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A Christmas Carol (in prose)

A guest post for Xmas from Bernard Crofton adding a seasonal spin on a topic previously reported on Red Brick here.

A Christmas Carol (in prose)…… being a …….. ghost story for Christmas. 

In November of 2010,  the two government departments facing amongst the biggest budget cuts, the Department for Communities and Local Government,  and the Ministry of Justice,  issued a new  guidance leaflet : “Advice on dealing with squatters in your home”   available as a pdf  download from  http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/advicesquatters,  where there is a helpful summary as well :-

There are an estimated 20,000 squatters in the UK. This guidance is aimed at homeowners and to make them aware of their rights where their property has been unlawfully occupied. It has been jointly produced with the Ministry of Justice which makes clear that it is an offence for a squatter to fail to leave a residential property when required to do so by or on behalf of either a displaced residential occupier or certain other occupiers whose interest in the premises is protected under the legislation.

That stirred some queasy  questions about the “new” advice;  mainly “Why?”  and “Why now? “ .

However, when I clicked and the pdf started its weary download, I heard the rattling of chains in the cellar. Surely Jacob Marley has been dead these seven years (or 17  since the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994).

The Advice starts with these words:

 “What can I do if my home has been taken over by squatters?

1                 If you return from holiday or walking the dog to find squatters in your home and they refuse to leave, you can call the police and report a criminal offence. “

I was fascinated by the imagery. Mainly because part of it was mine, come back to haunt me.  I was among the local government representatives consulted by the Home Office about the legislation. Actually the law, as laws of that era went, ended up quite fair. I never met any supporter of squatting who thought squatters should be able to move into an occupied dwelling and effectively evict the occupants.  Nor did I ever find a case where this had happened. Canvassing round the councils in London (where statistically almost all the squatting in the UK was concentrated) we couldn’t find a single case where that was  alleged to have happened.

We found a few cases where home-owners were trying to repair a newly acquired empty property before moving in, and it being squatted while undeniably unoccupied. We found very many parallel examples on council estates (and I managed a tenth of that national 20,000 squats figure) But the pubIic debate had far more of the tang of the illegal immigrants debate  It was about scroungers and spongers but with a more direct threat: they wouldn’t just take your money indirectly through the tax system, they would take your home and all that was in it!

One newspaper (I think of it as being the Daily Mail but I may just be prejudiced) ran a tale of a family returning from holiday to find their home squatted. “Vox populi” in the neighbourhood were said to be frightened to leave their homes unattended in case squatters moved in. We tried to find this example. The local council, where it reportedly occurred, only came up with a couple who lived abroad and owned several rented properties in the UK, one of which they found squatted on a visit back to the UK. They were certainly neither “displaced residential occupiers” nor  “protected intending occupiers” of the property.

So in discussions with the civil servants I pointed out that if I went out to walk the dog and found someone in my home when I returned, I would not find the Police reluctant to act on straightforward “breaking and entering” or even malicious damage grounds. My  sarcasm was effective. That “walking the dog” phrase alongside the “returning from holiday” one became shorthand for the fact the legislation was an over-reaction or a pandering to right wing prejudices. I still do not believe any owner-occupier was ever “displaced” by squatters while the kettle was still warm, or as Confucius say “swinging chain, warm seat”.

The issue, as local government and voluntary sector consultees all argued, was the time it took to get to court to repossess a squatted property. Ironically,court waiting-times  meant that if you bought an empty house that was immediately squatted, you were kept out of it for the full term of that other brilliant invention of the era: the shorthold tenancy.  So the law was eventually drafted to include the situations of both “a displaced residential occupier” and a  “protected intending occupier” of the property. And rather than put resources into reducing court waiting lists we got the “interim possession order”.

Now I never rule out the possibility there really was a case where people left their home to go on holiday and found it squatted on returning. I never completely rule out the possibility that somewhere there is a Big-issue seller who gets into his Rolls Royce at the end of the day. But I never met one remotely near that bracket, and so I remain sceptical. But as for home-owners being squatted while out for a walk with the dog, I never heard anyone ever suggest it has happened – except me as a sarcastic example of the hysteria over squatters.

Suddenly at the end of 2010, I find the example heading a new advice leaflet, not just from one but two government departments.  So I wrote to them both under the Freedom of Information Act (we didn’t have that when the 1994 Act was proposed, it was up to us to produce our own statistics). I asked:“Please supply me with any statistical information held or viewed by the Department or its predecessors, as to the number of owner-occupiers who have found squatters in their homes: a) on returning from holiday; b) after walking their dog.”

DCLG were first to respond, with the classic line from Fawlty Towers “ I know nuzzing”. The Ministry of Justice were more helpful.    The person with “responsibility for answering requests in the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) which relate to civil (non family) law and housing possession related statistics which are to be handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)” told me : 

“I can confirm that the Department does not hold the information you have requested. MOJ does not record property owners or property occupiers who have found that whilst away from the property, for whatever reason, that it has been occupied by squatters.”

After advising me of the rights of the un-numbered disposed occupiers, he helpfully provided the following table which he was not obliged to do under FOI, as it did not directly answer my question. He hoped it would be of use to me, so I am using it below. He warned me :

Table 1 below shows the number of Interim Possession Orders and Possession Orders against trespassers made in the county courts of England and Wales for the past full five years. Please read the footnotes underneath the table which describe how the data were compiled. Please note in particular that the figures include cases where properties were occupied by types of trespassers other than squatters (figures for squatters alone could only be determined by inspecting individual case files at a disproportionate cost), involving non-residential properties; and also that not all such orders given result in actual repossession of a property from a trespasser.

Table 1 Number of possession orders and interim possession orders given for trespass in the county courts of England and Wales, 2005-2009

                  Possession orders          Interim possession orders

2005                  929                                            117

2006                 1036                                           114

2007                   752                                            154

2008                  626                                             164

2009                  653                                             136

Source HMCS manual returns

Notes:

1. Data from 2005 to March 2009 were gathered from the Dept’s Management Information System.  Data from April 2009 were collected from the courts online data monitoring system One Performance Truth

2. Quality assurance checks have been carried out to remove outliers.  However these decisions have not been verified by contact with the courts.  These figures should therefore be treated with caution.

3.  Orders against trespassers and IPOs can be given for the possession of both commercial and residential properties from trespassers.

4.  Not all orders and interim orders given for possession against trespassers relate to properties that are occupied by squatters.

5.  Not all possession and interim possession orders result in actual repossession of a property from a trespasser.                       

Now let’s ignore that the table includes squatted shop-units etc. and that not all trespassers are squatters.  The table shows possession orders against trespassers (I recall the definition used to be “against persons who entered as trespassers” but that mayhave changed).

I conclude from this table the following.

The number of full orders has declined significantly in the last five years.

The number of interim orders has started to decline, after a rise.

That at the current rate of full orders  it would take 30 years to remove the current number of squatters….if there were no new cases.

That at the current rate of interim (i.e. urgent?) orders it would take nearly 150 years.

No one seems in a hurry.

Is it me or is there something odd about the emergence of this new governmental advice from financially strapped departments just in time for the Xmas season? Conspiracy theories are accepted, but any genuine leaks as to why this ghost has been disturbed would be especially welcome.

Bernard  Crofton

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Remember this?

I remember reading this a few months ago and thinking that as a plan for housing it was fairly anodyne, but largely harmless. The only really interesting measure being the tentative promise to examine council borrowing for housing:
Better and more affordable homes
 In a fair society, everyone should have the right to a decent home, but this is not the reality of Britain today. There should be quality social and private rented housing available for those who need or choose it. And it should be easy to keep your home warm without harming the environment; British houses are frequently poorly insulated, wasting money and contributing to global warming. 
We will:

  • Make sure that repossession is always the last resort by changing the powers of the courts. 
  • Bring 250,000 empty homes back into use with cheap loans and grants as part of our job creation plan. 
  • Begin a national programme to insulate more homes paid for by the savings from lower energy bills.
  • Make sure every new home is fully energy efficient by improving building regulations.
  • Investigate reforming public sector borrowing requirements to free councils to borrow money against their assets in order to build a new generation of council homes, and allow them to keep all the revenue from these new homes. Over time, we will seek to provide a greater degree of subsidy as resources allow to increase the number of new sustainable homes being built. 
  • Scrap burdensome Home Information Packs, retaining the requirement for homes to have an energy performance certificate.

Clearly what I missed in these words were were the seeds of the most right-wing attack on the principle that the state should provide good quality housing for its citizens, above all for those that cannot afford it themselves.
It is, of course, an extract from the Lib Dem Manifesto for 2010. I’m sure they must have said somewhere that they would accept cutting housing investment by 75%, forcing ever more people on to housing benefit at the point where you’re slashing it to below poverty levels – as they admit themselves.

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The ghost of Christmas yet to come

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Steve Hilditch</span></strong>
Steve Hilditch

Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.

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We don’t often link to the Telegraph on Red Brick.  But the sting operation against leading Liberal Democrats has had a focus on one of our favourite topics – housing benefit.

So here is what Business Minister Ed Davey actually said to the undercover reporters on this topic.  Hear the tape here.

“Well, their housing benefit cuts, for example, which are going to mean in my view if they go through that some people on the breadline will be put below the breadline.  And that’s just deeply unacceptable.  There is (sic) five changes to housing benefit, and there are two which I find are unsupportable.  One which will come in in 2010-13 where if you were unemployed for 12 months and you still were passing the working test which is actively seeking work – to get jobseekers allowance, which is about £80 a week, something like that, so you can eat you will have to show that you are looking for work…… I don’t understand why you are on the breadline, you’ve been trying to look for work, you’ve been passing all the government tests, and you’re suddenly going to have your rent, which is your highest cost, your help with that, taken down by 10 per cent.  No logic behind that whatsoever…. We spend too much on it.  It’s pushed up rents and landlords, rich landlords, are getting their pockets filled.  So the system doesn’t work, but I don’t think you kick people when they’re down.”

Contrast that with the pugnacious and ever so slightly pompous Mr Davey’s attack on Chris Bryant and Boris Johnson on BBC’s Question Time in October for using the word ‘cleansing’ to describe the housing benefit changes.  He said:

“Chris and Boris Johnson should apologise.  The language they are using is appalling and I think it is scaremongering and I think their analysis is completely wrong.  And I’ll tell you why it’s appalling.  I have Kosovan asylum seekers in my constituency who really were ethnically cleansed ….. what is being proposed is nothing of the sort, you should use temperate language and have a moderate and grown up and adult debate…. People will find that 790,000 social homes in London will be completely unaffected.  They will find that the vast majority of housing benefit recipients across the country will be unaffected.   And yes there will be some but we have increased massively the fund that will assist if there are problems to £140m.  And even those people who will be affected, they will be able to find that up to a third of private rented sector homes in London still affordable under housing benefit.  Now I’m afraid you are being factually wrong and pandering to people’s sentiment when we’re actually putting in a sensible policy….. The real issue here is that we are proposing after all these changes the state will still subsidise up to £20,000 a year rent in the private sector – £400 a week”.   

A few facts

–        Many social tenants will be affected by the 10% cut in jobseekers allowance, uprating benefits at less then RPI, and the increase in rents for some tenancies to 80% market rents

–        The £21,000 a year cap is irrelevant to most private tenants.  Many more will be affected by the 30th percentile rule and the overall benefits cap of £26,000

–        The ‘vast majority’ of private tenants will be affected, as the government’s own figures now show.

As an aside, Ed Davey’s rage about the use of hyperbole about cleansing looked synthetic at the time – after all, Lord Turnbull said Gordon Brown was Stalinist – but it looks even odder now that Vince Cable has called the government ‘Maoist’.  It seems that comparisons to genocidal maniacs are more common that we think.

We’ve observed before that the more the government accuse the opposition of scaremongering, the more likely it is to be true.   Below the breadline…… kicking people when they’re down.  Mr Davey’s real views deserve to be heard, and should be acted upon. 

Even Ebenezer Scrooge finally repents.  If the LibDems stand up for their principles, they might just get to play the part of the ghost of Christmas yet to come.

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What will housing look like at Christmas 2014?

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Steve Hilditch</span></strong>
Steve Hilditch

Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.

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Just published on the Labour Housing Group website is a fascinating article by LHG Executive member Graham Martin, who tries to predict what will happen to the 3 main tenures between now and Xmas four years hence, when we will be 5 months away from the most likely date of the next General Election.  What will the Labour Party, when returned to government, be facing in housing?  Here is a summary of Graham’s conclusions (figures are for England only).   

Social Housing

Housing Associations currently own around 2.3m affordable homes.  Given the size of the stock, the overall numbers will change slowly despite the planned changes. 

  • The current (inherited and new) social rented programme will produce about 100,000-120,000 extra ‘target rented’ properties.  But between 100,000-170,000 existing target rent homes will be relet at intermediate (upto 80% market) rents.  In 2014 it is likely to be 50,000 fewer in total than now.
  • There will be around 285,000 more homes let at intermediate rents (say 135,000 relets and 150,000 new build). 
  • The debt funded/rental cross-subsidised new Intermediate rented homes will be produced mainly in London and the South East (with some in the South West and Midlands) as it is here that the maths work best.  In other parts of the country, intermediate rents will result in either a small increase or even a rent reduction, making development on the new model unviable. 
  • The biggest impact is likely to be caused by the interaction of the various benefit changes, and in particular the overall benefit cap of £26,000, restricting tenants’ ability to pay.

Council house numbers will change slowly.  There is little appetite and resources for significant stock transfers.  Some other conclusions: 

  • The reform of Housing Revenue Accounts is likely to improve councils’ financial strength and their ability to invest in their own stock.  There is a risk that there will be a smash and grab raid on HRA money (rising rents, financially more secure) to cross subsidise the General Fund.
  • The provision by councils of Intermediate rented housing is likely to be slow.
  • Management issues around benefits are likely to be the same as with Housing Associations.
  • Changes to statutory homelessness rules, and changing letting priorities will have a significant impact.

Home Ownership

Graham projects that house prices might fall another 20%, maybe 25%-30%, as measured against inflation. This will be mainly due to the long term ‘deleveraging’ of the residential mortgage market – i.e. there will not be the money to lend to home owners to buy new homes (such money as there is will go mainly to those buying the nicest properties with the biggest deposits).

Home construction for home ownership will be remain low until 2014, after which is may start to increase again (from a very low base).

The lack of affordable homes for (all but the best off) first time buyers will result in increased pressure on the rental market, and more adult children living in the parental home.

Private Rented Sector

The hardest to predict. The only certainly is that there will be big change.

The changes to Housing Benefit (and total benefit) rules will profoundly impact on the sector. Landlords may split their properties into smaller flats to respond to the benefit caps and ceilings.  Savills are projecting that the impact will be, first, large falls in demand for and rents of 1 bedroom flats (due to under 35’s now being subject to the ‘single room rate’ rule), and, secondly, increased demand for larger ‘shareable’ properties.

The new 30% centile cap on maximum HB and the plan to greatly widen the ‘Broad Market Rental Areas’ will have a big impact.  There are areas where over 30% of private tenants are dependant on HB, but will be constrained to living in the 30% of cheapest properties. 40% into 30% just does not go….

It is likely that the gap in housing (especially ‘green’) quality between other tenures and the private rented sector will grow significantly upto 2015.

Regulation and quality control are likely to be drastically reduced due to spending cuts, and there is a danger that undesirable landlord practices will increase. This is unfair to tenants but also to responsible landlords and managing agents.

There is an opportunity to promote high quality institutional landlordism, with investment available if the regulatory structure is right.  REITS – Real Estate Investment Trusts – could work well in residential letting, kick starting the UK residential construction industry, and providing high quality, long  term rented property at market rents.

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It just may not work

A lot of this blog has been dedicated to the effects of the government’s reforms to housing, local government and regeneration. We’ve built up a fair picture of the impacts of these reforms on communities and especially those on low incomes or in need.
But have we neglected something obvious: these rapid and dramatic reforms might just not work. I don’t mean that they may have consequences the government hasn’t foreseen but rather they may entirely unoperational for the various bodies that are supposed to enact them. Or interact in such a way that the (affordable) housing system just fails.
I have been vaguely thinking this but Vince Cable’s latest indiscretions, brought it to the fore. He’s quite clear of the possible impacts of the speed and extent of change:

There is a kind of Maoist revolution happening in a lot of areas like the Health Service, local government, reform, all this kind of stuff, which is in danger of getting out of… We are trying to do too many things, actually. Some of them are Lib Dem inspired, but a lot of it is Tory inspired. Actually, the problem is not that they are Tory-inspired, but that they haven’t thought them through. We should be putting a brake on it.

So what might a systematic failure in the housing system look like. A few initial thoughts:
1. Housing associations going bust, potentially caused by a combination of:

  • Housing associations over extending themselves (again), either through their own folly or the HCA/government trying to force too many new units out of the ‘investment agreement’ process.
  • Higher 80% rents which aren’t covered by housing benefit/universal credit creating spiralling bad debt, especially as councils maintain allocations policies of putting the poorest and neediest first (the irresponsible bureaucrats that they are) and housing associations not having the stomach or the ability to evict those that can’t pay.
  • Unstable and increasing borrowing costs and especially changes to the  existing loans that housing associations have – ramping up their existing debts, not even future ones.

2. Housing associations being reclassified as public bodies.
It may seem smart now for ministers to pontificate on CE pay or demand public sector-levels of transparency. It won’t look so smart if the ONS decide housing associations are public bodies and stick their debt on the public balance sheet. the Treasury I guess would stop all borrowing at once to protect the deficit reduction plan and a swift and full privatisation would likely follow. Who knows what mess would fall out of that.
3. A botched HRA reform:
You may have picked up that I’m broadly supportive of the HRA reform as it stands, but I wouldn’t put it past this government to engage in some last minute political meddling – a level of debt councils can’t support or an attempt to skew the debt to help Tory areas, as we saw in the local government finance settlement. This could see House Revenue Accounts going into the red, needing to be topped up from already diminishing council coffers and/or spending on maintenance and management stopping.
4. Planning reform that stops anything being built
This could be because either the policy impact of the Localism Bill does this or because the change and upheaval stops everything dead for a while. Housing, affordable and otherwise, completely grinds to a halt for years to come.
Update: It just occurs to me that of course in a lot of ways the housing system is already systematically failing. Perhaps I mean a failure in such magnitude or of such speed that requires immediate emergency action – such as the action which was taken during the crash to keep the existing system (and its flaws) going.

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Devolution in Three Acts

Steve’s previous post on HRA reform got me thinking about the government’s claims to devolution and decentralisation.
It seems to me the government’s measures fall into three categories: new centralism, devolving bad news and genuine decentralisation.
New centralism:
Any issues that are high on the government’s agenda are being centralised. Gove’s school reforms take more power and influence away from elected local councils over education. Welfare equally could have been localised or at least adapted to different local circumstances. But being high on the Tory agenda they keep it to themselves. Equally, populist measures like bin collections and banning council magazines are subject to central edict.
Devolving bad news:
So local authorities lose ring fencing at a time of the worst ever local authority cuts – meaning they have the ‘power’ only to decide what to cut. Council tax benefit gets localised, at the same time the government topslices 10% of it, without reference to need. Plenty of examples of this.
Genuine Decentralisation:
The new powers that social housing landlords have over rents and tenancy lengths constitute a genuine loosening of controls from the centre. But, the most extensive of these powers will be exercised by housing associations which may be national in scope and not subject to democratic accountability – so decentralisation yes, but localism or greater democracy?. The HRA reform (I think) is probably the only straight forward and genuinely localist reform so far: it devolves real control (and control over money at that) to a local democratic body.
I am surprised they have gone ahead with the reform given how everything has been sacrificed to deficit reduction. I thought any system which delivered a surplus to the Treasury would be very likely to stay put.
Any other categories of localism I’ve missed, or things I should add?

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One cheer and one HuRrAh

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Steve Hilditch</span></strong>
Steve Hilditch

Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.

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In trying to look beyond this government’s irksome habit of claiming credit for things agreed before the Election, at least it can be said that the snail’s pace move towards the abolition of the housing revenue account national subsidy system continues in vaguely the right direction. 

Having announced already that he planned to stick with most of John Healey’s proposals, announced it again as part of the November consultation on the reform of social housing, and announced it yet again as part of the Localism Bill package, Grant Shapps has now announced a ‘route map’  towards reform – in advance of a more detailed announcement next month!  The route map makes it clear that more detail will emerge over the next year before implementation in 2012, no doubt offering Mr Shapps further opportunities to announce his great, but inherited, reform.  Who said spin was dead?

Brought up on a council estate in Kenton, Newcastle, I have always had an emotional belief in council housing, and have often been outraged at the stigma attached to the tenure, the appalling media misrepresentations, and the snobbery.  Although what Thatcher did to council housing was unforgiveable, I was hugely disappointed that it turned out to be not very New Labour either.  But the rationale for council housing is not just emotive.  Based on a system of rent pooling, so that surpluses from older homes cross-subsidise the cost of new ones, it was also a robust financial model.  It could have provided hundreds of thousands if not millions of extra homes if it had been managed properly over the past 30 years.   

The Tories’ failure to invest in managing and maintaining the council stock left Labour with a huge problem in 1997, including a backlog of disrepair estimated at around £19billion and an incoherent rent policy.  Labour made some well meaning attempts at reform, such as the introduction of rent restructuring, the Major Repairs Allowance and the Decent Homes Programme, but funding for the latter carried the clear political price tag that direct management of the stock by councils was unacceptable to the government. 

As some councils in the national HRA subsidy system had large historic debts and others had none, the system was unbalanced and rent pooling became unmanageable.  It also became increasingly unpopular with tenants and councils in those areas where a third or even a half of local rents were taken for distribution elsewhere.  Despite producing growing surpluses nationally, all of the participants were unhappy with the outcome, even those that gained from redistribution.  As an annual system, there was no certainty about income and it was impossible for councils to plan long term and improve efficiency.  Tenants simply could not engage with the key decisions that affected their homes and communities because they were only understood by a tiny number of civil servants and professionals.  In its latter years, the Labour government became less hostile to the idea that council housing should have a long term future, and understood that a more local system suited the times.  It embarked on the hugely complex exercise of unravelling the system.

The Localism Bill contains powers to implement the local system proposed by Labour.  In future, councils will keep their rental income and use it locally to manage and maintain their own homes and service their debt.  To get to the point where all councils have sufficient income to meet these costs, there will be a one-off payment between central government and each council, which will reallocate existing housing debt between councils in a final settlement based on 30 year business plans for each landlord.  This is possible because the national system is in surplus – ie tenants are paying more in rent than council housing costs to run.

Communities and Local Government department’s task is complicated: they have to incorporate the implications of the new government’s shifting policies, for example on rents, as well as making important assumptions about inflation and the ‘discount rate’ (currently assumed to be 6.5%) used to determine the ‘net present value’ of each council’s housing business. 

I have 2 main concerns.  First, John Healey planned to allow councils to keep their right to buy capital receipts, whereas the Tories will retain the current system that returns 75% of net receipts to the Treasury.  There will also be a cap on councils’ overall housing borrowing.  Hope that HRA reform would trigger a resurgence in council housebuilding has been dashed.  The overall receipt to the Treasury from all the various calculations is currently projected to be around £6.5b, but tenants may come to view this as being paid for out of a large rent increase next year of over 7%.

Secondly, Labour would have localised the HRA within the clear framework of the regulatory regime.  There would have been an external check, through the Tenant Services Authority, and a place for tenants to go if, for example, their council set up backdoor arrangements that took funds out of the HRA to benefit the general fund.  It is still not clear how regulation will operate without the TSA, and this will make tenants in some areas nervous about what their landlords will get up to.   

At least we can look forward to further announcements.

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Principles for an early Labour housing policy

This is the follow on from my post the other day, arguing that Labour didn’t need housing policies now. But we do need to set out some principles to show how we’d be different and use as a basis for opposition to the government. Here’s my starter for 10, but are these too specific and prescriptive still?

  • Defend the principle that the state has a duty to ensure the poorest and most vulnerable are properly housed.

Under attack from the coalition a no brainer for us.

  • Promote the principle that the state has a role in ensuring the housing system meets everyone’s aspirations

The government should ensure that the private housing market and the mortgage market works better to meet what people want. And there should be a role helping those who aren’t the most vulnerable, but may struggle to buy, to have housing that meet their needs.

  • A commitment to mixed communities

 There are good policy reasons to ensure a mixture of incomes, class and ethnicities in a neighbourhood. It helps build understanding and solidarity between different types of people. And I believe the type of segregation you see in the US, France or elsewhere is culturally alien to us in Britain. For example, part of London’s identity has always been that rich and poor could live ‘cheek by jowl.’

  • Maintain some ‘Bricks and Mortar’ subsidy, i.e. grant to build affordable homes

The government has shifted financial support for those who can’t afford a home from building affordable homes (bricks and mortar subsidy) to housing benefit to allow people to pay private or near private rents (personal subsidy). This will be difficult even in five years’ time, but we shouldn’t give it up. Mixed communities depend on it and it means we support a wider range of providers.

  • A commitment to a mixed economy of housing; more products, more choice from more providers.

Labour should promote a more diverse sector: a wider range of private builders and more opportunities for smaller firms, more space for co-ops and mutuals, get more housing associations of different sizes building and free councils to build again. Encourage, support, cajole and compel providers to offer a diverse range of products from supported housing for those with extensive needs, to traditional social rents, to a variety of sub-market rents, to well managed professional private rent and a range of ways to get into homeownership.

  • Embrace localism; free councils.

Tricky this one. The government’s localism is a front for neglecting their responsibilities for ensuring everyone is well housed. But, support for new housing best comes from a local area and housing provision should respond to local needs, the type of community and people’s aspirations. One popular way would be to free councils to start building again and putting their housing business on the same footing as housing associations with the ability to borrow (someone with better knowledge needs to correct me as to why this is so impossible, as I’m often told). They should be able to build for a range of needs and aspirations and not just social rent. We will need to find a credible way to square this with 1. What happens when local areas make decisions that make it impossible to house everyone well?

  • Intervene to prevent another property bubble

If house prices ever start running away again, let’s be brave and act. And let’s tell people now that we will curb excessive house price rises. Making this argument successfully should be done immediately while the economic crisis is still fresh in people’s minds. You won’t convince homeowners just at the time when you need to do it that it’s needed.
There may be more things I think of…

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Localism Bill – the Pickle Family Circus

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Steve Hilditch</span></strong>
Steve Hilditch

Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.

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The famous American Pickle Family Circus was known for its ‘Big Juggle’ that ended every performance in an intricate club passing pattern.  As the Localism Bill, published yesterdy, passes ‘powers’ (ie the blame for cuts) down to councils, ‘Pickles Big Juggle’ seems an appropriate metaphor.

For social housing and homelessness, the Bill had few real surprises as everything had been widely trailed or pre-announced.  We’ll pick up on specifics in later posts but here’s an initial reaction to the Social Housing Reform chapter of the Bill.

On allocations, councils will be able to decide who goes on waiting lists, which will no doubt lead to great claims in the future about ‘cutting waiting lists’.  We will be back to local manipulation of the list for political ends.  Transferring tenants will be moved outside the waiting list, but there is no evidence to support the claim that this will make it ‘easier for them to move’.        

On homelessness, its a nerve to call this reform rather than virtual repeal.  Come on Shelter, time to wake up to what is actually happening here!   And come on LibDems, the homelessness legislation was a Liberal private member’s Bill in the first place, something the Party has always been proud of  – time for you to speak up.  The government complains that 20% of social lettings go to homeless people ‘at the expense of other people in need on the housing waiting list’.  A miserable and ‘divide and rule’ justification for an extraordinarily backward step. 

The introduction of ‘flexible tenancies’ (insecure fixed term tenancies) which will gradually turn social housing into transit camp accommodation.  Some housing association chief executives really like this, so I am even more concerned.   

Reform of council housing finance is something I welcome but we still have to be careful about how much will be returned to the Treasury and how the detailed formulae will apply to different councils with stock.  Called a ‘key plank of localism’ but a previous Labour measure. 

The proposed Homeswap Scheme again is something to welcome as mobility arrangements need a boost.  Landlords will be required to participate in home swap schemes. 

‘Reform’ of the regulatory system and abolishing the Tenant Services Authority will, in some magical and as yet unexplained way, “put local people in control of driving up standards of social housing management and resolving most failings.”  Social tenants will receive ‘stronger tools to hold landlords to account’ but I’ll believe it when I see it.  The more likely explanation lies in the statement that ‘State intervention will be reduced’.  A positive change will be to end the system of two separate ombudsmen handling complaints, providing a common route for all social housing tenants.

In London, new powers for the Mayor will include full control over housing investment, a good step, and the devolution of more planning decisions to the boroughs.

Watch this space for more discussion of these issues over the coming few weeks.

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Council cuts hit most deprived hardest

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Steve Hilditch</span></strong>
Steve Hilditch

Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.

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Did anyone really believe it when the coalition claimed to be ‘progressive’ and that it would stand up for the worst off in society? The local government cuts are an extraordinarily clear example of the vindictiveness of the government and its wholly political approach to funding. Their motto should be ‘we look after our own’.

Where do the biggest cuts fall? From South Tyneside, Sunderland and Hartlepool in the north east to Southwark, Hackney and Tower Hamlets in London, those getting the biggest cuts of over 8% read like a list of the most deprived communities in the country. And who does well? Little surprise here as well. It’s Dorset, Kent, Bucks and the Tory shires. You can get figures for all councils here.

If the division isn’t strictly political, there is a clear inverse correlation between the size of the cuts and the level of deprivation.

Nationally, the LibDems seem to be getting all the flak while hard core Tory policies just steamroller through. Even if they support cuts of this scale, surely they don’t support this distribution between councils?