Category: Blog Post

Categories
Blog Post Uncategorized

Generation rent

I was suitably riled listening to Grant Shapps on World at One at lunchtime today, failing to answer sensible points and questions about the housing market from Tony Dolphin and Owen Hatherley.  His ability to avoid any question and reply in ludicrous blandishments never ceases to amaze me. 
According to Shapps, house price inflation only occurs under Labour.  He must have been too young to remember the boom under Thatcher – and even worse the bust when home owners were abandoned with vast amounts of negative equity, a huge number of repossessions – and no government help.  At least when the bust came in 2007 – and never forget it was an international banking bust whereas Thatcher’s was home grown – the Labour government took a series of important steps to protect tens of thousands of home owners, and the tenants of home owners, from foreclosure and homelessness.  
Shapps simply fails to deal with the issues raised by two important reports today.  The first, the one that grabbed the headlines, was from the Halifax who coined the phrase ‘Generation Rent’ to show that people no longer feel that they will be able to buy and that half of 20-45 year olds now think renting is the norm, similar to much of the rest of Europe. 
The second, Tony Dolphin and Matt Griffith’s serious piece of work for IPPR, Forever Blowing Bubbles? takes a long hard look at housing’s role in the UK economy with a proper historical perspective.  It makes a series of recommendations for mortgage regulation and the importance of stopping borrowers from thinking that housing market is a one-way bet.  They also make a strong case for reform of the private rented sector to provide a real alternative choice for those who need to hedge their move into home ownership.  As they say, “tenure rights are weak and the sector is poorly prepared for larger families and their needs. The professionalisation of the sector is much needed to make it the natural choice for those who wish to sidestep the risks of the owner-occupied housing market.”
At one level it seems obvious, but they demonstrate the importance of looking at the housing market as a single entity and not two markets of different tenures, arguing for “reform of the PRS to make it a less destabilising influence in the UK housing market. As we have seen, BTL (buy to let)  investment has too often been speculative, volatile and a cause of pro-cyclical price pressures in the housing market. Worse still, it appears to have cannibalised existing housing stock, led to a weak response in total housing supply, distorted existing supply incentives to encourage the overproduction of small city-centre flats, and driven out large institutional investors by pushing prices up beyond sensible yields.”
Owen Hatherley, whose interesting article on home ownership and renting is also published today, put it to Shapps that people who could no longer afford to become home owners were left at the mercy of the unregulated and insecure private rented sector, and therefore faced no real choice at all.  And that secure public sector tenancies should be a genuine option.  Exit stage right for the Minister, off on another ramble about some excruciatingly complex shared ownership option he’s invented (effectively a cut-back and rebranded Labour scheme). 
The Government avoids the big questions in housing policy today, especially how the housing market – and the vast majority of people live and will continue to live in market housing – can be made to work for people on low and moderate incomes.  There is a real opportunity for Labour to build on these interesting reports and come to some radical but sensible and appealing policies of its own as the Housing Policy Review takes shape.

Categories
Blog Post Uncategorized

Housing policy crossroads

In the week that the Labour Party issued its call for evidence for the Housing Policy Review, guest blogger Paul Lusk works through some practical issues that policy-makers need to address.
Housing is at a crossroads. There is an opportunity such has not existed for many years to put housing policy in the UK onto a practical footing – one where choices can be made based on value for money, not returns on financial manipulation.
First, take owner occupation. Tax privileges have fuelled a fifty-year bubble in prices whereby owners have bought homes for personal use and then stumbled on a gold plated pension plan which successive generations have bought into. Society will be wary of ever again repeating the conditions that led to the 2007 crash. Owner occupation remains a preferred form of tenure with the benefits of control and security. Its origins lie in Chartism and the co-operative building societies that were early fruit of British socialism. We on the left can be proud of this legacy, and cherish its continuation. But no longer can home-buying be a one-way street to apparently assured riches.  An over-sudden readjustment of house values to their real worth would be catastrophic. The only realistic option is a standstill in housing values for a generation. It may be two decades before the adjustment is complete, but it’s the only way forward. The owner occupation boom is over, and a soft landing is now underway.
Now on social housing: by completing finance reforms that the Brown government started (but failed to complete), the coalition is stabilising the council housing sector at a shade under ten percent of the national stock. There will no longer be artificial incentives to shift council stock to housing associations, so any transfers will be about the strategic benefits of transferring control, not about financial manipulation. The seventeen percent of housing in the ‘social’ sector will settle down split roughly half and half between councils and housing associations.
That leaves the sector that provides homes for market rental. The so-called ‘private’ rented sector (housing associations, of course, also like to think of themselves as ‘private’) now provides nearly as many homes as the entire social sector. It is mainly geared around short-term lets by very small landlords, many of whom have bought homes as a speculative investment. Its capacity to provide good homes meeting housing need can be overlooked. It is now time to address the potential for a private sector that attracts more professional managers to deliver longer term homes with a recognised role in meeting housing need.
We need to think clearly about the whole issue of ‘housing need’ and subsidised rents. Generally we on the left know that social housing does not equal welfare housing but we have been reluctant to draw the obvious conclusion – that creating more lettings in the social sector does not equal meeting housing need. The private and the social sectors both have a role to play in meeting housing need, if this means enabling people to access essential accommodation which they could not otherwise afford. We need to think about both short term and long term housing needs, and the risks of defaulting into restricting the future choices of people whose short term housing need has been settled by the allocation of a social home. We need to think about whether the buying power of the state is properly rewarded by the current system of housing benefit with its array of poverty traps.
We also need to revive a central idea in the Cave review of social housing – making it easier to decouple housing services from stock ownership. Actually this applies also to the private sector if is to be made stronger and more efficient. The tax system heavily penalises landlords who devolve housing management to external providers, including tenant co-ops. The Tenant Services Authority abandoned its plans to empower tenants to ‘trigger’ a change in managing agent for reasons that it always refused to discuss, but the logic of removing the barriers to this separation of powers is irrefutable. All groups of long-term tenants should have the right to choose their own manager.

Categories
Blog Post Uncategorized

Is Social Housing Welfare? (2)

Picking up Tony’s theme in our last post, our guest blogger seeks to answer the same question.
Monimbo
In housing circles there have been debates for years about the ‘role’ of council housing or more widely social housing, and of course these were given a further boost byJohnHills’ report in 2007. Before the election, as readers of red Brick are probably well aware, think tanks were falling over themselves to redefine – and usually narrow – social housing’s role.
But recently there have been even more worrying developments – typified by the media castigation of Bob Crowe for living in council housing which Steve covered in an earlier blog.  Nothing could be more typical of the recent trend than the disgraceful article by Mary Dejevsky about fraudulent tenancies, which called for all council tenancies to be ended on 1st April 2013 at which point there would be a sort of moratorium and people (presumably by now waiting outside the front gates of their houses) would have to justify their entitlement to a continued tenancy.
As CIH’s Abi Davies has pointed out, while of course social housing is part of the welfare state, it is not ‘welfare’ in the sense that it’s only available when needed like a hospital emergency service.  There has always been ambiguity about these issues in the media, most of whose commentators probably know and care little about social housing, but the recent trend is marked by a succession of coded comments about the sector by ministers, which are then regurgitated in the usual exaggerated ways by the media to produce a general picture of tenants who want to live in social housing long-term somehow being abusers of the system. 
Steve has previously written about the misleading term ‘tenancies for life’, which is part of this slur campaign, when security of tenure is simply about proper consumer protection.  CIH is about to publish a book, Housing and Inequality, which reminds readers that housing policy is about people’s homes and the home is a key ingredient of people’s happiness.  This is something deliberately overlooked in current debate about security of tenure, the need for more ‘mobility’ and the issue of ‘underoccupation’.  It is almost as if there are two housing systems, one in which owner-occupiers with adequate and secure incomes have an almost unthreatened dominion over their homes, while the more than one third of households who are not owners or who have only a tenuous grip on ownership have to live with much less security and less right to regard their house as their home at all. 
The other slur is to describe council housing (in particular) as ‘subsidised housing’.  There are several issues here. One is that all tenures are subsidised – the last government spent about £1bn in its last year subsidising owner-occupiers, for example.  Of course social tenants pay sub-market rents, partly because of historic grants and subsidies and partly because social landlords are non-profit.  However, if someone shops at the Co-op, we don’t describe his shopping as ‘subsidised’, do we?
Let me make a positive proposal to address this particular issue, at least as far as council housing is concerned. In a year’s time (April 2012) council housing becomes self-financing, and this presents a golden opportunity to kick the ‘subsidised’ tag.  The Treasury is forcing councils to take on £6.5bn of extra debt, not currently in the system, to compensate the Exchequer for the profits (yes, profits) it would have made if council housing had still be on its books.
Let’s make a virtue of this necessity.  Every Labour councillor, every council, the LGA, trade bodies like ARCH and the NFA, the CIH, trade unions, the four national tenants’ organisations – all should plan to publicly celebrate on 1st April 2012 the fact that council housing will have paid off its historic debts to government.  From April next year it will no longer be subsidised, and in fact it will be making a modest return to reinvest in the homes it provides.  Non-profit, yes, but subsidised – no!

Categories
Blog Post Uncategorized

Labour's housing policy review – your chance to contribute

The recently launched Labour Party review of housing policy is issuing a ‘call for evidence’ from organisations and individuals with an interest in housing policy.
Earlier this year Labour Leader Ed Miliband MP established several Policy Reviews, including one led by Shadow Communities Secretary Caroline Flint MP which will focus on the key question: How do we meet families’ aspirations for good housing and a good home?
Written evidence is invited by Monday 27 June covering any or all of the above and any other relevant issues.  A website is being launched and submissions will need to be in a specified format and may be published: we will publish details here when they are available, and the document will also be available on the LHG website at www.labourhousing.co.uk .  This will be an important exercise and Red Brick encourages readers to consider the questions and make submissions.  We would also be pleased to receive any comments for publication on this site.
The call for evidence starts by recognising that Britain’s housing system is failing and that there is a genuine housing crisis, the effects of which go well beyond the needs of those on housing waiting lists: “Our commitment is to a decent home for all at a price within their means, supporting successful, safe and sustainable communities where people are able to lead happy, healthy lives and contribute to their local community, and ensuring that the next generation of families has access to the sort of home that best suits their needs and meets their aspirations.”
The Housing Policy Review will consider:
1 – The Changing Landscape:

  • What effect will significant demographic trends have on household formation and household type in the future?
  • What will the impact of Government’s policies on housing be and how will it vary around the country?
  • What will the housing market look like in 2015, and how significant will regional variations be?
  • How are changes in the housing market affecting people’s expectations and aspirations for housing and decisions about their lives?

2 – Places where people want to live:

  • Where do people want to live and what do people want from a home and from the community they live in? Does everyone want the same?
  • How do we create and finance the infrastructure and amenities that communities need to thrive?
  • How can housing support safe, healthy communities where people are able to work and their children can get a good education?

 3 – Housing finance:

  • How do we encourage more private and institutional investment in housing?
  • Where should public expenditure on housing be spent?
  • How do we create a housing market that contributes to economic stability and
  • How do we balance a prudent approach to mortgage lending with a mortgage market that enables people to buy their own home?

 4 – Housing supply: 

  • What are the causes of undersupply in the housing market and why have levels of house-building fallen to such low levels?
  • What lessons can we learn from our approach in government and from what worked in the past or overseas?
  • How do we support the construction industry to build more homes? And in an environmentally sustainable way?
  • What role can converting empty residential or commercial units play in creating more homes and how can we increase supply amongst existing housing stock?

 5 – Home ownership:

  • Why do people want to own their own home?
  • Are there aspects of home ownership that could be replicated in other types of tenure?
  • What is preventing people from buying their own home?
  • How do we make home ownership more affordable and accessible for first-time buyers?

 6 – Social Housing:

  • What is the role of social housing providers? Who should live in social housing and how should it be allocated?
  • Why do people want to live in social housing and are there aspects of social housing that could be replicated in other types of tenure?
  • What should the relationship be between social housing and the private rented sector and home ownership?
  • How do we ensure that all social homes are decent?

 7 – Private rented sector:

  • Why do people live in the private rented sector?
  • What do people want from a home in the private rented sector?
  • How do we tackle bad landlords? Does the private rented sector need better regulation?

 8 – Planning:

  • How do we increase land supply for housing?
  • How do we make better use of previously developed land and vacant dwellings?
  • How do we overcome local opposition to proposed developments and get communities to champion new homes?
  • How do we ensure that those outside the housing market aren’t excluded from decisions about development?

 9 – Housing design and quality:

  • How do we encourage the best design in new builds?
  • Are homes in Britain fit for purpose and how do we improve the quality of housing?
  • How do we set the standard for energy efficiency in new builds and improve energy efficiency in existing stock, especially private stock?
  • What would a ‘green homes standard’ look like?
Categories
Blog Post Uncategorized

Know any Lords?

The Opposition was defeated and the hand-wringers in the Liberal Democratic Party have done nothing yet.  So the Localism Bill (see here and here and here) went through the House of Commons and now heads off to the House of Lords.  There it will meet a few people who know a lot about housing, and it is time for them to take a firm stand.
There is encouragement from what a few LibDem MPs said during the second reading debate that a concerted attempt to remove or at least dilute some of the housing aspects of Bill could have some success. 
For example,

  • LibDem MP Annette Brooke said that she wanted “to put on record my concern about the two-year tenancies…… The Liberal Democrats want this issue to be revisited in the House of Lords.  It is incredibly important to get it right….. as we pass this Bill to the other place, we do so with a lot of questions.”
  • President of the LibDems Simon Hughes MP said he was “very supportive of the comments of my hon. Friend Annette Brooke, who expressed her concern not that the Government are not listening, but that they may need to go further in the House of Lords to accommodate the points made by those of us who for years have had a passionate concern for social housing and council housing.”
  • And another LibDem Dan Rogerson set out a principle that shows what the debate is all about: “The key to social housing is longer-term tenure, which gives families, and particularly those with young children, confidence that they have a home for their family for the future. That is why we need to focus on the fact that social housing is meant to be not for short-term crisis accommodation but for family homes…… I should like a great deal of reassurance in that regard from those on the Treasury Bench before I join the Government in the Division Lobby” (for Third Reading).

So now is the time, if you know any members of the House of Lords, to get writing and lobbying to make sure that this nasty Bill doesn’t come back to the Commons without some substantial amendment. 
Combining those that take the Labour Whip, concerned LibDem Peers and the many cross-benchers who take an interested in housing, there are enough votes to force the government into change.
Despite my many reservations about the House of Lords, forcing changes to the Bill would not be an undemocratic step.  None of the Bill’s housing policies appeared in the Lib Dem Manifesto.  Apart from housing mobility, none appeared in the Conservative Manifesto, which promised to “respect the tenures and rents of social housing tenants”.  Apart from HRA reform and empty homes, none made it into the coalition agreement.  This Bill is borne of thoroughly undemocratic practice: the British people were not told any of it at the Election and should not have to put up with it now.

Categories
Blog Post Uncategorized

Human rights at home

Human rights and equalities, like Health and Safety, get a bad press.  The media associate them with overweening European institutions and bureaucratic interference with the ability of people to do whatever they like.  In reality it is about providing checks and balances to the power of the state or public bodies, seeking to ensure that individuals get equal treatment irrespective of their personal characteristics and are not subject to unfair or arbitary decisions.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has just published an excellent guide to the human rights legislation and its impact on social housing.  As the introduction to ‘Human rights at home: Guidance for social housing providers’ says: “Poor housing can affect a person’s health, work, education, relationships and life chances, which is why the right to respect for a person’s home is in the Human Rights Act.”
The guide deals with many of the current controversies surrounding the operation of the  European Convention on Human Rights in housing, including the applicability of the Act to housing associations (broadly yes, but it does not make them public sector bodies) and the restrictions recently placed by the Courts on ‘mandatory’ rights to possession (including the ending of starter and demoted tenancies), where it is now clearly necessary to demonstrate reasonableness and proportionality in the decision. 
The Guide includes a useful step by step set of questions designed to help providers to make decisions that are not in breach of the Human Rights Act.  Given the timing of publication, it does not address the issues that may soon arise from the government’s legislative programme.  I can think of two that might interest lawyers and the Courts in future – the application of rules to award and end flexible tenancies and the circumstances in which eviction would be justified in the case of a tenant who has fallen into arrears because their housing benefit entitlement has been severely curtailed due to underoccupation but for whom there is no reasonable means of obtaining a smaller home.
In my view the landlord/tenant relationship is shifting far too far in favour of the landlord and it is a good thing that the Human Rights Act provides a constraint on landlords’ activities.  The Guide should encourage reflection amongst those who want to maximise the freedom of action of landlords: even if the Localism Bill appears to give them more absolute powers to end tenancies, the Human Rights Act is lurking in the background to provide some possibility of challenge, redress and amelioration.

Categories
Blog Post Uncategorized

Seabeck slates Tory housing segregation

A longer than normal post bringing edited extracts from the speech of Alison Seabeck MP, shadow Housing and Planning Minister on the housing parts of the Localism Bill, during the Bill’s second reading in the House of Commons.  You can read the full speech on the Labour Housing Group website or indeed the entire debate here.   
Alison Seabeck said:
The Opposition cannot let these proposals go unchallenged. We will press for votes on our amendments flexible tenancies and security of tenure.
The Government’s proposals on housing and homelessness are deeply damaging, and none more so than the proposal to end security of tenure in social housing. That will create two classes of tenant in social housing. There will be great uncertainty, because there will be different lengths of tenure and different levels of rent, with little rational relationship between the two. There will be a divide between those who have been fortunate enough to get security of tenure in their social housing, and those who have been made to wait for too long and will be granted a tenancy for as little as two years. Tenants whose financial circumstances improve above an arbitrary level will potentially be told to pack up and move on.
As a result of the complexity of the system that is being brought forward, which will be a bureaucratic nightmare, a household in a three-bedroom house could pay less rent and have greater security than a household next door in a two-bedroom flat.
However, the message from the Government to all families in social housing is, “Get a better job and you will lose your home. Invite your partner to move in with you and start a family, and you will put your home at risk.” At a time when we want people to do their best to get on in life, and to build something better for themselves and their families, this is the wrong policy. Labour will stand up for people who strive and who put the hours in to better their lot. What will happen to people who fall foul of the new Tory rules and are told to leave their council or housing association home simply because they have worked hard if they subsequently lose their job or fall ill and are unable to work? What will their entitlement be then? They will go to the back of the queue and start all over again. Where is the incentive to work and where is the fairness?
To solve the housing crisis, the Government need to build more homes. Their policy seems to be aimed at trying to solve the shortage of social housing by allowing everyone a year or two in a social home before moving them on. Ministers seem to have failed to realise that to house people we need not to give them shorter tenancies but to build homes.
What will be the consequences of that policy of limiting social housing so that it is not available to those who work hard to build something for themselves, or to those who invest in their homes and communities? What will happen when we reduce estates to being areas that people pass through at their most vulnerable point and transitional communities of the most deprived? We will go back almost to the state of social housing in the first half of the last century, when access to it was limited by law to the “working classes”. That term was only ever defined once in legislation, in paragraph (12)(e) of the schedule to the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1903, as those “whose income in any case does not exceed an average of thirty shillings a week”.
In today’s money, that would be an annual income of just over £7,000. Mean as the Government are, I do not expect them to set a threshold as low as that, which would make them comparable with Tory Governments of the late 19th and early 20th century. However, the message that their change will send is the same now as it was then: that social housing is for the poor. It is to segregate people from other sections of society that are seen as doing better.
It has been more than 62 years since the House decided to accept that segregating social housing off for just one deprived section of society was entirely wrong. In that debate, Aneuring Bevan said—it is as true now as it was then—that it was
“entirely undesirable that on modern housing estates only one type of citizen should live…that from one sort of township should come one income group and from another sort of township another income group…if we are to enable citizens to lead a full life, if they are each to be aware of the problems of their neighbours, then they should be all drawn from the different sections of the community”.
Sixty years on, the idea that this country is stronger when its communities are more diverse, and that its society is more cohesive when it comprises of a broad and mixed swathe of people, is no longer supported by the Conservative party. Nor is it supported by the Liberal party, whose MPs did not oppose the measures in this Bill in Committee despite trying to raise their concerns by tabling amendments. They consistently withdrew those amendments without a vote. Just where is their fabled voice in government and their backbone? We still believe in mixed communities in social housing, underpinned by security of tenure, which the Bill targets so directly.
The framework published by the Department is quite clear that tenancies will be secure only for tenants who have a secure tenancy before 31 March 2012. Therefore, tenants with a secure tenancy will lose their security if their family grows and they need to move to a larger home, or if a person wishes to downsize to a smaller home and the only properties available for re-let are offered on a flexible tenancy.
The Bill is a retrograde step. Homeless applicants found to be in priority need and unintentionally homeless will no longer be able to draw on the security and stability of a social home with security of tenure. Instead, they will be placed directly into the private rented sector and if they refuse an offer, for whatever reason, the local authority will no longer have a duty to house them. They would then have almost nowhere to turn for help. It does not take much to realise the circumstances in which an offer might be unacceptable to an applicant. The accommodation might be too expensive, too far away from their child’s school or too close to an abusive ex-partner. It might also be damp, mouldy or unsafe—the list goes on. Key among all this is the insecurity that a private rented sector offer can sometimes bring. There was a very good article in Inside Housing this week, following a survey that clearly showed that a homeless person placed in the private rented sector was likely to face eviction very early, and to be turned around and around in a circle of homelessness.
The third biggest cause of statutory homelessness last year was the loss of an assured shorthold tenancy. As I said earlier, stability is vital in order to prevent what people have referred to as the revolving door of homelessness. With tenancies in the private rented sector being less stable and of a shorter duration, the risk of recurring homelessness is greater, so the need for stronger statutory protection increases.
If the Government are insistent that they wish to place homeless applicants directly into the private rented sector, it is only right for them to acknowledge the need to strengthen protections for the very predictable outcome of their choices. Evidence shows that homeless people housed in the private rented sector are more likely to be evicted.
Let me finish by saying that it is not just this Bill’s provisions that give cause for alarm, as changes to housing benefit will increase homelessness and rough sleeping. We have already seen homelessness increase by some 15% since this Government came into office. The Government’s consultation on statutory duties on local authorities has seen Tory councils like Hammermsith and Fulham viewing it as an opportunity to scale back their duties to homeless people, while Westminster council has been busy trying to ban soup kitchens.
Our new clauses and amendments are designed to defend mixed communities, to extend protections and advice to homeless people, to stand up for security and stability for low-income families and to prevent the segregation of those sections of our society that this Bill will surely deliver.

Categories
Blog Post Uncategorized

Council rents: dodgy stats and dodgy conclusions

A Guardian poll claims that nearly 80% of respondents agree with the statement that councils should charge high-earning social tenants higher rents.  The Guardian quotes twitter comments including one saying people who can afford to live in the private sector should not be in social housing. ‘Simple. Irrefutable.’
The initial story that provoked such a strong public opinion and huge media coverage came from Westminster City Council.  That in itself should raise suspicions.  The Guardian leads its poll – and misleads its readers – with ‘facts’: that in Westminster 200 social tenants earn more that £100,000 a year and 2,200 earn more than £50,000.  Who then could disagree with the policy they are proposing?  But closer scrutiny leads to the information that the figures are estimates based on a survey carried out in 2006.  There is no information as to whether these are single earners of couples (if both earn average wages, household income would be £50k) and whether lessees were excluded. Personally I just don’t trust this data and have put in a freedom of information request to get the calculations. 
Westminster are using these ‘facts’ as a rapier argument to front their desire to have greater local powers to set council rents.  Very successful bit of propaganda so far.  But beware – they want the local power because they want to put their rents up for everyone not just ‘the rich’.
It is interesting to ruminate on this story.  First, if the figures are correct they show a remarkable amount of social mobility in council housing (2,200 is more than about 1 in 6 of Westminster’s tenants).  Well done council housing for helping people achieve their aspirations.  Secondly, it shows that council housing, despite everything, can still achieve mixed income communities.  Well done council housing.  Thirdly, it makes an interesting change, even if it is dodgy, to see some Tories wanting to get rid of people it regards as rich when most of their policies, especially around local housing allowance, are about getting rid of the poor.
Fourthly, beware polls, even in the Guardian.  People voted yes to a statement that social housing ‘should be available only to those who need it most and increasing rents for high earners would encourage them to move on’ – a totally different statement from the headline that 4 in 5 agreed that ‘councils should be allowed to charge high-earning social tenants higher rents’.  So who was trying to prove what and for what reason?
Fifthly, there would be the small matter of implementation.  To charge higher rents to some because of their income, the council would need to know and be able to verify the income of all their tenants.  It would be dodgy getting housing benefit information for this purpose, and that wouldn’t identify high earners.  I see armies of means-testers knocking on doors, sending out forms and making detailed verification checks.  Even if some simpler means were found (eg higher rents for higher tax payers) the information would have to be transferred from HMRC or self-declared – and in any case would not ‘catch’ the 2 income household earning £25K each.  And it would make the marginal rate of tax for a person passing the higher tax rate threshold totally unsustainable. 
This is a well-worn path trodden by people who like to discredit social housing – there is a fine tradition of stories about council tenants with Jags outside the front door – but in my view it is totally unimplementable even if you like the principle.  So, it has been a bit of a propaganda victory for Westminster, rekindling a few old prejudices.  But even this government isn’t daft enough to do what Westminster wants.  Or is it?

Categories
Blog Post Uncategorized

Heroes fit for homes

Ex-service personnel have always featured highly amongst the homeless.  For many years the armed forces seemed particularly bad at helping people re-settle after their discharge.  There was no single cause for homelessness: sometimes physical disability made people less able to work and more vulnerable, sometimes mental stresses and post-trauma conditions made life back in civilian life more difficult to bear.  Sometimes people had become institutionalised or distanced from their families and an inability to re-settle led to problems with alcohol or drugs.  Some faced discrimination. 
For decades small charities campaigned to get a fair housing deal for homeless ex-service men and women but it was an uphill struggle.  The 1977 homelessness legislation provided one route to a decent home for some: if vulnerability through disability could be demonstrated then a social rented home would be found.  But this was not enough: research by Crisis in the mid 1990s found that around one-quarter of the single homeless population had spent time in the armed forces. 
Since then, increased awareness and better services, both within the armed forces and in local government and the voluntary sector, have had a demonstrable impact on the problem, with Crisis estimating that ex-service people are now around 6% of the single homeless population.  And in a very important step, the Labour Government changed the priority need categories in the homelessness legislation to give clear rights to vulnerable former members of the armed forces.
Striking his most Churchillian pose, Housing Minister Grant Shapps seeks to make the most of today’s announcement by Defence Minister Liam Fox about the improving the ‘military covenant’.   Shapps’ statement is littered with pomposity but little practical action: ‘These brave men and women… heroes … we will not stand idly by… our duty as a nation… we must hear their call’.  There is nothing wrong with the government giving ex-service people priority (in some as yet undefined way) for the FirstBuy scheme, shared equaity schemes, self-build projects and the like.  But it will hardly crack the problem.
In his little list, Shapps included ‘fairer treatment for military personnel applying to live in social housing’.  On the surface, fair enough, given their incomes and housing histories, the route into social housing is likely to be more important than the others in ensuring ex-armed forces personnel obtain an affordable secure decent home.
Call me an old cynic, but isn’t this the same Grant Shapps who has ended the production of social  housing at target rents in the future?  Who has brought about the slashing of ‘supporting people’ budgets – used to support homeless ex-service personnel amongst others – in many areas of the country?  Who has promoted legislation that will remove the right of vulnerable ex-service personnel to be rehoused in a social rented home?  Like everyone else, in future homeless ex-service personnel are likely to be offered a letting in the higher-cost, insecure private rented sector.
It pays to be careful when you see a Tory waving the flag.  In all likelihood they will be up to no good.

Categories
Blog Post Uncategorized

Prescription for a healthy Britain – conference reminder

Labour Housing Group, Socialist Health Association and Unite the Union are organising a Conference on tackling the housing and health divide, to take place in London on June 13 2011. 

PRESCRIPTION FOR A HEALTHY BRITAIN
Speakers are
Alison Seabeck MP – shadow housing minister;
Karen Buck MP – shadow welfare reform minister;
Dr Stephen Battersby – President, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health;
Angela Mawle – Chief Executive, UKPHA

Costs (includes lunch) £50 for statutory or commercial organisations, £25 for voluntary organisations and individuals, £12 for members of LHG or the Socialist Health Association. Unfunded organisations or individuals please contact SHA.

Bookings through SHA at http://www.sochealth.co.uk/confs/Booking.php