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Awaab Ishak’s death and the failure of democracy within social housing

Image: Family handout

The damning verdict of the Awaab Ishak inquest has thrown a spotlight on the poor housing standards faced by many tenants across Britain. In Rochdale, where I am a Councillor, this tragedy has obviously hit home.  

Widespread media coverage means that most people have read about this awful case and seen the photos of the house where two-year old Awaab died, as a result of mould which the landlord – social housing provider Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) – failed to deal with. I can’t stop thinking of Awaab and his family.

National and local news outlets have rightly, in my opinion, reflected public sentiment: the buck for RBH’s failures stops with the housing association’s senior bosses including Chief Executive, Gareth Swarbrick. Michael Gove demanded a meeting with him earlier this week, but so far, no one from RBH has stepped down. 

Arguably, this is an exercise in blame avoidance – the Housing Secretary is keen to ensure the Government doesn’t take the rap for this, despite the fact that it’s part of a national problem. Many people living in social housing across the UK are suffering due to inadequate maintenance after over a decade of Tory cuts in the sector. The new cap on social housing rent increases, announced by the Chancellor the Autumn Statement, will make things even worse.  

Mr Gove stepping in ‘from the top down’ is also at odds with what would be happening here, if the social housing provider was adhering to its own mission statement.  

RBH is an independent, separate entity to Rochdale Council. It was previously an arm’s-length management organisation (ALMO) but became fully responsible for the borough’s council housing stock – over 12,000 homes – a decade ago, in 2012. RBH chose to call itself a ‘mutual’ rather than a housing association, and frequently emphasises its claim to be ‘the UK’s first tenant and employee co-owned mutual housing society’ with organisational values such as ‘responsibility’, ‘equity’ and ‘democracy’.

In relation to ‘democracy’ RBH says, on its website: ‘We are democratic. Our democracy is rooted in our mutual status and evidenced in our governance through our Representative Body and Board. Our tenants, employees and communities have a voice and power over what we do, and how we operate.’

This is simply not the case.

RBH does have a ‘Representative Body’ from which the only elected representatives of the community  – two Labour councillors, one of whom is the Council’s portfolio holder for housing – were removed by RBH officials at the start of this year. They publicly disagreed with the housing association’s plan to demolish council flats in Rochdale town centre. RBH is not allowing the Council to put the representatives it has nominated on this panel.    

Labour councillors have also questioned RBH’s credentials as a ‘mutual’. Under a proper mutual system, the tenants and communities RBH purports to empower would have democratic control, and surplus would be re-invested in the housing stock. In Rochdale, RBH executives have been enjoying repeated, substantial pay rises.

Following the coroner’s verdict on RBH this week, Rochdale Council’s housing portfolio holder has intervened by writing to them. It is a strongly worded letter and I agree with its content, but I’m sorry to say: it’s only a letter. This is the opposite of ‘communities having a voice and power’.

One reason this sad case stands out is that a mouldy home making people ill is something one might expect to see from an irresponsible landlord, hellbent on making a profit at any human cost, in the private rented sector. Awaab Ishak didn’t die in private rented housing, though.

Social housing providers need to make a surplus: enough money to invest in, and improve, their stock. Unlike in the private sector, social landlords’ main concern is not profit making – arguably they should not be doling out continued, significant pay rises and quashing scrutiny from elected representatives.

All bodies whose work significantly impacts the community, like RBH does, should have some form of democratic representation on their boards from a local authority. Social housing providers should also refrain from placing directors of other housing associations on their boards as this does not result in adequate scrutiny when it comes to decisions about executives’ pay. 

Political oversight (or at least involvement) should come from the most local level possible. This is a vital element of ensuring that social housing providers listen and respond to people’s needs, at a time when – as this case tragically illustrates – standards appear to be declining. 

Without input from community representatives with confidence and ‘know how’ about how boards and local democracy work, social housing providers like RBH will continue to fail to acknowledge and understand public opinion. Most importantly executive directors should feel that, when they are making decisions about the lives of so many people, ‘the public’ are sitting in the room.

We are in the middle of interrelated cost of living and housing crises. There is much more we need to find out about the state of the social housing stock across the country and questions about standards do need to be asked, because many of the people this affects are the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. 

Councillors across the country have important skills to contribute in these areas. 

Perhaps a future Labour Government could pass legislation to ensure that social housing providers have local authority representation on their boards. This would help to ensure that ordinary, local people have a stronger voice on these critically important issue.  

Elsie Blundell is a councillor, the Chair of Labour Housing Group North West branch and sits on Labour’s National Policy Forum.

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How stigma shapes social housing policy in England

The reality of life for far too many people and families in England is that they are judged negatively and even actively discriminated against because they rent their home from a social landlord. “Sink estates”, “underclass”, “work-shy”, “uneducated”, “lacking in aspiration”, “zones of criminality”, “benefit scroungers”, “drug-infested”, “getting something for nothing ” are just some of the phrases that have commonly been used to describe social housing estates and their tenants.

The Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017, in which 72 people died brought to the fore of public consciousness, the stigma experienced by social housing tenants as well as the ineffective and discriminatory complaint procedures in social housing. This led on to the Social Housing Green Paper, published by the Government in the summer of 2018, which highlighted stigma in social housing as a significant issue which needed to be addressed. 

While the Grenfell fire and the White Paper cast some light on stigma as an issue, little was known about the nature of social housing stigma. Why should people have to face this type of stigmatisation just because they live in social housing? What is the impact of this type of stigma on the lives of social housing tenants? How is it challenged?

Seeking answers to these questions led us on a journey – meeting with residents, speaking with housing associations and landlords, advocacy agencies and government officials, and reviewing how the media typically treats this issue. This resulted in our report titled “Stigma and Social Housing in England” which we published in July 2021. The report highlighted the complexity of social housing stigma as it intersects with other stigmas such as poverty, mental health, race, drugs and crime stigmas. It also highlighted how stigma is driven by political rhetoric, housing policy which residualises social housing and promotes home ownership while depleting social housing stock through the right to buy and a lack of investment in social housing as well as the absence of a strong tenant voice to advocate for the rights and interests of tenants.

Following the publication of this report, we opened up a sector-wide consultation on a number of issues which we felt were central to addressing stigma. The questions focused on the status of housing as a right, challenging and changing negative rhetoric on social housing from politicians and the media; creating a strong tenant voice and empowering tenants, changing the power imbalance between landlords and tenants and making landlords more accountable to tenants. In September 2022 we published our analysis of the consultation responses in a report titled “Stigma and Social Housing in England: feedback on the consultation responses” as well as a policy briefing, titled “Reducing social housing stigma in England: recommendations for the housing sector”.

In this blog, we highlight a few of the key issues from our report and their implications for housing policy.

Housing should be viewed as a right… 

In “Stigma and Social Housing in England: feedback on the consultation responses”, our respondents specifically noted that there needs to be a radical shift from housing being seen as a symbol of wealth to one in which adequate housing is considered a basic and fundamental human right. Taking seriously the idea of housing as a fundamental human right would entail a complete rethink of the purpose of social housing and more particularly it would mean:

  1. Moving away from policies of residualisation of social housing and the promotion of home ownership as a more superior tenure than renting.
  2. Placing a responsibility on government to provide adequate housing for everyone. This would need significant investment in social housing as well as the halting of policies such as the right to buy which deplete social housing stock.
  3. Social housing should be available to all households including all those squeezed into the private rental sectors. 
  4. Recognise the intersection of social housing stigma with other stigmas and develop policy measures that adopt a holistic approach to challenge the stigma in social housing.

Affordability of housing should be at the core of government housing policies to ensure the provision of social homes that meet the needs of a diverse set of people.

Political rhetoric…

In both “Stigma and Social Housing in England” and “Stigma and Social Housing in England: feedback on the consultation responses”, our responders overwhelmingly pointed out that politicians primarily drove the intensification of stigma in social housing in two ways. First, is that politicians use stigmatising language to justify their housing, particularly to residualise social housing and to project homeownership as a viable tenure to desire. Secondly, our responders argued that politicians stigmatise social housing residents in a bid to justify welfare reforms. They agreed that the stigmatising narrative from politicians and policymakers is a key driver of the negative media narrative on social housing, and this needs to change to build a sustainable and inclusive housing system. To address this, a few things need to happen

  1. Political will and policy need to be directed towards tackling stigma. This implies that policymakers need to be held accountable when found to have directly stigmatised social housing and its occupants.
  2. Politicians need to set the right tone to shape the societal perception of social housing and the media stereotyping narrative of social housing.
  3. To tackle stigma, policymakers need to adopt a collaborative approach to understand who lives in social housing and their everyday realities to inform housing policies. Indeed, given the intersectionality and complexity of stigma, unless there is a joined up approach to tackling stigma which involves tackling other associated stigmas it is unlikely that much progress will be made.

Accountability to Tenants…

The power imbalance between landlords and tenants is not new, and has previously been highlighted in the social housing green paper and in our initial report “Stigma and Social Housing in England”. This imbalance is driven in part by the nature of regulation of social housing. The weak regulation of the consumer standards and the marginalization of tenants in the co-regulatory arrangements in the sector has meant that power is placed in the hands of the landlords and a space is created in which landlords can deliver poor services and stigmatise tenants with impunity. To address this, a few things need to happen:

  1. Refocusing social housing regulation to reflect the interests of the tenants.
  2. Involve tenants in the co-regulation of the sector. Particularly, tenants have to be involved in the setting of service standards and the assessment of performance in relation to those standards.

Stronger tenant voices…

In both “Stigma and Social Housing in England” and “Stigma and Social Housing in England: feedback on the consultation responses”, our responders agreed that there was a distinct lack of tenant voice at a local, regional and national levels. Tenants need to be placed at the centre of policies and practices that affects them and they should be given substantive opportunity to shape those policies and improve the services that affect them. To promote a culture of inclusivity and democratic accountability, effective tenant panels and associations should be encouraged by housing providers, professional and trade bodies, the regulators; and feedback from these groups should be taken seriously to improve services and tenants’ experiences. 

In addition, participants in this consultation noted that the lack of an effective voice means that tenants do not have the power, mechanisms, resources or structure to lobby, challenge or help steer housing policies and regulations at the regional and national levels. 

At the regional and national levels, tenants’ voice should be established for the tenants and with the tenants, with the operations independently managed by the tenants. This will ensure that power and voice are directly placed in the hands of the tenants and not in the hands of any third parties with limited power to advocate for them.

Mission Drift…

Finally, one of the issues which featured strongly in the consultation’s responses was the sense that social landlords had lost sight of their “social mission” and had become more focused on making profits than on challenging politicians and the government to improve the lived experiences of social housing residents. By putting profits before people, tenants felt, that had contributed to poor service delivery and the continued stigmatisation of tenants. There were clear indications that as social landlords became bigger, the mission drift became more pronounced. One thing that can be done here is to limit the size of social landlords to ensure that they remain rooted in the communities which there serve. This would include breaking up larger providers.

Concluding comments…

Building an inclusive and sustainable social housing system devoid of stigma should not be expected overnight because the shift requires needs to happen at both policy level as well as at organisational levels. Stigma in social housing has been perpetuated over decades, and its eradication will require a multifaceted approach with conscious, consistent, deliberate, collective and sustained long-term programmes, policies and partnerships to change people’s perception of social housing and its residents. For this to happen, meaningful actions must be taken by all stakeholders to tackle this deep-rooted problem that affects the everyday realities, the quality of life, and the life chances of social housing and its residents. Some of these actions include:

  1. Adopting a rights based approach to housing
  2. Investment to significantly increase the social housing stock as well as putting an end to the right to buy and other policies which deplete social housing stock
  3. Expanding access to social housing
  4. Stronger regulation focused on interests of tenants
  5. Independent national, regional and local tenant voice organisations
  6. Increased tenant involvement in governance structures of landlords
  7. Placing a limit on the size of landlords to ensure that they remain rooted in the communities which they serve and focused on the interests of tenants and communities

About the authors:

Dr. Mercy Denedo is an Assistant Professor in Accounting at Durham University Business School.

Dr. Amanze Ejiogu is a Senior Lecturer in Accounting at the Newcastle University. 

Contact details:Enquiries can be sent to us via [email protected]

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Plans to destroy the Healthy Housing Assessment System will leave us all worse off

Unhealthy dwellings are not just uncomfortable, they can cause death.  On 15 November 2022, Coroner Joanne Kearsley held that 2 year old Awaab Ishak died as result of prolonged exposure to mould in his home.  This tragic death highlights the need for the application and enforcement of the Housing Health and Safety Rating System to be stepped up. But, here we report on proposals that would weaken the System not strengthen it.

In 2021 the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUCH) commissioned a revision and update of the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (the Rating System). The draft of the proposed new “revised” Guidance (which has not yet been published but was previously expected to be in place by the end of 2022) ignores the principle underlying the Rating System, hasn’t really been updated, will cause confusion, and will result in legal conflicts. If adopted, it will result in increased suffering for individuals, days off school and off work, and greater demands on the health and care sectors.

After 10 years’ development, the Rating System was adopted in 2006 and is the statutory method for assessing housing conditions in England and Wales. It focuses on identifying threats to health and/or safety arising from deficiencies in a dwelling – Hazards. The principle underlining the System is that “Any residential premises should provide a safe and healthy environment for any potential occupier or visitor.” 

The Rating System has been recognised internationally as a major shift in housing assessment.

The revision commissioned by DLUCH was supposed to achieve several objectives, including: 

  • Reviewing and updating the current Guidance.
  • Providing a simpler means of banding the results of an assessment to make them clearer to understand by landlords and tenants.
  • Developing new standards to be incorporated into an assessment.
  • Amalgamating and/or removing of some Hazards.

We consider that the draft Guidance is badly written, confused and confusing, does not obviously update the existing Guidance, introduces arbitrary unexplained bandings, brings in so-called minimum standards, and mismatches and combines some Hazards. Not only that, it creates conflict with other legislation, and would fail to promote healthier housing if applied and enforced under Part 1 of the 2004 Housing Act.

There is no obvious updating of neither the statistical data behind the Rating System nor the evidence on housing and health. This leaves the important support for the Guidance nearly twenty years out of date.

The Rating System developed a method for putting a number against each identified Hazard (a Hazard Score). The legislation deems Hazard Scores above 1,000 as Category 1, and those less than 1,000 as Category 2, and places a duty on local housing authorities to take action to deal with Category 1 Hazards, and a power to do so for Category 2 Hazards. Local authorities can also deal with all Hazards, Category 2 as well as Category 1, at a dwelling. The proposed guidance creates three categories (with no explanation) dividing Category 2 Hazards into those with Scores of 101-999 and those of 100 or less. This implies Hazards Scoring 100 or less can be ignored (are “tolerable”), and if action is taken to deal with several such Hazards, or such a Hazard is included with a Category 1 Hazard. This adds a new ground for appeal.

As well as the proposed guidance suggesting that some Hazards are “tolerable”, it also introduces the idea of “normal behaviour” – two totally arbitrary concepts. While the current Guidance makes it clear that the Rating System does not include any potential hazard that is solely attributable to occupier behaviour, the revised version seems to imply some dwelling Hazards should be either “tolerated” or are made worse by the occupier, presumably, through “abnormal behaviour”. No guidance is given on what constitutes a “tolerable” Hazard, nor what is “normal behaviour”. These concepts will make it easier for landlords to argue that any Hazard is the fault of the tenant.

The objective to propose minimum standards has been taken to be a licence to introduce minimum standards for every Hazard.  The current Guidance avoids the pass/fail approach of a standard recognising three flaws with any standard. First, the line drawn tends to become the norm – Why should someone exceed the line? Second, it doesn’t give an indication of the severity of failure. Third, minimum standards encourage a check-list/tick-box approach to assessments – if the minimum is reached, then it is OK – it passes.

The minimum standards seem to be linked to a misconception that there are disconnections between the HHSRS and other legislative standards. It is difficult to find a disconnect when the current Guidance manages to avoid them stating that account should be taken of any relevant matter when assessing a Hazard. Meeting a standard does not mean there isn’t a Hazard. For example, the Electrical Safety Regulations set a standard that all electrical installations should be safe, but it does not state how many sockets should be provided to avoid the need for extensions leads (the wires of which could be a trip Hazard). Another example is that relating to smoke and CO alarms. 2015 Regulations (some nine years after the Rating System) requires such alarms to be fitted in rented dwellings and working at the start of the tenancy. The Rating System guidance advises that the lack of such alarms in any dwelling should be taken into account and that they should be working at the time of inspection.

The current Guidance applies to any structure used or intended to be used as a dwelling – the same assessment approach can be used to assess a house, a flat, a caravan, or a park home. This seems to be ignored by the proposed guidance and some so-called minimum standards are only geared toward houses.  (While the current Guidance gives clear definitions to avoid confusion, the proposed guidance does not.)

29 potential housing Hazards are given in the current Guidance, grouped to reflect the four basic health requirements in dwellings (as first set out by the American Public Health Association in the 1930s). The proposed guidance regroups the Hazard, without any rationale, ignoring the fact that the current Hazards are given in other legislation (such as the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018).

The proposed guidance proposes combining some Hazards. These include a Hazard labelled “Domestic and Personal Hygiene” which brings together three Hazards in the current Guidance – “Domestic Hygiene, Pests and Refuse”, “Food Safety”, with “Personal Hygiene, Sanitation and Drainage”. Another combines “Fire” with Explosions”, and another “Biocides” with “Carbon Monoxide and Fuel Combustion Products”, “Uncombusted Fuel Gas”, and “Volatile Organic Compounds”. Aside from the incompatibility of these, it is difficult to understand why this has been attempted.

Other matters of concern suggest a lack of appreciation of the significance of a review of the HHSRS and a lack of understanding of the relationship between health and housing.

The concern is that the civil servants who commissioned the work will not appreciate the impact of the ill-thought-through proposals, and that the current political pressure could see this guidance adopted without challenge when tabled in both Houses.

What can be done? 

The guidance would have to be issued by the Secretary of State under s9 Housing Act 2004. If you agree with us that this would be against the interests of tenants and put their health at risk, do write to your MP and/or to the Secretary of State as soon as you can to argue for the draft guidance to be rewritten. 


This piece was prepared by David Ormandy, Steve Battersby, and Richard Turkington, members of the Academic-Practitioner Partnership for Healthier Housing. www.healthierhousing.co.uk

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Setting the right housing targets will be critical for Scotland

Unlike in England, where the new Government has denounced housing targets as Stalinist in another sign of an uneasy relationship with its own 2019 manifesto (300,000 a year were pledged), the question of how many homes Scotland needs and where to put them is a live policy debate. The National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4), expected to be laid before Parliament this year, will set out for each local authority a minimum requirement of the number of homes for which land should be made available. 

This important decision has taken on added salience because of the cost of living crisis. High rents and massive mortgages have left us little capacity to absorb economic shocks, whether external such as energy costs or the self-inflicted hike in mortgage rates following the budget announcements. Ensuring sufficient land is available for housing is crucial to bringing housing supply and demand into better balance and thereby improving affordability. It is also critical in ensuring there are enough shovel-ready sites to realise the Scottish Government’s commendably ambitious target of 110,000 new affordable homes between 2022-2032.  

Housing targets are partly a practical necessity (aligning housebuilding with infrastructure) and partly a democratic middle ground which balances competing interests. These attributes may not endear them to those seeking ideological purity, but they chart a course through undesirable alternatives. Targets are a compromise between a libertarian free-for-all, where people can build wherever they choose, and an exclusive, communitarian beggar-thy-neighbour approach, where those fortunate to live near undeveloped land in and around cities and towns are able to exercise an absolute veto over its use. The former fails to recognise people’s desire to shape, debate and influence what happens in their local area. The latter fails to give voice to families seeking a home of their own, which meets their needs and aspirations, and most of the population who consider we are facing a housing crisis.  

The housing crisis, while national in nature, must be solved on individual sites across the country. Without a clear target which local authorities are required to meet there will be a high risk of vocal local objectors successfully lobbying Councillors to prevent housebuilding. While those in need of a home make their voices known at a national level (evidenced by the prominence of housing issues in political debate) they do not, and cannot be expected to, lobby in favour of specific developments. Objectors and those commenting on planning applications play a valuable role in the process but without housing targets representing those in need of a home there would be a clear democratic deficit in planning for housing. 

Because land for housing is rationed in this way, unlike the inputs for the other of life’s essentials, it is critical that targets are as accurate as possible with sufficient tolerance for changes over time. The risks of setting targets which are too low are profound – placing upward pressure on affordability and leaving local authorities chasing scarce land at high prices to deliver their affordable housing. 

The Scottish Government is right to set out targets in NPF4. However, the figures in the 2021 draft are based on a flawed default methodology. The defaults have been changed in response to evidence submitted by some local authorities. However, these changes are haphazard; some local authorities put forward detailed, considered evidence such as households surveys, others submitted limited information probably due to pressures on resources. Remarkably, two of the least affordable local authorities in the country, East Renfrewshire and East Dunbartonshire (where house prices are 10 times average earnings) successfully lobbied for targets below the already low defaults.  

There are two components to the Scottish Government’s methodology. Household projections are added to an estimate of households in existing need to give a target. Uncritical reliance on household projections leads to unsatisfactory housing outcomes being projected forward as Professor Glen Bramley has observed “If household growth has been artificially suppressed by the undersupply of new housing, then basing future need calculations on those lower growth figures will by necessity under-estimate that need”. This is acknowledged by the National Records for Scotland who produce the projections. The past decade or more has seen worsening affordability and housing outcomes we should be planning to improve upon, not perpetuate. No attempt has been made in draft NPF4 to quantify the additional homes needed in areas where houses are less affordable and have become less so over the last decade (below).

Image: Average house price multiples of workplace full-time earnings in 2021 (left) and change since 2011 (right). Using Registers of Scotland Average House Price data and ASHE full-time earnings by workplace location

The definition of existing need only recognises it in its most acute form; those in temporary accommodation and households which are both overcrowded and concealed. Concealed and overcrowded households are where two or more families live in one home without sufficient rooms. This is an exceptionally high bar missing many other forms of urgent need such as overcrowded households, adults and adult couples living with their parents, on waiting lists, in unsuitable or physically unfit homes and those in unaffordable homes. It is not fit for purpose and will underestimate the extent of housing need. Household surveys are needed to better understand existing unmet need.

The Scottish Government has been less bombastic than the UK Government in its growth ambitions, but its Strategy for Economic Transformation is clear and aims “to deliver economic growth that significantly outperforms the last decade, so that the Scottish economy is more prosperous, more productive and more internationally competitive”. Draft NPF4 should be changed to provide targets which are fit for purpose, fully understand existing need and address affordability challenges. These will be essential in providing the homes Scotland needs to deliver housing outcomes which significantly outperform those of the last decade and take pressure off household budgets. 

Joe Larner is an Associate Director at Holder Planning based in Edinburgh, with around 8 years of experience focused on housing projects of all tenures in Scotland and England.

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The battle for evacuation plans, so we can live safely in our homes

Who Are CLADDAG and Why Were We Set Up?

We are a Leaseholder Disability Action Group, campaigning on issues impacting disabled leaseholders trapped in the cladding and building safety crisis scandal. In the absence of any group representing disabled leaseholders, we set up CLADDAG in December 2020. This was after Sarah Rennie saw a blog I had written for Greater Manchester Housing Action, about disabled leaseholders not being included within the conversation. At that time, it seemed that our existence wasn’t recognised.

We campaign hard and aim to improve disabled representation, within campaigning, discussions and the media. This is about increasing visibility, as well as highlighting issues specific to us.

We use the term ‘disabled’ loosely in the aim of being inclusive. Many people with health conditions don’t identify as disabled. This might include deaf or older people for example.

Whilst we are disabled leaseholders and there are specific issues related to leasehold, we recognise that many impacts us the same as other leaseholders. Also, that some issues that impact us, affect disabled people across housing tenures. So as allies, we work with individuals, groups and organisations, across all categories with common aims. We learn from each other and by uniting, our combined strength increases our influence. 

Our Campaign and Our Asks

In May 2022, the Government announced it would not be implementing Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs), although it had previously committed to doing so.  A PEEP is a plan that helps people who cannot self-evacuate in the event of a fire, which could include a knock at their door or equipment such as a device alerting a deaf person that the fire alarm is going off. The Grenfell Inquiry made important recommendations for their implementation and they also received overwhelming support (87% in favour) from the Government consultation on PEEPs. The Home Office had secret meetings with private lobbyists who raised concerns which led them to this decision, based on ‘practicality,’ ‘proportionality,’ and ‘safety,’ but with no underpinning evidence.

Following the announcement, another consultation on Emergency Evacuation Information Sharing (EEIS) was launched, which doesn’t resemble PEEPs and is clearly an inappropriate standalone alternative. This closed in August 2022. 

So not only was anyone given the opportunity to respond to these concerns, but the Fire Minister, referred to disabled people as ‘getting in the way of others’ during evacuations. Such throwaway comments have been used by many throughout these consultations. Others include, ‘you should be living on the ground floor,’ being referred to as ‘those people,’ ‘evacuation chairs get in the way of everyone,’ ‘equipment is too expensive,’  ‘the Grenfell fire was rare, so the risk is low’ They aren’t easy spaces to engage in generally and is why many disabled people are reluctant to or refuse to. 

Focusing so much on cost, with no projected evidenced based costs, is a typical tactic, to make us appear unreasonable, reinforced by flippant comments, so that not only do we feel inconvenient and a burden, but others about us do too. How much is a disabled life worth?

When you look at the timeline from the Grenfell fire in 2017 (which caused the deaths of 40% of the disabled residents living in the tower at the time), it was in 2018 that the Grenfell Inquiry recommended the Government enact PEEPs. Now we’re still in a situation where nothing has been decided, following three consultations. The relatives of Sakina Afrasebi, a disabled woman who died in the Grenfell fire, took the Home Office to Judicial Review in 2020, as the first consultation was on a watered down version of PEEPs. This led to the second consultation on PEEPs. 

It feels that the human aspect is often overlooked, especially when discussing such issues often coldly in online meetings and some questions on forms being tick box questions. 

For over five years the fight for fire safety equality continues. So there was no alternative, but to request a judicial review, as the only way of holding the Government to account on their decision, which we find discriminatory. On equality grounds, people should not be prevented from evacuating a building if they wish to, at the same time as their neighbours, only because they have a disability or are pregnant for example.

Our application was granted, stating that we have an arguable case, and the hearing is due to be held later this year. In order for us to be able to do this, we need to reach our crowdfunding target towards legal costs, in case we lose. Our legal team are working on a ‘no win,’ ‘no fee’ basis. 

Equality in evacuation has become our current main focus, while most of us are currently in limbo, waiting to see if the Building Safety Act will cover our homes. This is going to take years to complete, so the most urgent issue is equality to means of escape. 

In our overall campaign, we join with our allies to demand three actions:

  1. Ensure disabled leaseholders live in accessible homes of their choice, unimpeded by the building safety crisis.
  2. Protect disabled leaseholders from the costs resulting from remedial safety works.
  3. Provide disabled leaseholders with aids and equipment for safe evacuation.

Escalated related costs are wholly infeasible for all leaseholders. However, disabled and older people are more likely to be supported by state benefits or pensions. Such restricted incomes massively impact ability to fund remediation costs, including insurance hikes. Some of our flats are more than a home and in a sense are also a care setting, as they’ve been adapted for our needs, e.g. wet room installation, ceiling tracking for hoists. For others, their conditions have progressed, meaning they need to move somewhere accessible, but they are stuck, unable to sell.

The majority of disabled people we represent do not have PEEPs to evacuate their homes, many of which are in highly dangerous blocks of flats. Managing agents are reluctant or refuse to discuss disabled leaseholders’ needs.    

Local and National Campaigning

From grassroots to national organisations, we’ve worked with numerous campaign groups, fire experts, politicians, fire and rescue services, unions and will continue to do so. We’ve had huge media coverage, partnered with organisations including Grenfell United, Disability Rights UK and Social Housing Action Campaign, as well as End Our Cladding Scandal and local groups under that umbrella, such as Manchester Cladiators. We’ve also met with local councils.

This has all come at a huge negative impact on our physical and mental health, but we do what we can, when we can. We know what it’s like to live in unsafe homes, which currently isn’t physically or financially secure, but the opposite. Combined with the fact that most disabled people are denied access to a PEEP, means our situations are confounded. It’s on your mind constantly, no matter what you do and where you go. There is literally no escape. People advise you to take time out, switch off and rest, but how is that realistic? 

Trust in all associated companies and services has been lost, which will take decades to repair. I live in a midrise block, informed of fire safety issues in 2019, including timber cladding and balconies and compartmentation issues. 

For too long ‘stay put’ as a strategy has not even been discussed publicly. It’s taken a devastating fire where so many lives were lost for this to come to light. I hadn’t previously questioned it, even having a disabled mother, in all the jobs I had working with disabled people and unexpectedly becoming disabled myself as an adult.

People contact us with all sorts of harrowing experiences. They are scared and also angry that this is even a fight. It should never have come to this. 

Our asks for Labour’s policies 

Therefore, within this crisis and alongside others, including the cost of living crisis, our contribution and focus, as part of all this, is mainly in the fight for PEEPs. Sadly, fire safety inequality is yet another example of how the government views our lives as less ‘worthy.’ Finally, I urge the Labour Party to incorporate our three demands into policy and support our legal battle.

We #DemandBetter #EnoughIsEnough

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www.claddag.org

Twitter: @Claddag

Facebook: @LeaseholderDAG

<strong>Georgie Hulme</strong>
Georgie Hulme

Georgie Hulme is a leaseholder at the Life Buildings in Hulme and a campaigner with the Manchester Cladiators.

Georgie co-founded the disabled-led leaseholder action group Claddag, which has relentlessly advocated in the media, in the community and in the courts for disabled and older people impacted by Building Safety Crisis

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The elephant in the room: to broaden home ownership access, governments must tackle housing affordability head-on 

Boosting home ownership: an overriding housing policy objective for many decades, not only in Britain but the world over. And yet, as also seen in many countries, the past 10-20 years have witnessed owner occupancy rates static or falling – see graph. 

Figure: Changing home-ownership rates (owner occupiers as a percentage of all households) in selected countries indexed to 2003 (2003=100) – for sources see Figure 19 in our report

Home ownership levels among young adults have widely plunged in much more dramatic fashion. In the UK, for example, the 25-34 age group owner occupancy rate declined from 51% in 1989 to only 28% in 2019. And, in another concerning dimension, both in the UK and Australia, within each age cohort, ownership rates have declined disproportionately among lower income households. Given the range of inherent benefits believed associated with home ownership, these trends present a major housing policy challenge.

It is not as though official endorsement for home ownership can be dismissed as purely rhetorical. Quite the contrary. As demonstrated by our recent research comparing approaches across eight countries including the UK, a highly diverse array of first-time buyer assistance interventions have been, and are being, pursued around the world. 

Demand-side and supply-side interventions

In Britain this has lately involved schemes such as the Help to Buy shared equity model, where government effectively takes an equity stake in the value of an acquired home via a (time limited) interest-free loan, thus reducing the size of a purchaser’s necessary mortgage. Significant stamp duty concessions and government-backed low deposit mortgages have also been recently offered for first time property acquisition.

Since these types of help effectively enhance consumers’ ability to pay for housing, they can be classed as ‘demand-side’ instruments. Supply-side measures, by contrast, involve government support for home ownership targeted through housing suppliers (developers) or through the below-market-value disposal of publicly owned assets. 

UK examples include grant funding for housing association shared ownership dwellings and the effective subsidy offered to council tenants exercising the Right to Buy, as well as developer contributions to affordable home ownership mandated through land use planning. 

In Australia, while supply-side interventions are nowadays virtually absent, government-commissioned build-for-sale schemes formed an important instrument for boosting home ownership in the early post-war period. Direct state involvement in land and housing development to generate ‘entry level’ homes for sale meanwhile remains significant in both Germany and the Netherlands, and extensive in Singapore. 

All demand-side and supply-side models identified in our research feature among seven distinct forms of first-time buyer assistance identified in our generic policy typology – see Table 1 in our published report.

Political potency

Generally speaking, anglophone countries (e.g. Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, UK) have in the past 10-20 years tended to see growing deployment of demand-side first-time buyer assistance measures. 

Approaches of this kind chime with the neo-liberal preference for governments to act as ‘market enablers’ rather than to play a more direct role in provision. They also tend to be politically attractive because of their media appeal and electoral resonance. 

However, especially where they take the form of cash grants or tax concessions, demand-side measures are widely criticised by economists and public policy experts as inequitable (because the beneficiaries tend to be moderate income rather than low income households) and ultimately counter-productive since, by boosting purchasing power for a commodity with inelastic supply, they contribute to house price inflation. 

Those losing out under this type of approach – because of the higher prices consequently faced – include all aspirant first-time buyers failing to qualify for such assistance. The main beneficiaries, on the other hand, are existing home owners, whose properties consequently appreciate in value without any effort by property holders themselves. 

Nonetheless, the political potency of home ownership affordability was notably highlighted in recent national elections in both Australia and Canada where rival demand-side first time buyer assistance measures were pushed high among contested issues by the leading rival parties.

Broadening access to home ownership?

How far do first-time buyer assistance schemes in fact broaden home ownership across the income spectrum, as sometimes claimed? From our own work we would largely endorse the conclusion of UK researchers who concluded in 2017 that:

‘[Low cost home ownership] schemes are not expanding … social mobility by opening up home ownership to new groups of lower income households. Rather they are being used by households who would most likely buy anyway’.

Instead, the main effect of models such as shared equity (e.g. Help to Buy) or low deposit mortgages is to bring forward home purchase for moderate income earners otherwise destined to buy some time later. Alternatively, beneficiaries are enabled to buy a home somewhat bigger, or better located, than in the absence of assistance.

Arguably, regarding the scope for broadening access to home ownership, the discounted sale of council housing to sitting tenants could be something of an exception to the rule, since many scheme participants have indeed been relatively low-income households. Nevertheless, considering the eye-watering value of the effective subsidy receivable via discount entitlement (currently up to £100,000 per buyer), the true program cost to government is, and has been, colossal.

Because such costs have been historically incurred without direct government expenditure (but, rather, by accepting a below-market price for a state-owned asset), they have had low political visibility. However, if the Conservative government was serious about its recently declared intention to promote housing association Right to Buy sales, this would change because the associations concerned would expect Treasury compensation for the value of discounts approved. 

Some more recommendable first-time buyer assistance measures include:

  • Mandating developers to include below-market price housing for sale (as well as affordable rental) in residential developments is recommendable on the grounds that the discount is effectively financed by taxing land value
  • A strength of the shared equity model (e.g. Help to Buy) is its potential for lowering both the income and wealth threshold for home ownership access, to the benefit of lower income households.
  • Enabling development of for-sale housing by state agencies or housing associations offers a means of providing dwellings that can be sold to qualifying applicants at cost price (i.e. no need to factor-in profit), while also expanding overall housing supply to the benefit of the wider market.

Housing unaffordability – the elephant in the room 

Well-chosen measures to assist first-time buyers are a desirable element of a wider housing strategy. But their potential for expanding access down the income spectrum remains very limited if other key policy settings remain sacrosanct. Overall home ownership growth demands systemic change to tackle the much tougher challenge of easing broader housing affordability. 

Yet this objective calls for the dampening of property values, an objective in tension with the dominant theme of home ownership policy: to facilitate wealth accumulation through asset ownership. 

Some will argue that this demands land-use planning de-regulation to ‘free up supply’. In our view, however, the volume of new housing output is primarily influenced by developer response to market conditions, not by the planning system. Rather, the key problem lies in the taboo status of key tax and/or social security policy settings that in many countries encourage people with spare money – or credit capacity – to plough it into housing. In the UK context this could refer to the unlimited exemption from capital gains tax for the principal home, the weakness of the inheritance tax regime and the absence of a broad-based land tax.

A serious commitment to expanded home ownership demands consideration of phased reforms in areas like these. 

<strong>Hal Pawson</strong>
Hal Pawson

Hal Pawson is Professor of Housing Research and Policy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He is also well known in the UK for his many years of work at Heriott-Watt University, where he worked up until 2011, and where he is still an Honorary Professor. Hal’s latest co-authored books are: ‘Housing Policy in Australia: A case for system reform’, and ‘The Private Rental Sector in Australia: Living with uncertainty’, published in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

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How Proportional Representation can help the housing crisis

As the spectre of a general election rears its ugly head, talk of Proportional Representation (PR) only increases. Many believe now that First Past the Post must go, whether due to its effects on smaller parties, its Conservative bias, or the existence of unaccountable safe seats.

However, PR isn’t just about counting votes. Research over the years has tied more proportional voting systems to a range of policy outcomes, from lower income inequality to more effective action on the climate emergency.

Less research has been done so far on the impact of voting systems on the housing sector. However, there are a few compelling reasons that making every vote matter could at least help a policy system wracked by decades of inaction.

Whose votes matter?

First Past the Post creates an unequal democracy, where voters in marginal constituencies have more power than those in safe seats. ‘Pork barrel politics’ often result, where officials use the power of the state to advantage voters in these marginal areas.

Anecdotal evidence exists of this happening in housing, of councillors lobbying to build more in safe wards, and to avoid construction in more marginal areas. The policy outcomes of ‘NIMBYism’ are long-documented, but its politics are only viable in a system which gives certain areas more electoral weight than others.

Perhaps the most notable case of electoral manipulation through housing strategy was Westminster’s ‘Homes for Votes’ scandal, where the Conservative council renovated homes in target wards to increase their value and drive away those seen as potential Labour voters, and relocated homeless voters to safe wards.

What’s more, as urban constituencies become Labour strongholds and electoral battlegrounds move to suburbs and towns, those who are at the sharpest end of the housing crisis, particularly the young, have little electoral outlet. All ten of the safest constituencies in the country in 2019 had median ages substantially below the then national average of 40.3, going as low as 27.9 in Birmingham Ladywood. These constituencies also include significantly more private renters, while homeowners disproportionately live in marginal seats.

As we see policymakers shying away from building in electorally salient suburbs, and instead further densifying city centres, we can see that our democratic institutions have an impact on our policy outcomes. In such a geographically centred sector as housing, this is only too clear.

Who governs

What’s more, systems with single-member districts like First Past the Post encourage parties to select candidates closer to the district’s median voter, rather than to select a balanced slate of candidates who reflect the electorate large. This overwhelmingly leads to representatives who are older, whiter, and more likely to be male than the population at large.

Given that home ownership is higher among the White British demographic group and among older people, this creates a governing class more similar to those who already own homes than those seeking to get onto the property ladder.

Proportional Representation improves the age, gender, and ethnic diversities of the legislatures elected under them. Devolved assemblies elected under PR in London, Wales, and Scotland, for instance, all have a consistently higher proportions of female members and members from ethnic minority backgrounds than the MPs from the same areas elected under First Past the Post.

Moreover, First Past the Post favours right-wing governments over more progressive counterparts. In the UK, Labour has received 40% of the vote to the Conservatives’ 41% since the second world war. But it has been the Tories who have been in power for two thirds of the time.

Looking internationally, research by Holger Döring and Philip Manow showed that countries with majoritarian systems have right-wing governments 63 per cent of the time, while those with PR do so 44 per cent of the time.

Given that left wing governments are often more ambitious in housebuilding, we can see that not only does our electoral system make our politicians more likely to represent homeowners than renters, but it actively encourages Conservative majority governments which suppress housebuilding.

A different kind of politics

The kind of politics which Proportional Representation encourages is also one which the housing sector desperately needs.

For too long, the housing debate has been polarising and riddled with short termism. Pro-housing Ministers like Michael Gove and Robert Jenrick were often attacked as in the pockets of developers, while anyone with objections to new developments risks being caricatured as a NIMBY. Meanwhile, plans to reform the planning system are constantly moderated or ditched altogether, as the concerns of the next election trump long-term considerations.

This is not helped by First Past the Post. Majoritarian systems often lead to dramatic changes from one government to another, and with these changes come considerable policy changes. Governments know that they may only be in office for five years, and so short-term success often triumphs over long-term planning.

Meanwhile, parties are actively encouraged to emphasise their differences rather than their similarities. Under a plurality system, it is often more important for parties to maximise their base vote, rather than reach across to floating voters.

In comparison, Proportional Representation leads to less polarising campaigning, as parties are not just focused on winning votes in the election, but about presenting themselves as credible governing partners. Systems of shifting coalitions also enable long-term policymaking based on consensus from across the political spectrum, rather than the transient dominance of small chunk of it for five years at a time.

After years of unhelpful binaries and policy stagnation, the housing sector is in desperate need of long-term stability and progression. Ending First Past the Post’s grip on politics, with its imbalanced electorate, hegemonic political class, and polarisation and short termism, could well be a start. Want to end the housing crisis? Making every vote matter could well help.  

<strong>Alex Toal</strong>
Alex Toal

Campaigns & Digital Executive @MakeVotesMatter

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What’s wrong with the Conservative housing proposals for Two Cities?

Cities of London and Westminster residents experience the housing crisis at its most acute and extreme. Families are forced to move away from their communities because there just are not enough genuinely affordable homes.  From Middlesex and Mansell Street and Golden Lane to Tachbrook and Churchill Gardens, from Hyde Park to Pimlico, families are living in overcrowded conditions, where children find it difficult to study.  Private renters across the Cities are left with no certainty about the future of their home and soaring rents.

Let’s not forget that Conservative politicians in Westminster were responsible for a loss of affordable homes in the Homes for Votes Scandal and for 50 years, Westminster City Council was at the forefront of efforts to limit the obligations of local authorities to homeless people.  In advance of the original Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, Westminster tried to persuade MPs to water down the legislation. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, WCC developed ways of ‘gatekeeping’ homeless people from accessing their rights.  Thousands more received ‘offers’ of insecure tenancies in the Private Rented Sector creating further inequality and leaving them in uncertainty. 

Last week, the Conservative Government has announced two poorly thought-through policies which do nothing to address the long-term housing crisis or tackle the immediate struggles that households are facing.

The Right to Buy for Housing Associations has been trailed for years by this Government.  I’ve been campaigning against it ever since it was first suggested. Some Housing Association tenants already have a preserved Right to Buy as a result of living in a home transferred for a Local Authority. Housing Associations themselves are deeply sceptical about the proposals with many of them questioning how the homes sold under the Right to Buy would be replaced.  I hope that Housing Associations will stand up to these policies.

The proposals for tenants to use Housing Benefit to pay for a mortgage reveal a serious lack of understanding of the challenges families claiming Housing Benefit face.  The Government has provided no evidence for how many households would have nearly enough savings for a deposit on a home. It is not clear with mortgage lenders have been consulted on any of the detail of the proposals or whether they are prepared to bring forward mortgages in these circumstances.

It says it all about this Government that when they run out of ideas, that they turn to the failed policies of the 1980s Thatcher governments.

Instead of these policies which will just reduce the number of social homes, Cities of London and Westminster needs a MP who will stand up for long term sustained Council Homebuilding Programme. I’ve delivered council homes in London and championed delivery of council homes across the country. Cities of London and Westminster needs and MP who believes that Housing is a Human Right and who would call for a review of homelessness legislation putting Housing as a Human Right at the heart of the process. But at the moment, there simply are not the resources available within local authorities to administer this system.

The Homelessness Reduction Act must be funded properly and Local Housing Allowance cap must be lifted.  After decades in which their experience has been disregarded, it is vital that the voices of homeless people are listened to by decision-makers.  As a housing activist, these are the issues that I have campaigned on for years and as the first ever Labour MP for Cities of London and Westminster, these are the housing proposals I would stand up for.

NB: RB would be open to any contributions from any other candidate running for selection in Two Cities as well as other constituencies.

<strong>Rachel Blake</strong>
Rachel Blake

Rachel is a Labour and Co-operative Party Councillor in Bow East and is Vice-Chair of the Labour Housing Group.

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Buy a House on Benefits? Why not!

Right to Buy (RTB) – argued to be the most successful transfers of wealth since its introduction in April 1980. Yet despite successfully giving aspirational working-class families the ability to participate in the property-owning democracy it once again is under scrutiny.

Incredibly over 1.9 million homes have been sold through RTB since its inception, a take-up that demonstrates its sheer popularity. Once commonplace under Local Authorities the offer has now been made to tenants of Housing Association (HA). But for many this is a step too far.

Labour, Guido Fawkes and Shelter condemn the proposal

On the right, we have seen Guido Fawkes condemn the “buy a house on benefits” scheme as a “stupid idea”. Shelter has claimed extending RTB “couldn’t come at a worse time”. While also suggesting “the government should be building more social homes, not selling them off”. Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Lisa Nandy, recently called into question Boris Johnson’s announcement.

She challenged Johnson over the feasibility of allowing people to use housing benefit towards a mortgage. Tweeting recently whether lenders are “on board” with the Prime Minister’s first proposal after his disastrous vote of no confidence. Nandy also claims the new proposal would “make the housing crisis worse”.

Questions over feasibility and acceptance by the market

The scheme could help 17,000 families a year according to the report on the pilot published in February 2021. However, it found half of the homes under the scheme weren’t replaced despite promises of “one-for-one” replacement. Those “replaced” were often found to be as a more expensive form of tenure. This in large part driven by a Tory grant programme favouring such forms of tenure. Arguably fair kop to call into question.

Notwithstanding the above, we have seen the rise of the for-profit registered provider backed by private equity and institutions. Who have been piling into the sector lured in by government backed income in a supply constrained market. Whether social or affordable rent, or controversial shared ownership, the private sector has been licking its lips.

If these capital providers can accommodate such government-backed income streams, why cannot lenders?

But the proposals actually spur on new supply

Secondly, the argument around the need for one-for-one replacement seems one based on a lack of understanding of basic arithmetic. For those on the left, many feel a tenancy for life forms part of housing as a human right.  On that basis, whether an aspirational working-class family lives in a social rented home, or one where they have exercised the Right to Buy, morally this principle holds true. Under RTB total housing stock does not deplete and new build from recycled capital ultimately still contributes to new supply.

The family who can now use their in-work benefits towards a mortgage become the beneficiaries directly of the subsidy. Not the HAs who fail to do repairs and pay their executives investment banker wages. At a time where the National Housing Federation announces an independent panel to review the poor-quality homes endemic under its watch, why would we want to prevent aspirational working-class families from the opportunity to fix and maintain their own home, if they have the means to do so. Ultimately giving them an opportunity to escape the ever-lasting trap of poor housing management they currently endure under HAs.

But how, after all, in a supply constrained housing system does adding new housing stock make the housing crisis “worse”?

Global market headwinds make opportune timing to support demand

All sides have now sought to strawman the Right to Buy, blaming it for the loss of much needed social housing stock. The debate has not become one of supply. Instead some argue these recent measures merely add to demand-side pressures, which an already distorted market does not need. Yet in a time of globally increasing interest rates and a recession, when else is there a better time to broaden access to those on low incomes and counter market forces.

Furthermore, HAs often have low levels of debt against them with the homes valued on the books at Existing Use Value (EUV). Such a low level of debt allows the Government to provide meaningful discounts and unlock wealth for working class families. Of course, the HA lobby and HM Treasury will have kittens if they have to sell their silver, but ultimately who benefits?

Boris Johnson is playing to the aspirational working class

Whatever your politics, broadening access to an affordable home or home ownership should be the end goal. Yes, the Labour Housing Group has taken a stance to abolish Right to Buy. But I argue this policy is targeted at those Labour must seek to win back from the Tories. Boris Johnson is sending a key message to the millions of tenants living under often dreadful Housing Association conditions, that he cares about them.

Meanwhile, Labour and much of the left-leaning housing industry, condemns what has previously been a hugely successful policy for those who have benefitted from it. Right to Buy and the need to provide more social rented homes are not mutually exclusive.

Without means-testing tenancies how else can we recycle capital from those in social housing who can afford to buy?

Many of those who will exercise their right will be those who can afford to, who are still living under the benefits of a social tenancy. These include the members of Parliament who remain in their social rented flat, while earning a top 10% salary in the Commons, as well as the 117,000 households (16%) in London living in social rented accommodation  resided in by the top 40% of earners in the capital.

But if we are not to bring in means testing of social rented accommodation throughout a tenancy, is not recycling capital from sales into the provision of new homes an admirable end goal?

I certainly think so if the sellers can keep the receipts. We can argue about whether we “replace” less than half with social or affordable rent. Or we can recognise the use of the benefit systems ability to increase the overall level of stock in a housing market beholden to NIMByism. After all an election message to aspirational working-class families that they have a chance at closing their own personal wealth inequality gap is compelling.

<strong>Christopher Worrall</strong>
Christopher Worrall

Chris is the Editor of Red Brick blog and sits on the Labour Housing Group Executive Committee.

He currently is Chair of Poplar and Limehouse CLP, co-hosts the Priced Out podcast and is the Local Government and Housing Member Policy group lead for the Fabian Society.

He writes in a personal capacity.

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Housing in the Australian election

Housing loomed large in the campaign debate running up to the recent Australian federal election. In fact, rival plans for first-time buyer assistance were central to the rival pitches of the two main parties in the final week of the contest.

The overarching context for this is the concern provoked by declining owner-occupancy rates in a country that still thinks of itself as a home ownership nation. By UK standards, the overall downward trend has been quite modest – the past 20 years has seen owner occupation drifting down by around 3-4 percentage points to 67 per cent. But that conceals much faster rates of decline among young adult cohorts.

Again, as in Britain, falling home ownership worries have been aggravated by the unexpected COVID house price boom which has seen prices jump by 30% since 2019 – a substantially more marked increase than the UK’s equivalent market climb.

Add to that, the recent spike in rent inflation greater than at any time since 2008, and it’s obvious that the pandemic significantly aggravated Australia’s longstanding housing affordability challenge.

So, in this battle that ended with the centre-left Labor Party (yes, that’s the correct spelling) regaining power after nearly a decade in opposition, what exactly were the rival housing plans pitched by the two main parties?

With Labor having retreated from significant reforms to private landlord tax breaks pledged in the previous two elections, there was actually less distinction between the housing offers of the main protagonists this time round. Even so, the difference between Labor’s 2022 platform and that of the Liberal/National governing coalition remained notable.

The home ownership offers

The main area of contest was of course home ownership. Both parties committed to expanding the existing national low deposit mortgage scheme for first-time buyers predicated on a government guarantee enabling downpayments of 5% rather than the standard 20%. This may now be made available to around half of all those entering home ownership.

Beyond this, and targeting much the same group, Labor pledged to initiate a national shared equity programme. Complementing existing state government schemes in Victoria and Western Australia, and subject to applicant income and property price caps, this would see the federal government taking an equity stake of up to 30% in an existing dwelling and up to 40% in a newly built home. The model is very similar to the UK Government’s Help to Buy scheme in both content and name.

Deriding Labor’s approach as one in which ‘the government wants to own your home’, on the ropes in the opinion polls, and clearly seeking a point of difference as the campaign neared its end, the Prime Minister further ramped up the debate by pitching a new and novel proposal. Aspirant first-time buyers would be enabled to draw on otherwise inaccessible pension (or ‘superannuation’) savings for home purchase.

Although widely criticised as inflationary, as well as inequitable, the ‘super for housing’ proposal was considered by some a political masterstroke, since it leveraged a libertarian sensibility across the electorate at no (immediate) cost to government. It also served the partisan aim of attacking the pension industry disliked by conservative Australians not only because of its compulsory contributions but also because some funds are union-linked.

Social housing

While featuring comparatively minimally in election media coverage and debate, a number of other potentially significant housing commitments were aired in the contest – mainly by Labor. These included Labor’s pledge for a national social and affordable investment program to generate 30,000 dwellings over six years.

Considering that Australia has been latterly constructing only around 3,000 social housing units annually, with the federal government making a near zero contribution, this is notable – yet also modest. Factoring in expected population growth, it would be enough to slow, but not to reverse, the longstanding decline in social housing representation in the housing system (now only just over 4% of total occupied dwellings).

The most novel aspect of the social and affordable housing investment proposal is its financing through investment returns from an ‘off balance sheet’ future fund. The attraction of such a structure is that, under relevant accountancy conventions, the cost would not score as government debt. Some readers may detect parallels with the long-running UK debate on the accounting treatment of council housing investment.

As far as social housing is concerned, the Liberal/National election platform extended only to expanding the quantum of community housing debt guaranteed by government – a facility of only very limited value without the matching subsidy that the Coalition declined to offer.

Institutional reform and strategy

Finally, and once again, with a very low media profile, Labor’s election pitch included some significant institutional reforms which, with the Party now installed in government, we can expect to take shape in coming months. These include, firstly, the creation of a National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC), a body charged with analysing housing needs and provision – a remit similar to the UK’s erstwhile National Housing and Planning Advice Unit (NHPAU).

NHSAC will sit within a new national housing agency, Housing Australia. This will absorb the former administrative roles of the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC) for first-time buyer assistance schemes, as well as the housing future fund. Perhaps opening up more far-reaching possibilities for the future, Housing Australia will also take responsibility for a ‘National Housing and Homeless Plan’. This, it would be hoped, will cement the federal government back into an active an ambitious role in the national housing system – something unseen for more than a decade.

Until Labor can find the stomach to revisit fundamental tax reform many of us would argue that the scope for fixing Australia’s dysfunctional housing system will remain extremely limited. At the same time, the incoming government’s program contains some housing green shoots that are still worth celebrating.

<strong>Hal Pawson</strong>
Hal Pawson

Professor Hal Pawson, is based at the City Futures Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney

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