Grant Shapps has always professed a profound personal attachment to the cause of homelessness and rough sleeping:
“When a family is made homeless or someone has no choice but to spend a night sleeping on the street, they become some of the most vulnerable people in our society. I am shocked and saddened when I see people bedding down for the night on our nation’s streets, or hear of a family spending another night in temporary bed and breakfast accommodation. Tackling homelessness and rough sleeping is what first got me into politics.”
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One of the best projects I’ve been involved with over the past few years was chairing the group that led to the creation of the National Tenant Voice. The NTV was the third leg of Labour’s regulatory system for social housing – the smallest and cheapest part – together with the Tenant Services Authority and the Homes and Communities Agency.
By Nicky Gavron AM Labour spokesperson on Planning and Housing on the London Assembly
Three years ago this month, the Tory Mayor Boris Johnson pledged to end rough sleeping in London by 2012. Today, faced with a perfect storm of unemployment, funding cuts, welfare reform and housing market failure, even more people are sleeping rough on London’s streets.
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Octavia Hill cries wolf?
As my family hold 3 National Trust life memberships I feel emboldened to add a few words to this week’s spat between Inside Housing blogger Colin Wiles and the National Trust’s Assistant Director of External Affairs Ben Cowell over the draft National Planning Policy Framework.
Monimbo
Red Brick has commented before on the influence which the think tank Policy Exchange has on government policy, which prompted me to wonder if its reputation is deserved. Certainly on economic policy it has come a cropper, since it confidently predicted in August 2010 that the necessarily heavy spending cuts and recession would be quickly followed by a ‘big boom’, in which growth through most of 2011 will be ‘the strongest seen in the UK since the 1980s’. Probably not even George Osborne expected that to happen.
Despite enormous pressure, yesterday the House of Lords defied the Government on one last amendment to the housing proposals in the Welfare Reform Bill – on the ‘bedroom tax’ for underoccupying social tenants. It was an amended and watered down version of the amendment that the Lords has supported a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately the Government immediately signaled that it would again reverse the Lords’ decision when the issue returns to the House of Commons.
The Lords decision was achieved due to a handful of LIb Dem peers voting against the Government. Of course, a similar stand by Lib Dem MPs would make it impossible for the Government to get its way in the Commons. But if form is anything to go by, Lib Dem MPs seem capable of failing to support even their most cherished long term policies.
The ‘bedroom tax’ proposal was hardly noticed when the Welfare Reform Bill was first introduced – although Red Brick covered it here and here and here – but has become an iconic symbol of the meanness of the Bill and the Government’s desire to inflict punishment on social tenants for existing. It will inflict benefit cuts of £14/week on tenants deemed to be ‘underoccupying’ their homes by a single bedroom. Even the Government admits that the vast majority, indeed nearly all, of the tenants affected will not be able to move home because smaller units are not available for them to move to.
Lord Richard Best moved a new amendment to the proposal which would ameliorate the impact on vulnerable groups, including disabled people, those not required to work, war widows and foster carers.
Richard argued: ‘Even though this amended, amended amendment is now providing much less relief than I feel the situation requires, it nevertheless draws a line by mitigating at least some of the hardship for at least some of those on the lowest incomes, and now exclusively for those who are not in a position to go out to work because they act as carers or are disabled themselves.’
Minister Lord Freud accepted that most of the 670,000 affected people would not be able to move, but said they had options available to ‘make up the shortfall’ and stay in their home. Presumably he had in mind freezing or starving among his options.
Over 70 housing and disability organisations wrote to MPs calling on them to support the previous, more wide-ranging amendment, citing examples of families that would be affected, including Grandparents who share the care of their grandchildren; families in which two same-sex teenage children have their own bedroom for privacy and study; disabled tenants who need an adapted room to live a dignified, independent life. Additional bedrooms in such circumstances would be taken for granted and regarded as entirely reasonable by the vast majority of people.
Following yesterday’s vote, David Orr of the National Housing Federation, which has campaigned tirelessly on this issue, said this result ‘is a victory for common sense and fairness. We are delighted that peers have stood firm and yet again voted to lessen the impact of the bedroom tax. ‘Peers and MPs of all parties have voted to amend these proposals. They have been supported by tenants, social landlords and nearly 80 organisations concerned with housing, family issues and disability. ‘Together, we have shown that it is simply unfair to penalise some of the most vulnerable families for under-occupying their homes when they have nowhere else to move. For disabled people, war widows and foster carers, with nowhere else to go to, this could mean the difference between making ends meet and living in poverty.’
The campaign can be followed on the NHF website at http://www.housing.org.uk/
By Nicky Gavron AM, Labour’s Housing and Planning Spokesperson on the London Assembly.
The coalition government has slashed London’s housing budget by 60 per cent, although you wouldn’t know it from the press release. Under the cover of giving new powers to City Hall, a budget of £3 billion has been spun to mask the huge cutsLondon faces.
Boris Johnson described Eric Pickles’ £3 billion settlement as “excellent”. But it is nothing of the sort.
Not a penny of Pickles’ money is new. It was all previously within existing London budgets, including:
- Money the government pledged to the Olympic Park Legacy Company (which soon becomes the new Mayoral Development Corporation); and
- £1.4 million of the now axed London Development Agency’s staffing budget.
The budget trumpeted most by the Mayor – £1.9 billion for housing – is a 60 per cent cut on the amount given to London in 2008 by the previous Labour government.
The Labour settlement gave London more money over three years than the Tories are now giving the whole country over four.
Could anyone take this spin as anything other than an attempt to mask the huge cuts to housing and regeneration inLondon?
With this reduced budget settlement for London come a host of new powers and responsibilities. The Mayor accurately describes the new powers as a “landmark” for the city. We agree. Labour has always supported more housing and regeneration powers for City Hall, especially when we are in the grip of a housing crisis.
Rents are rocketing and supply is plummeting across all sectors. But, faced with these challenges, what is the Mayor doing with his new powers?
He does not have a single policy to deal with extortionate private sector rents – believing it should be left completely to the market. And on the supply of affordable homes even he admits his policy is completely unsustainable. Housing associations will be forced to make up the shortfall left by government cuts by borrowing excessively – a policy that threatens their long-term viability.
When seeking election the Mayor said there was capacity to build 40,000 homes on land under City Hall’s control. In typical Johnson style he promised to “put his land where his mouth is”.
But this pledge has gone unmet. Housing completions on land he controls have plummeted to less than half the number Ken Livingstone delivered.
Under Boris Johnson London has more powers but things are going backwards. We urgently need a Mayor with a real plan who can use all the levers now at City Hall’s disposal to tackleLondon’s housing crisis.
Nicky Gavron can be followed on twitter @nickygavron and at nickygavron.wordpress.com
London Labour Housing Group can be followed on twitter @fairdealldnhsg and on the Fair Deal for London Housing Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/FairDealforLondonHousing/
Once upon a time Governments cared about the neutrality and independence of people that were appointed to undertake public tasks. But the announcement that the Cabinet Office’s ‘Red Tape Challenge’ review of housing regulation is to be championed by Simon Randall and Stephen Greenhalgh puts two of the country’s most dedicated Conservatives in charge of a dangerous exercise that could have major ramifications for the social, private rented and construction sectors.
Simon Randall CBE has a string of Tory appointments and Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh – described by Conservative Home as ‘a successful entrepreneur and landlord’ (no conflict there then) is of course the Tory Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham. Greenhalgh notoriously co-wrote the Localis pamphlet on social housing which, despite denials by Grant Shapps and others at the time, became the template for the destruction of the social rented sector which the Government is now pursuing. He is also behind the policy of redeveloping social housing estates in his borough against the wishes of the residents.
We have previously warned on Red Brick that the Red Tape Challenge holds serious dangers for the sector and the standards it operates to, and is mainly a device to bring in deregulation whilst no-one is looking.
As an example of the lurking danger in this exercise, most people in the sector believe that there is a need for stronger regulation of standards in private renting and in particular in houses in multiple occupation. Yet a series of regulations to do with private renting and HMOs are on the Red Tape list for review and possibly for abolition. Indeed, the Cabinet Office trumpets as beacons what has already been done by the Government to deregulate short-term holiday lets and HMOs.
The need for greater not less vigilance in housing is amply demonstrated by the publication of a shocking report by a group of housing associations in Staffordshire warning that the housing benefit cuts could see private landlords ‘subdivide’ properties to provide homes for those displaced from social housing. The report shows the extreme danger posed by de-regulation when it is driven by the supposed need to provide ‘choice’ for tenants and reduce the ‘burden’ on landlords. Unlike the Red Tape Challenge, the report concludes that councils should increase regulation of the private rented sector and give higher priority to the ‘enforcement of minimum standards’ as the number of low quality but more affordable houses in mutliple occupation increase.
The Staffordshire case is the reality of what is happening in the sector, with benefits increasingly cut well below even reasonable social rents and many more desperate people seeking solutions on the private market.
Messrs Randall and Greenhalgh claim they wish to hear the sector’s views and, always willing to help, here is the reply email: [email protected] I hope points like those contained in the Staffordshire report are made loud and clear. But I fear that the Red Tape champions will hear only that which fits their world view. Deregulation is set to become the next in a long line of battlegrounds.
By regular guest blogger Monimbo
Once again the Daily Mail is the favoured news outlet for a government minister, and once again it fails to check if he’s actually right. This time the story is about 6,000 council tenants who allegedly earn more than £100,000 per year, and how Mr Shapps wants to make sure they either leave their homes or pay a market rent, because they are costing the taxpayer more than £100 million. Poor Frank Dobson is rolled out once more as the prime example.
Let’s take a look at some of the facts. First, the article says that not only do 6,000 council tenants earn more than £100k but that 720,000 earn more than the national average wage. What we know is that 18,000 council tenants were identified as earning more than £50k annually in the English Housing Survey, so it’s perfectly possible that Grant Shapps has got his staff to break these figures down further and has found that one third of this group earn over £100k. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. What is implausible is that 720,000 households earn above the average wage: the true figure of council tenants earning more than £20k annually is 405,000, and earning more than £30k is much smaller at 154,000. The Mail is confusing council tenants with all social tenants.
Now it’s important to remember that citing these figures does not mean that anyone knows where these 6,000 high earners actually are. The figures are based on sample surveys, grossed up to apply to all English households. Apart from a few celebrity cases like Frank, neither Mr Shapps or anyone else could identify the culprits.
Mr Shapps wants to introduce an upper income level above which tenants will have to pay full market rents. But the obstacles he faces are formidable: first, it needs legislation with some careful wording, then it needs a way of rewriting existing tenancy agreements to change the tenancy terms of households who have probably enjoyed them for many years, and then it needs to impose a means test on people who almost certainly have never had to reveal their incomes to the council (e.g. to claim housing benefit).
Finally, given that rent-setting is and for many years has been a power that rests with councils and not with government, he needs a way of telling Camden council to raise Frank’s rent. The irony, of course, is that he’s floating these plans at the very time when he’s giving councils even more freedom over their council housing finances.
The other part of the Mail’s story is, of course, that it’s the taxpayer who is subsidising these high earning tenants, and who will therefore get the benefit if they pay their full whack. Wrong on both counts. It might suit Mr Shapps in peddling the story to the Mail to woo their tax-paying readers, but as he well knows they don’t subsidise council housing. If high earners pay more, it’s councils and other tenants who will benefit. If high earners move out, which is what he and the Mail seem to want, there will be no savings at all, simply a new tenant paying the same rent. Of course it would free up a council house, but that isn’t a direct saving to the taxpayer.
There is sufficient confusion in the financial aspects of this story that I haven’t even touched on the arguments for having a number of better-off people in council housing, and I’m sure Red Brick readers are well aware of the case that can be made. The next time the Daily Mail links council estates with the riots or the chronically work-shy, it might pause to ask what the opposite might be. Having a few more people living in those estates who have good jobs and earn above the average wage, perhaps?
Last week the Metro carried a sensible article about the rise in the number of people being forced out of their homes by mortgage lenders or landlords. 16,600 properties were repossessed in the third quarter of 2011, a rise of 20%.
The article clearly pointed out, in the second paragraph, that ‘nearly half of the repossessions were carried out on behalf of mortgage lenders, while 5,140 tenants were evicted for social landlords and another 1,627 on behalf of private landlords.’ They quoted an expert claiming that the numbers would continue to rise as unemployment continued to bite.
So far no surprise, but the article provoked a little tantrum from our housing minister. It was ‘Inaccurate and misleading’ he said. And why? Well, it was because the article was ‘lumping together statistics of homeowners, social tenants and private tenants’. He then went on to say that the number of home owner repossessions was expected to be below the initial forecast made by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (good) and he set out the help the Government is offering to mortgage holders.
Now the original article was not about tenure but about people losing their homes, whatever their tenure and whatever their circumstances. Each of those is a tragedy and, as the article said, it will get worse before it gets better. From a human point of view, the loss of your home under forced circumstances has huge implications for any individual or family. But there isn’t a hierarchy that says that repossession of a home owner is somehow more important than that of a social or a private tenant. The whole feel of Shapps’ response is that the latter two don’t matter much, but look how much we care about home owners. After all, the tenants probably deserved it.
So my advice to the Metro, well done on the article and carry on ‘lumping together’ people who are victims of the recession . Counting people is always more important. And getting up Grant’s nose proves that this time you got it right.