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If Not Now, Then When? The Campaign for the Right to Adequate Housing

The Chartered Institute of Housing Cymru, Tai Pawb and Shelter Cymru are the Back the Bill coalition in Wales. It has been campaigning to incorporate the right to adequate housing (RTAH) in Wales since 2019. This June, following a Programme for Government commitment between the Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru a Green Paper on securing a path to adequate housing, including fair rents and affordability, has been published. The leaders of the three organisations fronting the campaign, Matt Dicks, Ruth Power, and Alicja Zalesinska, look at why introducing the right to adequate housing should be a key response to the housing crisis in Wales.

“If not now, then when?” is a question we often ask ourselves as campaign partners. When there are almost 90,000 people on social housing waiting lists and 10,221 in Temporary Accommodation, the housing crisis in Wales is inescapable. Too many lives are blighted by inadequate homes. As well as ruining people’s lives, poor housing costs the NHS in Wales £95 million per year. It is widely recognised that Wales is the birthplace of the NHS solving a 20th Century endemic issue of poor (public) health. Our predecessors did not wait for enough hospitals doctors and nurses to form the NHS – they recognised legislation would drive it and got on with it. That’s the approach we should take now and incorporate a right to adequate housing in Wales. 

In Wales, Many of us Agree Housing is a Human Right

We’re fortunate in Wales that we have governments with a history of looking at the bigger picture, whether it’s through the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, becoming an anti-racist nation or incorporating the rights of the child. In housing too, our 2014 Housing Act has been praised for its focus on prevention and replicated elsewhere in the UK.  So, the positive starting point is that Welsh Government recognises the challenge of the housing crisis and the importance of the right to adequate housing. Indeed, earlier this month, the Minister for Climate Change, Julie James, told the Local Government and Housing Committee, “…it’s a fundamental human right that you are adequately housed, and that is the mark of a civilised society that we can adequately house our citizens.”

Human Rights Must be Placed at the Centre of Housing Reform

Perhaps given this standpoint, it is surprising that the recently published Green Paper is a bit underwhelming, missing the transformative potential of incorporation and the benefits of progressive realisation in delivering it – essentially introducing the right over time alongside additional resource and increasing housing supply.  While the Programme for Government references ‘a right to adequate housing,’ there is an absence in the Green Paper of a strong discourse on human rights. And this matters. If adequate housing is a human right and the mark of a civilised society, it stands to question how it hasn’t been achieved by now. 

This Matters Because…

It’s not just enough to talk about human rights, but important to embed, protect and nurture them. Rather than talk about housing as a human right – a statement nearly all of us will agree with – it’s necessary to incorporate these rights to drive through change. This is how we secure a long-term, joined up and sustainable solution to the housing crisis. Unfortunately, this is not recognised in the Green Paper, which is almost silent on incorporation, and importantly, the value of incorporation. Instead, there is a focus on what adequate looks like – which while welcome fails to understand the full benefits of incorporation including tackling inequality and participation for communities in housing. 

While the Green Paper sets out a number of well-informed proposals to implement progressive policies, these are in effect reduced to discretionary priorities which are vulnerable, as policy always is, to changing priorities. There is no solid legal foundation that future generations could use as a basis to argue for progressive housing policies in Wales. 

The Green Paper stage is all about evidence and concepts – for the right to adequate housing, the most fundamental concept is that of progressive realisation, where the full right is introduced over time. We feel the Green Paper also misunderstands the role of progressive realisation in securing incorporation. Rather than seeing incorporation as the driver of change, the individual changes required are presented as barriers to incorporation with a right to adequate housing presented as the culmination of change; completely missing the point of incorporation.

For housing in Wales, ambition is critical.  However, as we stand now, the housing crisis is deepening. Tinkering around the edges with individual reforms hasn’t worked to date, so there can be no reason to expect it will in the future. We feel a right to adequate housing is the foundation of ambition, driving the long-term, joined-up and wholesale change required. Incorporation can drive the changes required to ensure everyone has a safe, suitable home they can afford.

We’d be naïve to not recognise legitimate concerns to our alternative vision but hear us out – none of these are insurmountable. 

Of course, the right to adequate housing will cost money – but independent cost-benefit analysis has shown that it will deliver savings of £11.5 billion for the Welsh public purse against a cost of £5billion over a 30-year period. 

It will mean change for housing and support providers, including local authorities – but this change means doing existing things better and leveraging in additional resources. All local authorities want good homes for their citizens and taxpayers without having to use inappropriate, expensive and unsuitable hotels as Temporary Accommodation.

We also recognise the fear around increased litigation. However, progressive realisation means the right to adequate housing is realised over time – not overnight. And with the maximum available resource committed, there will be no immediate increase in litigation, nor is there any international evidence to suggest it. Indeed, the outcome is greater supply and better standards across the board. Fear and risk of immediate litigation could also be mitigated through a ‘sunrise clause’ in any future Act, giving the government and public bodies time to progress their policies before the right is justiciable and fully recognised. 

For us, it is clear that the time to act and bring about positive, long-lasting change is now.   We believe that legislation to incorporate the right to adequate housing into Welsh law is the starting point that provides the paradigm shift in the way we view housing and the investment and prominence it is given in the wider public policy debate in Wales to deliver the long-lasting change that we, as housing professionals, all aspire to delivering.

Matt Dicks is Director of CIH Cymru; Alicja Zalesinska is Chief Executive of Tai Pawb; Ruth Power is Chief Executive of Shelter Cymru. Together, the three organisations represent the ‘Back the Bill’ campaign.

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Squalor and The Return of Real Capitalism

ITV’s releases ‘Surviving Squalor: Britain’s Housing Shame’ on Sunday at 10:15pm. Unquestionably highlighting some of the most horrific housing conditions endures by people and families living in social housing in the UK. 

Red Brick has long forewarned about the return of squalor. The national scandal that has been the neglect of housing. But as housing associations and local authorities are the only owner operator game in town, is it time for a rethink?

For many, these conditions are everyday norms. The perpetrators are not rogue private landlords, but housing associations and local authorities. And calls for regulatory intervention are falling on deaf ears.

Some of the worst offenders are receiving the most funding

The need for social housing has never been starker. So stark even the Tory Government has made an allocation to fund 30,000 new social homes. Notably following a recent funding announcement under the Affordable Homes Programme. In London, Sadiq Khan has seen £3.46bn distributed. The bulk of the funding is conditional on an emphasis towards social rent.

This funding comes with new conditions attached. These include all new buildings requiring sprinklers and that no combustible materials exist in the facades. Nevertheless, it must be noted that the biggest beneficiary for funding affordable housing in the capital was not a local authority. Instead Europe’s largest housing association, Clarion Housing will receive £240m to deliver 2,000 homes, of which 1,250 are for social rent.

Previous concerns over controversial mega mergers are coming home to roost

Clarion Housing was a merger between Affinity Sutton and Circle Housing Group in 2016. This occurred under the then Minister of State for Housing and Planning Gavin Barwell. Two of the housing associations in the Circle group had chronic problems with its repairs and maintenance services.

Circle had found itself downgraded as a result of ‘serious issues of disrepair’. Nevertheless, the mega merger went ahead. This was despite John Biggs, the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, condemning the lack of local accountability in the transfer to Clarion of Old Ford (Circle). The original stock transfer from the local authority crucially had this as a term in the original transfer agreement, which was completely disregarded.

Highlighting local concerns about the merger, and lack of local accountability, Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, Rushanara Ali questioned the Government. In response, Barwell argued that the housing associations involved believed the merger “will create a more efficient organization”.

Board’s lack tenant and resident representation

Two years after the merger, the now Lord Barwell found himself welcomed onto the board of Clarion Housing. In addition to David Orr, who had served 13 years as CEO of the housing association trade body the National Housing Federation, in addition to Graham Farrant – who has previously worked  for Dame Shirley Porter when the council moved homeless people into asbestos-ridden tower blocks. At present no tenant or resident sits on the board of Clarion Housing.

Red Brick has long argued for the Mayor to undertake a full audit of board membership of housing associations. While not against those with private sector experience, we need to balance this with expertise in social housing, alongside experiences of tenants and residents.

Clarion Housing continues to dodge regulator judgement despite serious controversies

Clarion Housing have been constantly in the news for all the wrong reasons. Not least down to the tireless campaigning of those affected, particularly across London. ITV Political Correspondent, Daniel Hewitt, has been legendary in his journalism. In particular through coverage of the appalling conditions on a housing estate of 500 homes in South London.

It appears too many residents in 2021 are living in squalor. In this situation finding themselves infested with vermin and plagued with damp issues. The scale of the most recent case prompted consideration whether Clarion Housing breached standards by the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH). The RSH had cleared Clarion just three months prior following an investigation into a major repairs scandal 5 years before. That time concerning buildings in Tower Hamlets.

On the 12th August 2021 the RSH curiously once again found no issues, citing there is no “evidence of systemic or organizational failure which indicates a breach of the consumer standards” . Weeks later Sadiq handed them almost a quarter of a billion pounds to go onto acquire and manage more properties. All the while living conditions remain dire for those affected.

But that is only the tip of the iceberg, red tape and bureaucracy in the Housing Ombudsman is holding back a tide of cases

Last November, Clarion featured in another investigation, this time by the BBC, investigating how they manage complaints handling and service charges. To date, further action has been actively delayed by the Housing Ombudsman, giving excuses such as not being able to take it on given the different tenures of those effected within a group complaint. The Housing Ombudsman is the ultimate gatekeeper to the RSH.

Still to this date, both shared owners and social tenants continue to pursue their case with the Housing Ombudsman. Almost three years after originally raising concerns with the landlord. Yet these recent regulatory judgements do not fill them with much hope.

But what does this achieve? Cases with the Housing Ombudsman can take up to in excess of a year to process. Even after having to slog through a complaints process that can be manipulated to take over a year in itself. Experiences all too familiar for those whose landlord is Clarion Housing. Along with other dysfunctional housing associations and local authorities.

For those living in the rat infested damp ridden flats that don’t even break social housing regulations, they are left to despair. For those currently living in temporary accommodation, or those who have been made homeless for weeks on end, after repeated leaks and floods of sewage water, lack of action from the Housing Ombudsman or RSH evaporates any sense of hope.

Clarion Housing Resident, Tower Hamlets 2021
Sector needs to do more to prioritise existing housing conditions

But what is the sector doing to tackle the problem of poor housing conditions? The short answer is not enough. Co-Founder of the Social Housing Under Threat campaign (SHOUT), Tom Murtha, aptly pointed out something did not quite sit right as to why housing conditions were not even on the agenda at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s ‘Housing 2021’ annual conference. This was an event that Housing Minister Christopher Pincher could not be bothered to attend in person. Coupled with Daniel Hewitt’s lack of invitation to speak, as pointed out by Tom Murtha below:

What was on the agenda was housing’s role in health and wellbeing. In addition to this was a panel featuring the RSH’s new Director of Consumer Regulation. Since January 2021 Kate Dodsworth has taken up the mantel. She has also talked about “the road to consumer regulation”, Although called for housing associations to fix their issues now and to “not wait for the regulator to come round in a couple years”.

Perhaps after ITV’s ‘Surviving Squalor’ is released they should come knocking somewhat sooner.

Lacking transparency, Housing Ombudsman statistics are massaged to cover the backs of its largest members

Kate is the former CEO of Gateway Housing, who topped the tables in the Housing Ombudsman own “complaints failures index”. This is despite only having found to be 9 times at fault between 2017/18 and 2019/20. Clarion Housing in comparison were at fault a staggering 129 times.

Determinations by Housing Ombudsman 2017/18 to 2019/20

Oddly, the index weights the number of determinations by how many homes each social landlord manages. In a way, this makes larger landlords appear lower down the rankings, despite having higher total numbers. Larger organisations claim they are more efficient – as aforementioned by Lord Barwell. But if true, bigger organisations should be indexed more heavily based on size. As opposed to the other way round.

In the latest landlord performance data published by the Housing Ombudsman, complaints received on Clarion Housing about complaint handling has seen a 250% increase in 2019/20 compared to 2017/18. Over the past three years Clarion Housing has received 1,899 complaints, of which 42.5% are related to property conditions.

What is not transparent from these figures is the number of tenant’s and leaseholders impacted by the complaints. By way of example, over 500 homes were affected in the ITV investigation, but these are not logged as individual complaints. Nor are they split out by tenure.

Social media is making prevalence of cases harder to ignore

In Channel 4’s ‘Grenfell: The Untold Story’ the poor treatment of residents by both landlord and local politician was all too revealing. It revealed how the then MP Victoria Borwick urged a mother concerned about being without water for days to “take baths with people next door”. This exemplifies the growing sense of the “us and them” society that we know is so deeply corrosive to our cohesion as a nation.

This remarkable footage emerged from a meeting concerning repairs and maintenance. It provides such crucial evidence of the plight put forward by many residents, many of whom are no longer around.

Snippets from this weekend’s ‘Surviving Squalor’ also highlight the ineptitudes of some local authorities too. Chronically ill Mehdi was living with water leaks contaminated with “significant faecal contamination”.

His landlord?

Lewisham Homes – a recent nominee for the Tpas England Awards Shortlist. While TPAS expressed their shame at the conditions some tenants are having to endure, they highlighted that their awards cover a range of categories. Admittedly, not just “managing homes”.

Real capitalism in the interest of humanity can help solve our low-income housing issues

So herein lies Sadiq’s funding conundrum. At present grant can only be provided to local authorities or housing associations. Some of which face reputational damage resulting from serious causes of concern and ESG related controversies.

Under the Labour-led Wheatley Act 1924 we as a country subsidised private builders to create homes for those on low-incomes. If we are to provide grant to the private sector conditional on owner operation at social rent levels, we would enable funding packages to be less reliant on those guilty of such poor management. Instead, we see the lion’s share of London’s funding for example go to a housing association with the most complaint determinations against its name. Clarion Housing.

At present we are dealing with the inability of the country to meet the heavy burdens now placed upon it. Back in 1924 private enterprise had little to no interest investing money in houses for letting purposes. Yet today we see operators indeed willing to invest. Whether this be through the burgeoning Build-to-Rent sector, or the nascent Single Family Rental sector, the local authority and housing association is no longer the only possible investment partner to bear these costs.

At the time, John Wheatley described his socialist housing funding proposals as “real capitalism – an attempt to patch up, in the interests of humanity, a capitalist ordered society”. Yes you read that correctly. The first socialist Labour government knew it had to patch up these interests through what it described “real capitalism”. For this reason, it is not outside Labour principles to fund housing at social rent levels for direct provision by the private sector. Nor has it ever been.

We need to diversify who owns and operates social housing

At present, only Registered Social Landlords can own and operate affordable housing under the eye of the regulator. Often forward funding from housebuilders and developers who do not have a long-term interest in the construction of the property. We have seen Clarion Housing’s own Group Director of Development highlight the “lack of commerciality in the sector”. It comes as no surprise that we see just as many issues with new build social housing, as we do with buildings coming to the end of their life.

In America federal states fund the construction of affordable rental housing for those on low-incomes through conditional tax credits. They provide this to both for-profit and not-for-profit owner operators through its Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) programme. By being sector agnostic both state and federal government drive competition, and thus commerciality, into funding programmes.

We should explore progressive innovative new funding models of low-income rental housing. For those on the left we cannot shun the private sector. We must work progressively with it to provide more options for those in most housing need. This will allow government to be less reliant on some of the worst offenders to deliver housing for those on low-incomes.

The ultimate goal?

To make fewer people have to survive squalor.

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Christopher Worrall</span></strong>
Christopher Worrall

Editor of Red Brick.

He sits on the Labour Housing Group Executive Committee, is Chair of Poplar and Limehouse CLP, and co-hosts the Priced Out podcast.

He writes in a personal capacity.

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The Future of Social Housing – Is Newham’s answer THE answer?

Our special correspondent, Bill D’Amore, has been at the Chartered Institute of Housing Conference this week, and was moved to write this post.
The Mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, spoke at Wednesday’s session of the Chartered Institute of Housing conference and set out his – and Newham’s – stall for social housing that builds resilience, aspiration and fairness for residents and communities. Sir Robin is one of Labour’s most outspoken politians calling for an end  to what he has called ‘the race to the bottom’. The social housing and benefit system has created a ghetto that makes the poor poorer and creates a culture of dependency, excluding people from work. Never avoiding controversy, Robin is a stalwart champion of his part of East London, and for what  his community needs:  robust access to employment, strong place-making, and prioritising social rented housing to those in work to “stop Newham’s revolving door”.
Robin’s position has been well known for some time, but he has courted particular interest because he tries to set out the socialist case for change – and a role for social housing that is, to some, not a million miles from Conservative boroughs like Hammersmith and Fulham and Westminster. He argues that  it isn’t – precisely because Newham has some of the most deprived communities in Britain that need stability and resilience, whereas other affluent Tory councils are actively excluding the poorest in areas where they work and live. Robin’s argument is both moral and economic. As he said: ”driving people out of rich areas seems to me to be just plain nuts”.
So far so plausible, to this party member, but as coalition policy starts to ramp up a vision for social housing as merely a short term  safety net ( as articulated on Wednesday by Matt Oakley from Policy Exchange)it’s important that Robin – and others – sharpen up their argument for a Labour housing policy that doesn’t just leave an open goal to the Tories. As I listened, three political challenges seemed imminent:
1) Some of us, Robin included, seem to have adopted the Tory narrative of the dependency culture, and invidious insinuations, denied by IDS but run week-in, week-out in the Mail and Express, that those in social housing are scroungers and the ‘feckless poor’.  I do not think Robin believes this, but we need a consistent challenge to this narrative – the Hill’s report did not draw this conclusion, and indeed other evidence suggests that the barriers to work are 80% circumstance / capability and 20% motivation, not the other way around. The third speaker on Wednesday, Diane Lee, tenant chair of Watford Community Housing Trust, gained the loudest applause of the session went she expressed just how much tenants resent this suggestion.
2) I am not sure Robin’s analysis does always lead to the need for social  lettings solely to those in work. As he says, the social tenants in Newham are the most stable, whilst it’s the private rented sector that sees the lowest standards and highest churn. What Newham, and places like it, may need is a far more robust set of tools to intervene in the private rented sector (PRS). What he can most readily influence is the easy option of his own lettings policy. To be fair, Robin does talk about the PRS, but only in terms of small pilots, and this part of the housing sector repeatedly never gets the attention in Labour policy that it ought to.
3) Most critically, Robin is always stuck within the localist position. If Newham can change its lettings policy to only allocate to working families, how can these flexibilities be denied to Hammersmith and Fulham? This is where we need the clearest thinking.  If ordinary working families are not to be driven into overcrowded slums or out of vast swathes of London and the South East, we need a policy that does not just help Newham, but all of the South East. The answer has to be one, or possibly both, of two possibilities:  in some way, a prescribed minimum tenure mix – a limit at the edge of localism however much local communities may squeal; or, some form of positive incentives to encourage genuinely mixed communities (and not merely the desultory bribe of the new homes bonus).
Neither of these will be simple, or uncontroversial, but our best advocates – like Sir Robin, and Labour’s national housing policy need to get passionately behind the reasons why we value mixed communities, whether of race, faith or economic circumstance, and a serious set of policy tools to achieve this. For Newham’s sake, and the rest of us.
Bill D’Amore.