shelter Archives - Red Brick

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 20^th 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.

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.

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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