30 years after – part 1

Posted: June 22, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Buy to let, Housing market, Mortgages | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

Interest rates rising to tame inflation. Home owners worrying about how they will pay their mortgage. Politicians panicking about the economic and electoral impact.

Prospects for the housing market arguably look bleaker than at any time since the spectacular crash of the early 1990s (unless you are a renter waiting for prices to fall, of course).

Ultra-low interest rates helped the economy out of the downturn that followed the financial crisis in 2008 and have underpinned rising house prices over the last 13 years. But that whole era now seems to be over and the escape route looks blocked.

So how does the situation now compare to what happened 30 years ago? This first part of a two-part column looks at the similarities – and some significant differences.

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A turning point for social housing?

Posted: June 13, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Cost of living, Council housing, Housing associations, Housing finance, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

For as long as I can remember the social housing business model seems to have been at a turning point.

From private finance to stock transfer, from affordable rent to welfare reform and from austerity to the rent cut, the policy changes have kept coming against a wider backdrop of financial crisis, Grenfell, Covid, Rochdale and the cost of living crisis.

For years it’s seemed that something has to give – until it does and landlords have to do more with less and tenants get less for more and apparent turning points become spinning in ever-decreasing circles.

This time around, though, you really get the sense that things can’t simply continue as they are and as they have been.  

That was what came across quite powerfully both from this week’s first hearing of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee’s inquiry into the finances and sustainability if the social housing sector and from the written evidence submitted in advance. The inquiry continues with a new set of witnesses on Monday.

This is not just about the impossibility of squaring the circle between competing priorities, of continuing to deliver new homes at the same time as fixing unsafe buildings, regenerating ageing estates and decarbonising existing homes.

And it’s no longer just about doing more with less either. The return of inflation, and even larger increases in construction prices, mean delivering the same with much less.

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Wales consults on right to housing and fair rents

Posted: June 8, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Private renting, Rent control, Wales | Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

The right to housing. Rent regulation. Two of the most prominent big ideas for fixing the housing system have just gone out for consultation in Wales.

There is still a long way to go after publication of what amounts to the lightest of green papers and there is a big difference between proposing something and implementing it. However, taken together they represent a big challenge to current orthodoxy.

The green paper on housing adequacy and fair rents is the result of the cooperation agreement between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru. A white paper will follow but this is more of a call for evidence than a definite commitment to action or legislation.

The right to adequate housing is part of a United Nations covenant on economic, social and cultural rights that the UK signed up to almost 50 years ago. However, turning a vague aspiration to ‘housing as a human right’ into something more meaningful means incorporating it into national law, a move with strong support in the housing sector in Wales.

At the same time, as in the rest of the UK, support has been growing on the left and among private renters for some form of rent regulation.

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