Posted: November 20, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Benefit cap, Budget, Local housing allowance, Tax, Universal credit |
Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on May 20.
Some very big questions on housing, welfare and tax are looming ahead of this Budget.
If there is not the same sense of raised expectations that surrounds the prospects for land and investment, the answers given by Philip Hammond on November 22 will still go a long way to determining what type of housing system we will have going into the 2020s.
I’ve written many times before about the way that the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008 and the policies adopted under George Osborne since 2010 have combined to create a system in which older and better-off home owners have gained at the expense of younger and poorer renters.
A piece in the Financial Times last week used figures from the Resolution Foundation to quantify just how much: housing costs for households below average incomes rose by £714 between 2007/08 while they fell by £271 for those on above average incomes. The biggest gains went to the richest 10% of households, whose average housing costs fell by £1,206.
And that these figures do not include substantial increases in housing wealth over the same period as house prices have risen.
Many factors have driven this including falling rates of home ownership and rock bottom mortgage rates but policies on tax and welfare set by central government have also played a part.
So what could Hammond do to redress the balance?
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Posted: November 12, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Home ownership, Housing benefit, Private renting, Welfare state | Tags: Generation Rent |
A report today from Generation Rent predicts that the number of pensioner private renters will increase by 169% in England over the next 20 years at a cost of an extra £3.5bn in housing benefit.
The increase will come as a result of trends already hard-baked into the housing system and they have nothing to do with the people in their 20s and 30s that we are used to thinking of as Generation Rent.
Successive editions of the English Housing Survey (EHS) have shown that falls in home ownership are rippling up through the age bands as existing private renters get older and find themselves unable to buy.
The report by David Adler of Oxford University and Dan Wilson-Craw of Generation Rent looks at the current EHS, Office for National Statistics and housing benefit data to forecast what will happen by 2035/36.
There are currently 1.1 million private renter households aged between 45 and 64 who will reach retirement age in the next 20 years. Some of them will still be able to buy but on current trends 947,000 will be private renters into retirement.
Add another 50,000 current retiree households who will live into their 80s and you have a million who could be reliant on insecure short-term tenancies and potentially dependent on housing benefit. That could translate into an extra £3.5bn on top of the current housing benefit bill.
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Posted: October 26, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, LHA cap, Local housing allowance, Social housing, Supported housing, Wales |
Originally posted as a column for Inside Housing on October 26.
So finally even the prime minister accepts that plans to impose a local housing allowance (LHA) cap on supported and social housing are unworkable.
Theresa May’s announcement at prime minister’s questions that the cap will not be implemented represents a massive u-turn that will be an equally massive relief to social landlords and tenants.
Statements from a succession of different ministers over the last few weeks had signalled the move for supported housing in the face of overwhelming evidence of postponed investment and knock-on costs for the health and social care sectors.
The decision to scrap it for social housing too was more of a surprise, though it may have been influenced by the difficulty of distinguishing social from supported homes.
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Posted: October 20, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing market, LHA cap, Social housing, Universal credit | Tags: CaCHE |
Originally posted as a column for Inside Housing on October 20.
Almost everyone agrees there is a housing crisis, that the housing market is broken and dysfunctional and that urgent action is required – but why and what exactly should be done about it?
For most of the last seven years, the answers to these questions seem to been scribbled on the back of a fag packet at Policy Exchange or emerged fully-formed from the brilliant mind of Iain Duncan Smith.
Any idea of evidence-based policy disappeared after 2010, with evaluations of policy published only reluctantly and ignored when their conclusions are inconvenient.
That has begun to change under Theresa May, who became prime minister with a reputation for taking her time over decisions and insisting on looking at the evidence for herself before she took them.
With the Conservatives apparently prepared to consider some ideas that were previously off limits, and even to fund social rent once again, the political consensus about the need to do something about housing is growing.
So the timing could hardly be better for a new initiative dedicated to supplying the evidence to help diagnose the problems with the housing system and come up with solutions.
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Posted: October 13, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, LHA cap, Social housing, Supported housing |
Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on October 13.
As universal credit understandably took all the headlines, the scale of the threat posed by restrictions on the local housing allowance (LHA) has come into even sharper focus.
The mood music this week suggested that ministers are set to make concessions over their plans to apply LHA caps to supported housing but the rest of social housing is still right in the firing line.
In a packed Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday and at the Communities and Local Government committee, ministers gave strong hints of flexibility to come.
The debate was called by Tory MP Peter Aldous, who called on the government to give ‘full sand serious consideration’ to recommendations made by two select committees for a supported housing allowance rather than LHA plus local top-ups.
Communities minister Marcus Jones said:
‘This matter is a priority for the Government, and we will announce the next steps shortly—later this autumn. I believe that when those proposals are introduced, they will show that we have listened and have understood the important issues at hand and the important situation. What is at stake is helping and supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our society.’
It remains to be seen exactly how much ministers have listened and understood about a system that would create a postcode lottery and has already halted development plans.
But at stake too is the government’s attempt to impose a flawed system originally designed to reflect private rents to control a very different combination of rent and care costs in supported and social housing.
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Posted: July 11, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing benefit, LHA cap, Right to buy, Social housing, Supported housing |
Originally published on July 11 as a column for Inside Housing.
If we need to ‘invest in good work’ what about good homes?
Theresa May was speaking at the launch of the Taylor review of the gig economy on Tuesday exactly a year after she became prime minister.
In the wake of her failed election gamble, she needs non-Tory support to address the challenges identified in the report.
And her plea to the other parties to ‘come forward with your own views and ideas about how we can tackle these challenges as a country’ is being interpreted as being about more than just the labour market.
So if the challenge of precarious work requires cross-party co-operation what about that of precarious housing?
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Posted: June 6, 2017 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Poverty, Social housing | Tags: General Election 2017 |
Originally published on June 6 on my blog for Inside Housing.
What will the main political parties do to improve the housing system for the poorest people?
The answer ranges from something to not much at all, according to a study of their manifestos launched by a group of experts this week.
Academics Stand Against Poverty conducted a poverty audit of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat plans on their policies on everything from disability to international development and education to health. Each of these was marked out of five, with 5 representing very high confidence that the policies on offer would tackle poverty and 1 very low confidence.
As the graphic shows, Labour came out best overall with an average score of 3.6, including 5 for its plans for disability and 4 for other areas including health, education and social security.
The Lib Dems came a close second with 3.2, matching Labour on education and ranked as the best party on the environment and sustainability.
The Conservatives scored worst on every topic, with no individual mark higher than 2 and an overall mark of 1.5.
That represents a significant improvement for Labour on its score in 2015, when more parties were assessed. Back then the Greens led the way with 3.9, followed by the Lib Dems with 3.2, Labour in third with 2.6, the Conservatives in fourth on 1.7 and UKIP trailing in last with 1.4.
Looking at housing specifically in the 2017 audit, Labour leads with 3, followed by the Lib Dems with 2 and the Tories with 1. That mostly applies to England given that housing policy is largely devolved but the combined score of 6 out of 15 is the lowest for the 11 different policy areas assessed.
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