Beyond coping
Posted: December 8, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing market, Mortgages, Poverty, Private renting, Social housing | Tags: Food banks, Housing costs | 1 CommentHousing costs have already stretched many people to the limit. What will happen if and when they rise again?
That’s the question raised in two reports out today on the plight of home owners and renters who have found ways to cope with current costs but may not be able to for much longer. A third report shows how the poorest households are only coping with help from food banks.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Map reading
Posted: November 21, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Social housing | Tags: New Era, Policy Exchange | Leave a commentHow should housing associations respond to the tantalising prospect of freedom? In uncharted territory you need something to guide you.
A report last week offers them the chance to buy out their historic grant at a discount and in return win substantial new freedoms over nominations, asset management and rents and the capacity to build many more homes.
The fact that it comes from Policy Exchange has been enough for many people to denounce it as privatisation and it may indeed be another big step towards that. However, this is not quite the free market fundamentalism we’ve come to expect from the think tank that brought us recommendations on selling expensive tenancies and the sale of all housing association homes. Many of the ideas in this report come from housing associations themselves and have been tested in polling of the chief executives and finance directors of 15 of the larger ones. As the contrasting reactions of the NHF and Placeshapers show, the report has sharply divided opinion but many of these proposals have support.
Housing 2040
Posted: November 17, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Poverty, Private renting, Social housing | Tags: Joseph Rowntree Foundation | 1 CommentWhere are we heading on housing over the next 25 years? That’s the question posed by a new study – and the answer may make you may want to look away now.
The study for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) takes existing trends in the relationship between housing and poverty between 1991 and 2008 and projects how it will change up to 2040.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Social messages
Posted: November 12, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Social housing | Tags: Housing Day | Leave a commentSome good news for Housing Day: it seems more people say yes to new social housing than say yes to new homes in general.
A fascinating Ipsos MORI poll published this morning reveals that 58% of people support ‘more social housing being built in my local area’. That compares with 22% who oppose it.
That’s a surprisingly positive result in itself given the steady flow of negative media stereotypes. And the balance only falls slightly to 55:24 when social renters are excluded.
However, support is also significantly higher than the 47% saying yes to ‘more homes being built in your local area’ in a survey of public attitudes to housebuilding published by the DCLG in July. That was hailed by housing minister Brandon Lewis as evidence that ‘nimbyism is on the wane’ and he was right: between 2010 and 2013 opinion shifted from 46:28 opposition to new homes to 47:31 support.
So what’s going on?
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
2020 visions
Posted: October 20, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Local government, Social housing | Tags: Lyons Review | Leave a commentSo what clues does the Lyons Review offers us about housing up to 2020? Here are some more thoughts.
The review is important in its own right as one of the most significant political reports on housing in the last ten years. However, it also gives us a much more detailed impression of what life will be like under a Labour government in the second half of this decade to add to the outlines of what we can expect under the Conservatives.
I argued in my blog last week that Lyons is good on housebuilding but offers little to supporters of social housing. If you judge the review by what it was asked to do (provide recommendations to Labour on how to get to 200,000 new homes a year in England by 2020) your verdict will tend to be positive. If on the other hand you ask whether recommendations made within these constraints are enough to solve the housing crisis you will be much more negative (for example, see this blog by Alex Hilton).
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Lyons made
Posted: October 16, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Garden cities, Housebuilding, Planning, Social housing | Tags: Lyons Review | Leave a commentThe Lyons Review is the most significant report on new housing supply in years but it’s much more convincing on private sector housebuilding than social housing.
Lyons picks up where Barker left off on housing in 2004 (and on planning in 2007) but with two added bits of context. First, we’ve gone backwards in the last ten years: annual output is around half what we needed and the backlog of unmet need is mounting by the day. Second, any solutions have to operate under severe political and financial constraints.
So anyone reading the report whose priority is more social housing will come away disappointed with the recommendations for a future Labour government. There will be no change in the borrowing rules for council housing and no increase in the borrowing caps except for potential swapping between authorities. The case for continuing and increased grant subsidy is accepted but subject to overall constraints on public spending in which social housing will be an unspecified ‘priority’ for more money.
And anyone hoping for a shift in the political obsession with aspiration and ownership rather than homes will already have been disappointed by the advance coverage. The Labour Party’s spin has been all about first-time buyers and ‘homes for locals’ even though they get relatively minor mentions in the report itself.
However, as with the launch setting of Milton Keynes the report offers solid grounds for optimism too. Here at last is consensus on a long-term strategy in place of the short-term gimmicks we’ve seen ever since the financial crisis.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Paper tigers?
Posted: October 6, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Social housing | Tags: Liberal Democrats | 1 CommentAs so often before the Lib Dems look like going into the next election with the best housing policies. On paper anyway.
Admittedly the competition is not high given the caution from Labour and divisiveness and hints about the end of grant from the Conservatives. However, the policies emerging from the Lib Dem conference in Glasgow look like they’ve been tested on a focus group consisting of people who care about housing.
This morning the party passed a motion calling for 300,000 homes a year, a new deal for renters, a housing investment bank and new powers for local authorities and housing associations to build plus measures to secure land at lower prices and remove barriers to house price stability. That was promptly amended to include a new power for local authorities to suspend the right to buy.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Visions and promises
Posted: September 29, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a commentAs the parties hold their final conferences before the 2015 general election, housing has a high political profile. Here are five themes I’ve noticed so far.
1) Priorities, priorities
‘Building as many homes as we need’ is the fifth of Ed Miliband’s six national goals by 2025. The big questions remain how we achieve that and whether it will be possible without substantial extra investment in new affordable homes. So it was definitely good news that the Labour leader had this to say too: ‘We will also make housing the top priority for additional capital investment in the next parliament.’ However, that can taken at face value or as an indication that it will not be top priority in its initial investment plans.
Mirror image
Posted: September 16, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Labour market, Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform | 1 CommentNobody pretends that reform of housing benefit will be easy but a report out today underlines the scale of the task.
The report by the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) does a great job of making the links between policies on housing, welfare and the labour market. The sobering conclusion for the government is that everything it has done so far has only succeeded in reducing the rate of growth of the housing benefit bill rather than reducing it.
So as fast as the government introduces cuts like the bedroom tax the bill keeps rising faster because of inflationary factors built into the system. Between 1997/98 and 2012/13 the total bill rose by 48 per cent in real terms.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Hard sell
Posted: August 28, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Right to buy, Social housing | Leave a commentAs sales pass 20,000, what’s been the impact of England’s ‘reinviograted’ right to buy so far?
Figures released by the DCLG last week show 20,027 sales since April 2012, when the maximum discount was increased to £75,000. This followed David Cameron’s Conservative Party conference speech in October 2011, when he said the proceeds would be reinvested in new affordable homes.
The government continues to introduce extra sales incentives. These include a new maximum discount for London of £100,000 from April 2013, £100 million to improve access to mortgage finance plus right to buy sales agents, annual inflation uprating of discounts and an increase in the maximum percentage discount on a house. Finally, the Deregulation Bill will reduce the qualifying period from five years as a tenant to three once it completes remaining stages in the Lords and gets Royal Assent.
That’s the context. But what are the numbers? And what about the wider impacts warned about by critics? Here’s an assessment so far:
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 