Giving hope
Posted: September 10, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: History, Philanthropy, Social housing | Leave a commentHousing and philanthropy seemed to go together naturally in the 19th century. Can they do it again in the 21st?
An interesting report out today from the Smith Institute, New Philanthropy Institute and Peabody Trust sets out to answer that question and in the process asks some more of its own about what the relationship should be between the state, housing providers and the private sector.
Peabody is of course one of the prime examples of Victorian philanthropy. American banker George Peabody donated a total of £500,000 (the equivalent of £40 million now) to ‘ameliorate the condition of the poor and needy’ in London. Thanks to careful management of its money, requiring a return of 3 per cent on its capital, it developed into an organisation with 20,000 properties housing 55,000 people.
Yet, as I blogged in celebration of Peabody’s 150th anniversary last year, that begs the question of why there are no equivalents today. Inequality is back to levels last seen in the 1920s and the super-rich grow ever more super and richer. So why is there no contemporary equivalent of Peabody or William Sutton or Octavia Hill? Why is there no Richard Branson Trust or Fred Goodwin Model Dwellings Society? The last major housing development funded by a philanthropist was Silver Edge, a model village in Essex founded by window magnate Francis Crittall – and that was in 1925.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Whose benefit?
Posted: August 23, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Culture, History, Homelessness, Social housing, Welfare state | Leave a commentYou know the formula by now: take a provocative premise, add three claimants selected to provoke different reactions, stir in the reaction on twitter, then stand back and watch the viewing figures mount up.
As with How to Get a Council House, Benefits Britain 1949 suffers from all the faults that are seemingly hard-wired into Channel 4 reality shows. The opening episodes showed them both at their worst (see me on HTGACH and Frances Ryan on BB49) but with time they evolved into something that went beyond the format and the premise.
I’ve just caught up with the second episode of Benefits Britain 1949 and if you haven’t seen it I recommend a viewing in conjunction with the third and final episode of How to Get a Council House because they neatly bookend the whole debate about social housing and its place in the welfare state.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Doing good
Posted: August 10, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Social housing | Leave a commentHow to Get a Council House broke free of its dodgy title and format last night. The same cannot be said for the reaction on Twitter.
The second episode in the series was set in Manchester and followed tenants and staff of Northwards Housing as the bedroom tax loomed earlier this year (watch again here). It gave some real insights into the way the system works and the good job that housing officers do in very difficult circumstances.
As I blogged last week, I felt the first episode also did well at showing the impossible situation in Tower Hamlets, where just 40 properties a week become available but 60 new families join the 24,000 families others on the waiting list. But I criticised the trivialising commentary and the lack of any context that might have explained why.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Choice viewing
Posted: August 2, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Local government, Social housing | Leave a commentA documentary about housing on Channel 4 is usually the cue for me to look what else is on TV. This time I watched the programme – and the reaction to it.
Inside my Twitter feed, the debate was about whether How to Get a Council House (watch again here) presented a realistic but depressing portrait of life on the waiting list or trivialised the issues by ignoring the reasons why the wait is so long.
Outside my feed, the racists, kippers and anti-welfarists were in full cry. Search under the hashtag #howtogetacouncilhouse and you will quickly see what I mean: in this world council housing is the preserve of immigrants and scroungers. All of the public prejudices against people on benefits are simply transferred to council tenants.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Rule of law
Posted: July 31, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Legal, Social housing | Leave a commentIf you take even a cursory glance at the circumstances of the 10 families involved in the legal challenge to the bedroom tax you’ll be left wondering how discretionary housing payments can possibly resolve their problems.
I read the High Court ruling painfully aware that I lack the legal expertise to interpret the finer points of the European Convention on Human Rights and Public Sector Equality Duty but with enough experience to know that what is lawful is not necessarily the same as what is fair.
The background to the case has already been covered in detail elsewhere. As Inside Housing reports, although the judges said that new measures must be introduced to protect disabled children who need their own room, housing groups were left bitterly disappointed by the dismissal of the other part of the judicial review and lawyers plan to appeal. Read this excellent blog by Kate Webb of Shelter or see statements by the solicitors involved here and here if you haven’t already for the background.
Paying the price
Posted: July 29, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Right to buy, Social housing | Leave a commentAll those high earners with social tenancies seem to be slowly melting away ahead of the government’s plan to implement ‘pay to stay’ market rents.
I’m not just talking about the impact of the policy itself and the incentive for tenants to declare an income of £59,999 or even to cut the number of hours they work to get out of paying a market rent for their homes.
Rather I’m talking about the government’s own estimates of the number of high earners. When the policy was first floated at the Conservative Party conference in October 2011, the Telegraph was briefed that there were 6,000 ‘fat cat’ tenants earning more than £100,000 a year.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Stay or go?
Posted: July 25, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Social housing | Leave a commentEvery time I think I’ve got my head around the pernicious impacts of the bedroom tax something new emerges to make me think again.
The trigger this time is an excellent report from Aragon Housing Association on the first 100 days of what the government calls the spare room subsidy. But that also sent me back to several conversations I had at the CIH conference in Manchester and reports published while I was on holiday from the National Housing Federation (twice), Chartered Institute of Housing and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.
Even before that the evidence was accumulating from around the country that the effects are at least as bad, and probably worse, than most people expected or feared. From rent arrears in Newcastle and Ayrshire to fears of more suicides in Birmingham to criticism of the Labour leadership’s stance on the issue in Liverpool, the effects of the bedroom tax continue to be felt emotionally, financially and politically.
Facing the future
Posted: June 28, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing benefit, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a commentSo now we know: 10 years of certainty on rents, five years on grant and who knows how many more years of welfare ‘reform’.
The future has come into much clearer focus this week following the spending round on Wednesday and the investment announcement on Thursday. And, as luck would have it, all of this coincided with the biggest housing conference of the year.
Read the rest of my thoughts on the implications of the spending round for housing on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Sold short
Posted: June 24, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Energy efficiency, Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a commentA stark warning of the consequences of market failure in the housing system comes from an independent commission today.
The broad-based group set up by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors(RICS) is chaired by Michael Newey, RICS president elect and chief executive of Broadland Housing Group, and also includes Mark Clare of Barratt, Nick Jopling of Grainger, James Pargeter of Deloitte Real Estate, Paul Tennant of Orbit and Duncan Maclennan of University of St Andrews.
They argue that: ‘High house prices, complemented with high levels of housing unaffordability are the greatest signs of market failure. This in turn has an adverse effect on labour mobility, commuting, productivity and job creation. This commission recognises the negative impact that a poor housing system has on the wider economy and hopes to see it elevated still higher on government agendas.
In other words, what the commission argues are ‘clear signs of market failure’ include negative externalities that go far beyond housing and require a switch away from the ‘short-termism’ that has characterised policy for the last 50 years.
However, in an illustration of just how difficult it is to break away from a short-term approach, the commission seems to face both ways on current government policies.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
The big switch
Posted: June 6, 2013 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Housing finance, Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a commentEd Miliband has ended three decades of political consensus that it’s better to subsidise rents than new homes but changing course will not be easy.
The Labour leader’s speech in Newham this morning is significant in all kinds of ways: for the party’s positioning ahead of the next election; for the implied switch to contributory benefits and ‘something for something’; for tackling low pay; and for the careful use of ‘social security’ to avoid the loaded term ‘welfare’.
Even the setting – Newham Dockside – is significant since it looks very much like an endorsement of the more proactive but harsher approach to benefit claimants adopted by its mayor Sir Robin Wales.
All of those things could have major implications for housing but none so much as the plan to shift spending back from housing benefit to bricks and mortar – the end of ‘letting housing benefit take the strain’ and admitting the failure over decades to build enough homes.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my post for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 