End game
Posted: August 20, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Social housing | Leave a commentOriginally posted as a blog for Inside Housing.
Policy Exchange is well known for its opposition to the Green Belt but that has not stopped it proposing what amounts to a Blue Belt in expensive areas of the country.
The influential right-wing think tank published a report this morning calling for social rented homes that become vacant expensive areas to be sold off to fund the construction of more homes in cheaper areas. Read the rest of this entry »
The Victorian values of Octavia Hill
Posted: August 12, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: History, Poverty, Social housing, Welfare reform | 1 CommentOctavia Hill retains an extraordinary ability to inspire and infuriate. The ideas of this pioneer of housing management, social work and environmental protection almost seem more influential (and more contradictory) now than they did when she died 100 years ago this week.
She was a high-achieving woman in a society dominated by men but she was not by any stretch of the imagination a feminist. Her housing managers were women because, ‘ladies must do it, for it is detailed work; ladies must do it, for it is household work; it needs, moreover, persistent patience, gentleness, hope’. Yet she was opposed to women’s suffrage on the grounds that, as Kathryn Hughes puts it, ‘women were unsuited to thinking about the big issues of finance and foreign policy’.
Credit crunch
Posted: August 8, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a commentIf the Devil is in the detail then he is dancing a jig around the regulations for the universal credit and the benefit cap.
Ok, I am exaggerating for effect but by how much? Take a look at the response (PDF here) from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) to the consultation by the Social Security Advisory committee that closed on the opening day of the Olympics and you decide.
Many of the same points are being made by the CIH, NHF and others but they have an added impact coming from the organisation representing lenders that have invested £60 billion in social housing and cannot be easily dismissed by ministers as coming from the ‘housing industry’. Read the rest of this entry »
Broken record
Posted: August 6, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Social housing | Leave a commentEven as the Olympics provide compelling evidence that Britain is not as broken as the government makes out, the anniversary of the riots is a reminder that it is not fixed either.
In the glow from the marvellous opening ceremony and the stellar performances of the athletes it’s easy to forget that we are a country in austerity and recession. Perhaps that’s because we weren’t when we won the games and when the stadia and all the other facilities were funded.
The Olympics and the Paralympics that follow are like a holiday from the cuts, unemployment and welfare ‘reform’. The thousands of volunteers who are being hailed as a living embodiment of the Big Society are happily working for nothing for the common good rather than being made to work for nothing for private contractors. And the homes that will be built at the athletes village and on the Olympic park will be a lasting legacy of all that investment.
Out for the count
Posted: July 3, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Homelessness, Social housing | Leave a commentIt was seconds out, round 27 in the Commons yesterday in the housing stats war but where were the two main contenders?
Communities and local government questions has become a stats slugfest between Grant ‘Slasher’ Shapps in the blue trunks and Jack ‘Jabber’ Dromey in the red but yesterday as the theme music from Rocky began to play there were two new boxers in the spotlight. Given everything that’s been happening outside the ring – new and highly contentious stats on affordable housing and homelessness to argue about and an official complaint from Dromey to the referee – was I the only one in the crowd to feel let down?
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Big ideas
Posted: June 21, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing market, Planning, Private renting, Social housing | Leave a commentA radical new report out today challenges almost 40 years of orthodoxy about how we subsidise housing – and much more besides.
The think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says it’s time to reverse the shift from bricks and mortar to personal subsidies that began in the 1970s and get back to building homes rather than subsidising rents.
It’s far from the only big idea in the report, which is part of the IPPR’s fundamental review of housing policy, but it is the most eye-catching. In the current spending review period we are spending £94 billon on housing benefit but only £4.5 billion on building new affordable homes. Is there a better way?
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Vanishing act
Posted: June 15, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Planning, Regeneration, Right to buy, Social housing | 2 CommentsOne of the stats most often quoted by Grant Shapps is that the social rented housing stock shrank by 421,000 homes under Labour. The real question is how much it will shrink under him.
The housing minister quoted the figure again this week when he was interviewed on the Today programme on Wednesday about the affordable housing figures (for more on them see my blog for Inside Housing here). His use of statistics is much discussed but on this particular one he’s right: social housing disappeared under Labour as right to buy and demolitions outnumbered construction of new homes. What he did not mention was that roughly twice as many homes disappeared under the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997.
Mind the gap
Posted: June 13, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Poverty, Social housing | Leave a commentEverywhere I’ve been in Manchester this week it’s hard to avoid falling into the gap between good intentions and cold reality.
It’s there in the underlying theme of the CIH conference (a decade of sector-led solutions) and attempts to find ways forward under continuing austerity as outside the conference chamber the underlying problems just keep getting worse.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.
Stats war
Posted: June 12, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Social housing | Leave a commentAffordable rent may have kicked in at last but affordable housing starts are still down 57 per cent on a year ago. Get set for another row about stats.
It is of course pure coincidence but 24 hours after Jack Dromey and Labour went to the blankets in the housing stats war with Grant Shapps (well, ok, referred him to the UK Statistics Authority) perhaps the most politically sensitive of all figures were published this morning.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.
Fair rent
Posted: May 21, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Social housing | Leave a commentThe proposed reduction of the ‘pay to stay’ cap to £60,000 raises introduces yet more contradictions into a policy that was already riddled with them.
Reports on Saturday (most comprehensively by Patrick Wintour in The Guardian) said a consultation paper will be published next month on the idea of charging social housing tenants a market rent once their income rises above a certain level. When the policy was first floated last year, the proposed household income was £100,000 but now Grant Shapps, with the backing of David Cameron, is apparently suggesting £60,000.
Read the rest of this post on my blog for Inside Housing.
Jules Birch 