10 things about 2017: part one

Posted: December 22, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Grenfell Tower, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, LHA cap, Temporary accommodation | Leave a comment

Originally posted as a column for Inside Housing on December 22.

As in 2016, it seemed like nothing would ever be the same again after a momentous event halfway through the year.

The horrific Grenfell Tower fire on June 14 means that the headline on this column should really have read ‘nine other things about 2017’. Just as the Brexit voted has changed everything in politics, so it is almost impossible to see anything in housing except through the prism of that awful night.

That said, 2017 was another year of momentous change for housing, one that brought a few signs of hope too. Here’s the first of my two-part review of what I was writing about.

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A damning verdict on the building regulations and fire safety

Posted: December 18, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Construction industry, Grenfell Tower, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on December 18.

Six months on from the disaster that changed everything it sometimes feels like not much has changed.

Despite the promises made in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell fire, progress has been painfully slow on rehousing families from the tower and surrounding block.

The police will not complete a full forensic assessment and reconstruction of how the fire spread before autumn 2018 and potential suspects in the criminal investigation will not be interviewed until after that.

Interim findings from the public inquiry were originally due by Easter 2018 but the judge leading it says the scale of the work that is required means that will not now be possible. No date has been set for the final report.

With up to 2,400 witnesses to be interviewed, 31 million documents to be examined and 383 companies identified as having played some role in the refurbishment of the tower, it’s not hard to find good reasons why things are taking so long.

Establishing the causes of the fire to stop the same thing happening again will be complicated enough but that is just part of getting justice for the victims and survivors.

Finding who was to blame will take time and all the while questions will remain about building safety elsewhere.

Tangible progress towards finding some of the answers comes with today’s publication of the interim findings of the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety chaired by Dame Judith Hackitt.

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Over-egging the pudding

Posted: December 15, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housebuilding, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally posted as a column for Inside Housing on December 14. 

Is a year that has seen a huge shift in the politics of housing ending with a return to business as usual?

The Grenfell fire is the obvious reason for the change in the terms of the housing debate but it is not the only one.

The prime minister’s party conference speech will be remembered for the prankster, the lost voice and the collapsing stage set but it did seem to mark the culmination of a shift from Help to Buy to help for all tenures. But just as her country is not quite working for everyone, so her social housing revolution may not be quite what it seems.

One clue, I think, lies in the way that parliamentary debate has returned to the bad old days of Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps in terms of the selective use of statistics. The first time I noticed this was at last week’s Communities and Local Government questions.

Alok Sharma seems a nice chap and has quietly impressed with his willingness to listen to tenants at consultations ahead of the social housing green paper. But asked about homes built for social rent last week, he boasted that: ‘Since 2010, nearly 128,000 homes for social rent have been built in England, and 118,000 have been built for affordable rent.’

That’s an answer that does not quite compute at first but check the statistics and he is perfectly correct – and totally misleading – at the same time.

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Farewell social mobility

Posted: December 4, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Inequality, Poverty | Tags: | 2 Comments

Originally posted as a column for Inside Housing on December 4.

One instinctive reaction to the news over the weekend that Alan Milburn and his fellow Social Mobility Commissioners have resigned is a simple question: what took you so long?

After all, what was then the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission was the creation of Nick Clegg, with the idea that they would hold the current and future future governments to account.

It always looked a tough job when the former deputy prime minister’s coalition chums seemed hell-bent on increasing child poverty and reducing social mobility after 2010.

After the 2015 election, when Clegg and most of his Lib Dem colleagues lost their seats, the child poverty bit was taken out so that the commission could concentrate on the more Conservative-sounding and more convenient part of its brief.

That is just as well for them as child poverty is now rising again in the face of stagnant wages, rising rents and frozen benefits but it seemed there was still a job to be done in ensuring that government paid attention to wider social concerns.

And when Theresa May became prime minister in 2016 her themes of correcting ‘burning injustices’ and ‘a country that works for everyone’ it seemed that it might be worth the commissioners hanging around to help.

That came to an end on Saturday night when Milburn and three other commissioners, including former Tory Cabinet minister Gillian Shepherd, tendered their resignations (Downing Street claims he jumped before he was pushed).

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Who owns Britain?

Posted: November 29, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Home ownership, Inequality, Tax | Leave a comment

Originally posted as a column for Inside Housing on November 29.

What happens to the huge wealth generated by soaring house prices is a crucial issue not just for housing but also for the future of Britain.

The Office for National Statistics puts the value of unmortgaged housing equity at just under £4 trillion and second only to pension wealth of £4.5 trillion in total personal wealth of £11.1 trillion.

Savills estimates unmortgaged equity at over £5 trillion and says housing is now the single biggest source of wealth in the country and a report today by the Halifax says the total value of the UK housing stock has passed £6 trillion for the first time.

Whatever the number you put in front of those 12 zeros that is a serious amount of money- the UK’s national debt is currently worth £1.8 trillion.

As by far the most visible divide between baby boomers like me lucky enough to have been born and buy houses at the right time and millennials born at the wrong time and stuck in the wrong housing tenure, housing dominated an event on wealth inequality that I went to in Bristol recently.

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The real Budget agenda is clear

Posted: November 22, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Budget, Council housing, Land, Local housing allowance, Universal credit | Tags: | Leave a comment

Philip Hammond’s Budget contains some big numbers and ambitious promises on housing but you don’t have to delve very far to find the real priorities.

Contrast, for example, what’s happening with housing, tax and welfare, two different measures that were heavily predicted and one that was desperately needed.

Stamp duty is being cut, but the chancellor has gone further than the expected holiday by abolishing it completely for first-time buyers of homes worth up to £300,000 or the first £300,000 of homes worth up to £500,000. The cut applies from now and will cost £3bn by the end of 2022/23.

Problems with universal credit are being addressed with measures including the scrapping of the seven-day waiting period, making advances easier to get and allowing continued payment of housing benefit for two weeks after a universal credit claim. The total cost is £1.5bn by 2022/23 and there is another delay to the rollout.

The universal credit changes are welcome but will still leave claimants potentially facing destitution and people in work thousands of pounds a year worse off than they would have been under the previous system.

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A look ahead to the Budget part three: welfare and tax

Posted: November 20, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Benefit cap, Budget, Local housing allowance, Tax, Universal credit | Leave a comment

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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A look ahead to the Budget part two: investment

Posted: November 15, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Budget, Council housing, Social housing | Leave a comment

Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on November 15.

In normal times, a chancellor who pledged an extra £2bn for social housing and an extra £10bn for home ownership might to be greeted with general acclaim.

But these are not normal times and the pressure to do something big and bold on housing was such that what might have been two key Budget commitments (plus the new rent formula as a third) were announced last month at the party conference.

And, far from being applauded, the government came under fire for doing too little, too late on social housing and for pouring petrol on the flames of house price inflation via Help to Buy.

Philip Hammond was not helped by a curious Conservative briefing to journalists that the £2bn would only be enough for 25,000 homes but even Tory newspapers were checking housebuilder share prices on the day after the budget for Help to Buy was doubled.

This second part of my blog previewing a watershed Budget for housing looks at the prospects for further moves on investment on November 22. Part three (coming soon) will look at tax and welfare.

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A look ahead to the Budget part one: the land question

Posted: November 13, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Budget, Compulsory purchase, Land, Section 106 | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Originally published as a column for Inside Housing on November 13.

More than ever before, this year’s Budget looks like a watershed moment for housing.

Philip Hammond is under mounting pressure from all sides to do something big and bold and break with the failed policies of the past.

The calls for something radical are coming from more than just the usual suspects and are for more than just a cheque with lots of zeros.

Conservative MPs know that they cling to power (just) thanks to the votes of elderly home owners. Brexit may dominate everything but many of them realise that beneath the surface housing is one of the key issues poisoning their relationship with the under-45s.

They understand that cynical policies like Help to Buy are no longer enough, that the party is running out of time and that it has to look at policies that were previously unthinkable.

Yet conventional wisdom says that we’ve heard all this before, that Hammond’s caution and the Treasury’s orthodoxy will turn thinking that was big and bold into outcomes that are tame and timid on November 22.

After the announcements in the last few weeks of an extra £10bn for Help to Buy, another £2bn for social housing and the u-turn on the LHA cap for social and supported housing, how much is left for the chancellor to say (or spend)?

However, another view says that the housing question has such serious social, economic and political implications that the answers cannot be put off any longer. See this blog by Toby Lloyd for a good round-up of some possibilities.

In a series of columns ahead of the Budget, I’ll be looking at some of the crucial questions concerning investment, tax and welfare and, to kick things off, land. Will the Budget be big and bold – or tame and timid?

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The long-term consequences of falling home ownership

Posted: November 12, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Home ownership, Housing benefit, Private renting, Welfare state | Tags: | 4 Comments

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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