Posted: November 21, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Social housing | Tags: New Era, Policy Exchange |
How 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.
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Posted: November 21, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding | Tags: Brandon Lewis |
Today’s penultimate housebuilding figures before the election will increase fears that the recovery is fading.
On the housing minister’s preferred measure (see the spin from Brandon Lewis on the previous figures), housing starts in the July to September quarter were down 10 per cent on the previous three months and up just 1 per cent on a year ago. This is the first quarter-on-quarter fall in starts over two years.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: November 17, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Poverty, Private renting, Social housing | Tags: Joseph Rowntree Foundation |
Where 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
Posted: November 12, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Social housing | Tags: Housing Day |
Some 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
Posted: November 5, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Economics, Housebuilding, Planning, Tax | Tags: Kate Barker |
A new book by the economist whose work first established the 250,000 homes a year benchmark has to be worth reading – especially when she’s not convinced it’s possible anymore.
Kate Barker’s seminal report on housing for the Blair government nailed the idea that the UK and especially England need to build houses at a much faster rate. A decade, and a separate study of planning, later and it still the ultimate source for targets of 200,000, 250,000 and even 300,000 homes a year to cope with demand and make up for the shortfall.
Now she’s back with Housing: Where’s the Plan, a short book setting out the housing challenge and potential solutions to it. With the new homes deficit rising by the year, she starts with a sober assessment of the possibilities:
‘To create a fairer and less harmful housing market, a combination of strong central direction about housing supply and unpopular taxation changes would be required. But politicians find it hard to grasp these nettles: there is far too much short-term pain and the gain will go to their successors. It is easier for them to carry on with somewhat ineffective knee-jerk and populist help for first-time buyers.’
While a perfect market may not be possible the book suggests ‘criteria for what a better housing market might look like’. However, she injects a note of caution from the outset:
‘I have become less convinced that it will be possible to meet demand in much of southern England, given the strength of local opposition in many places. So building more housing will not be the only answer, we also need to ameliorate the consequences of demand continuing to exceed the available supply.’
In less than 100 pages, the book covers an immense amount of ground including the sort of outcomes we want, post-war housing and planning policy, the housing market and the wider economy, market risks and taxation. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: November 1, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Civil service, Welfare reform | Tags: family, Iain Duncan Smith |
How would the government’s own policies fare under the new families test?
The test published by Iain Duncan Smith will apply to all new laws and policies ‘to make sure they support strong and stable families’. It follows a speech by David Cameron in August promising family impact assessments of all domestic policies as part of a wider speech about family-friendly policy.
As I blogged at the time, Cameron was careful to avoid giving the impression that he only meant traditional families. However, his speech exposed a huge gap between rhetoric and reality on everything from the benefit cap to the bedroom tax, out-of-area homelessness placements to the private rented sector and troubled families to wider welfare reform.
So who better to set out the detail than a secretary of state famed for his ability to believe he is right regardless of the inconvenient facts?
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: October 28, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Television, Universal credit, Welfare reform | Tags: Channel 4 |
Universal credit came under scrutiny on TV and radio last night and whether you look from above or below things are not looking good.
Dispatches on Channel 4 covered the problems from below by looking at the experience in Warrington, where the job centre was one of the first to pilot the new all-in-one benefit. We heard from a succession of people whose claims were delayed, or processed wrongly or were simply not told what was happening and from Golden Gates Housing Trust on the problems this has caused.
The pilots are of course only meant to cover the simplest cases. However, single people don’t necessarily stay single: Jay moved in with his girlfriend and baby and found himself in a nightmare of delayed payments and rent arrears. ‘Me, my partner and my child will be homeless and you just don’t know what’s going on,’ he said. Jay started off as a fan of universal credit but they survived on coffee and crisps until the problems were sorted out.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Posted: October 27, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Economics, Help to Buy, Housebuilding | Tags: financial instruments, National Audit Office |
Guess what the total value of government financial instruments to support new homes will be by 2021.
The answer that leapt off the page at me in a report on the department’s performance published by the National Audit Office (NAO) last week is a cool £24 billion. And that is just the direct support that comes under the DCLG and its agencies.
Perhaps the figure should not come as a surprise. After all, ever since the financial crisis we’ve grown used to the government adopting new ways of financing things that do not rely on conventional spending or borrowing.
The three programmes that make up the £24 billion are £10 billion for financial guarantees to housing associations and the private rented sector to help build new homes, £9.7 billion for the Help to Buy equity loan scheme (HTB1) and £4.2 billion for other loans and investments such as Build to Rent and the large sites scheme.
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Posted: October 22, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Poverty |
Originally posted on my blog for Inside Housing.
Who said this? ‘What is currently happening in the housing market epitomises our concerns about Britain becoming a permanently divided nation.’
This is not a quote from a housing pressure group or a think-tank or even an article in Inside Housing. Instead it is the verdict in a report published on Monday by an official government body: the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission.
The advance headlines ahead of its annual State of the Nation report were about the ‘under-30s being priced out of the UK’ and much of the coverage after that went to the commission’s criticism of Labour’s plans on the minimum wage and its proposal to ban unpaid internships. However, read as a whole the report gives a fresh perspective on problems that are all too familiar to anyone in housing.
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Posted: October 20, 2014 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Local government, Social housing | Tags: Lyons Review |
So 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
Jules Birch 