Help or hindrance?

Posted: April 13, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Housing market | Leave a comment

So a year in to Help to Buy, who has it helped and what has the impact been so far?

Those are the questions I set out to answer in my feature in this week’s Inside Housing. It concludes that the limited number of Help to Buy transactions seen so far cannot have been enough on their own to account for what’s happened in the market in its first year. What’s been far more significant is the impact on the behaviour of buyers, sellers and housebuilders of a signal from the government that it will do everything it can to generate a housing market recovery. That, combined with a range of other government policies (and non-policies) and the favourable environment of record low interest rates, has duly produced one.

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Frank words on welfare reform

Posted: April 9, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Poverty, Social housing, Universal credit, Welfare reform | Tags: , | 5 Comments

Getting the same criticism from different people is usually a sign you’ve got something wrong. How about for IDS and the DWP?

Three different reports published this morning amplify earlier warnings about the implementation of the bedroom tax, the wider impact of welfare reform on tenants and landlords and the prospects for universal credit. But it would surprise nobody if the work and pensions secretary saw them as yet more evidence that his reforms are a success.

Two of them come from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). Steve Wilcox finds that what he neutrally calls the ‘housing benefit size criteria’ has affected fewer people than expected but that half of those are in arrears and 100,000 who want to downsize are trapped and unable to move. Anne Power concludes that welfare reforms may end up making tenants more, rather than less, dependent and are making them more vulnerable.

The third is from the work and pensions committee and warns that it is still not clear that universal credit will work. The MPs on the all-party committee think that implementation will be delayed even further and have some strong words about Iain Duncan Smith’s attitude towards their scrutiny.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Paying the (affordable) rent

Posted: April 8, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Local government, Social housing | Tags: , | Leave a comment

The affordable v social debate took centre stage in the Commons yesterday and also emerged as an issue in the prospectus for new borrowing for council housing.

Communities and Local Government questions initially saw the usual routine in which a Labour MP asks a question about social rented housing and coalition ministers boast about the affordable homes programme.

Yesterday was different. Perhaps it was because Labour’s Heidi Alexander challenged the obfuscation directly:

‘I asked the Minister about social rented housing, not just affordable housing. The truth is that this Government do not want to build social housing; they want to decimate it. Will he tell me why the number of social rented homes being built in London last year was roughly one tenth of the number being built in the capital in 2009?’

And perhaps it was because the minister answering the question was not the housing minister Kris Hopkins but his fellow junior communities minister Stephen Williams. Hopkins seemed to be confined to questions about private renting and self build and, disappointingly, was not asked about his contention on Newsnight that rising house prices are ‘a good thing’.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

One size does not fit all

Posted: April 2, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Social housing, Welfare reform | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Today’s report from the work and pensions committee is an all-party challenge to the fundamental principles of the government’s reforms of housing benefit.

To my mind it is the most serious attack on the bedroom tax, the benefit cap and a swathe of other reforms since the government was forced to overturn House of Lords amendments to the Welfare Reform Act on the grounds of financial privilege.

But you would not guess it from reports in the national media this morning. On Radio 4’s Today programme it was only judged the third most important select committee report of the day and the second most important housing story behind the Nationwide house price index. It’s also downplayed elsewhere with headlines about ‘distress’ and ‘hardship’ or even stolen by Tim Farron rather than about the committee’s call for wholesale changes that could benefit hundreds of thousands of people.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Many unhappy returns to the bedroom tax

Posted: April 1, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Universal credit, Welfare reform | Tags: , | 3 Comments

Stop carping, you lot. The removal of the spare room subsidy is a success.

Today is of course the first of the month as well as the first anniversary of the introduction of the bedroom tax and a wave of other welfare reforms. But I am paraphrasing Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey rather than making a token effort at an April Fool.

 

Yesterday’s work and pensions questions brought inevitable attacks on the policy that has caused so much controversy since its introduction a year ago.

Labour’s Kate Green quoted last week’s reports from the BBC that just 6 per cent of households affected by the bedroom tax have managed to move and from Real Life Reform that eight out of ten are in debt and their borrowing is increasing by £52 a week. ‘Rather than preaching about careful budgeting, why do Ministers not just scrap this hated and unworkable tax, which is sending people spiralling into debt? Read the rest of this entry »

Why registration is the key for private renters

Posted: March 30, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Help to Buy, Private renting | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Can the votes of private renters swing the next election and move their concerns up the political agenda in the process?

The huge shift in housing tenure seen this century suggests they can. In 2000 just two million households in England were private tenants. According to the English Housing Survey, that had doubled to almost four million by 2012/13. Add another 500,000 in Wales and Scotland, allow for another two years of growth and, with 1.8 people of voting age per household, you have nine million potential private rented votes at the next election.

Polling by Generation Rent, the recently relaunched National Private Tenants Organisation, suggests that the votes of private renters could be decisive in 86 seats in England. Of these, 38 are currently held by the Conservatives, 32 by Labour, 15 by the Lib Dems and one by the Greens. The results here could be enough to deliver an overall majority for David Cameron, make Ed Miliband the leader of the largest party or give Nick Clegg a major say in a new coalition.

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Housing nations

Posted: March 28, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Scotland, Wales, Welfare state | Tags: | Leave a comment

What would a Yes vote to Scottish independence mean for housing in the rest of the UK?

With less than six months to go until the referendum, it’s not just in Scotland that the issues are being debated. While England may feel it can mostly ignore what’s happening north of the Tweed the question is perhaps felt more deeply in the other UK nations.

In Northern Ireland, a research institute has just warned of ‘substantial’ political, economic and social effects. And in Wales the issues were addressed directly this week in a debate at the TAI 2014 conference in Cardiff on the motion ‘This house believes an independent Scotland would be good for Wales.’

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Does the welfare cap fit?

Posted: March 26, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing benefit, Social housing, Welfare reform | Tags: , | Leave a comment

The debate about the welfare cap seems to be all about the politics. It should be about the contradictions at the heart of the policy too.

The coalition parties and the opposition are all supporting the measure that will place a legal restriction on most welfare spending from 2015/16 so, despite an expected Labour rebellion, it seems more or less certain to go through.

The cap started off as a political trap set by the Conservatives and Labour support reflects a determination not to fall into it.

Judging from his appearance on the Today programme this morning, Iain Duncan Smith seems determined to act as though Labour doesn’t really mean its support. But the example he chose says much about his priorities and the way the cap will operate.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Budget 2014: the next five years

Posted: March 20, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Budget, Economics, Housing market, Private renting, Welfare state | Tags: | Leave a comment

Never mind today and tomorrow: what does the Budget mean for housing over the longer term?

As usual, some of the most revealing information comes not in the speech or the Treasury’s background documents but in the Economic and Fiscal Outlook published by the Office for Budget Responsibility. This time around the detail and the forecasts for the next five years have a lot to say about housing benefit, the welfare cap and the housing market.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Making the move

Posted: March 13, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Legal, Local government, Private renting | Leave a comment

Forced out of area moves are on the increase and they are not just happening in London.

The Oxford Times reports this week on cases of people being offered homes as far away in Cardiff, Cheltenham and Birmingham. The council blames the cuts in housing benefit and the benefit cap that make it impossible to find affordable private rented accommodation but a local solicitor has accused it of dumping people outside the area.

Elysha Britnell, a 22 year old mother of two children, was told she would have to move out of her temporary accommodation in Oxford and accept a home in Birmingham. She says she has no family and friends outside Oxford and has never lived anywhere else and is appealing against the decision:

‘I’m Oxford born and bred. If this appeal fails I’ll be completely homeless. I have got nowhere else to go. Even if I go to Birmingham, I may as well be homeless, because I have nobody there.’

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

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