Silent speech

Posted: May 9, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a comment

It’s hard to know whether it’s good news or bad news that there is so little legislation affecting housing in the new parliamentary session.

The Care and Support Bill will have implications for the sector but it’s effectively another delay to the government’s response to the Dilnot Commission’s funding proposals because it’s only a draft bill. See this from Rachael Byrne of Home Group and this from Simon Parker of the New Local Government Network for a flavour of the reaction to that.

Apart from that the Queen’s Speech had nothing on housing. The only piece of legislation from the Communities and Local Government (CLG) department is another draft Bill dealing with the consequences of abolishing the Audit Commission while the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will have its hands full with pensions.

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

Beyond our Ken

Posted: May 8, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Housing market | 5 Comments

In the wake of the local election results it would be easy to conclude that housing does not count as a political issue. Easy but wrong.

Londoners elected the one candidate for mayor (Boris Johnson) who was promising to do least with new powers on housing (though he did at least pledge to create Homes for London). Voters in cities other than Bristol rejected the chance to have an elected mayor who could be in a position to demand the same and to take a strategic view of housing in their area.

And one of the gurus of opinion polling, Ben Page of Ipsos Mori, had this to say in a blog for Shelter last week:

‘Sadly this is one of those issues where there does not appear to be any happy ending anytime soon – and certainly not due to any election outcome in the UK. For organisations like Shelter, the challenge is to re-frame and re-articulate housing as the kind of mass issue that gets high profile coverage in an election campaign. And that is no mean feat.’

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Vampire diaries

Posted: May 8, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing finance, Private renting, Social housing | Leave a comment

The maths involved in the CLG committee’s new report on the financing of new housing supply is depressingly simple.

Add newly arising need to cope with population growth (232,000 homes a year on the latest estimate) to the backlog of existing need (1.99 million households in 2009), then take away the completions in 2011 (109,000) and you are left with a huge gap in provision. Even if private housebuilders succeed in increasing their output from last year’s miserable 82,000 to the maximum they managed over the last 20 years of 150,000 (a very big if) the gap will still be huge and the backlog will still be growing.

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

Disenfranchised by the housing system

Posted: May 2, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Private renting | 4 Comments

As Britain votes in local elections this week, spare a thought for the people who are effectively disenfranchised by the housing system. The total already runs into millions and the problem is set to get much worse.

It stems from the seemingly unstoppable growth of the housing tenure – private renting – in which people are least likely to register to vote. According to the latest estimate, there are 3.6 million private renting households in England. With an estimated 2.3 people in each of those households that gives a total of 8.3 million people. About a million of those households are couples with children or lone parents, but that still leaves perhaps 6.5 million people of voting age plus perhaps another 1.5 million in Scotland and Wales.

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Stat attack

Posted: May 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Private renting | Leave a comment

It’s Communities and Local Government questions – so it must time for a barrage of contradictory statistics.

I’ve grown used to the trading of numerical insults every few weeks between coalition and opposition over the last year or so. But would a week in which politics has been dominated by a stat (the 0.2 per cent fall in GDP that means the UK is in a double dip recession) make any difference?

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

The many (more) faces of Grant Shapps

Posted: April 29, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housebuilding | Leave a comment

No sooner had I written about a vintage week for Shapps watchers than another one followed quickly behind like a No 19 bus. Could this week be yet another?

Last week for our esteemed minister began with housing topping the agenda on the Today programme as Newham prepared to ship its homeless people to Stoke and all points north, south, east and west. This was proof, surely, of the impact of a combination of cuts in investment and housing benefit and the weakening of the homelessness safety net. Shapps on the ropes?

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Chink of light

Posted: April 26, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Economics, Housebuilding, Social housing | Leave a comment

A small dip in the GDP and suddenly there is an opportunity to put housing back on the agenda.

It was only -0.2 per cent but yesterday’s figures confirm that the economy is in a double dip recession for the first time since the 1970s in a downturn that has already gone on longer than the one in the 1930s.

Read more at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.

If you’re in a hole, start digging

Posted: April 25, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Economics, Housebuilding | 2 Comments

So we’re in a double-dip recession and construction is to blame.

You don’t have to be part of the construction lobby or a Keynesian or even Ed Balls to think that something is badly wrong here. The coalition’s strategy of cutting public spending to reduce the deficit to pacify the markets to keep interest rates low to produce a private sector-led recovery is not working and it is way past time for Plan B.

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Stoke-on-Thames: location, location, location

Posted: April 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting | 5 Comments

The news about Newham and Stoke has touched a nerve like few other housing stories this year. I wonder though if the coverage so far has identified the crucial issue.

The story broke on the Today programme on Tuesday morning. Newham had written to 1,179 housing associations around the country asking for help in finding homes for people affected by housing benefit cuts. The reason Stoke is in the headlines is that a housing association there went public with the letter (here). Housing minister Grant Shapps appeared alongside Newham mayor Robin Wales and accused him of ‘playing politics’ with the issue (something that Shapps himself would of course never do). I blogged my initial take on the issue for Inside Housing here but there are excellent blogs out there too from Polly Curtis, Steve Hilditch, Nancy Kelley and Toby Lloyd.

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Stoke-on-Thames

Posted: April 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting | Leave a comment

Stoke? Hull? Newham? Croydon? Westminster? Housing benefit cuts are a story in search of a location.

What I mean by that is that the story that dominated this morning’s Today programme could have been about just about any borough in London and any city in the north and midlands. We all know that sooner or later there will be real faces to put to the victims of the housing benefit cuts and real places where the problems will emerge. Up to now, though, and with several of the more draconian cuts still to come, we’ve had largely anecdotal evidence.

Read more on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.

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