Mar 15 2007
While Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, claims that Britain is on the verge of a golden age in housing policies, a new report from Professor Duncan Maclennan warns that “the golden age is still a serious number of leaden steps ahead”.
The report, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, acknowledges the Government’s significant efforts to secure neighbourhood renewal, poverty reduction and wider economic progress through its housing policies. However, new housing provision for low income households still lies well below the output of the mid-1990s while homelessness and housing needs remain resolutely high. In addition, more and more households have a growing struggle to get that increasingly important first foot on the property ladder.
Maclennan looks at a range of possibilities including exploring whether social housing should be for long-term periods or just for transitional phases in the lives of those who need it most. He asks if a more flexible approach is needed. He also asks whether long-term tenants should benefit from a share of the increased value of their homes.
According to Maclennan, John Hills is right to stress, in his recent review for the Government, that there is no deepening crisis in housing provision but that there are still too many places that people only want to leave and too many young lives that are blighted by inadequate homes and poor neighbourhoods. Maclennan provides a detailed overview of changing roles and patterns of the social housing sector and makes innovative, sometimes controversial, policy recommendations to reinforce or complement those advocated by John Hills.
While Maclennan feels that most commentators would agree social housing should be “adequate, accessible and affordable”, the Hills review does not address how it should be organised. Maclennan adds that provision needs to be organised in a way that is “economic, efficient and effective”. Maclennan outlines other areas missing in the Hills review and as yet unaddressed by government policy.
Maclennan shows how the share of 25-29-year-olds in owner occupation has fallen sharply from 60% to 50%, with the same age group in the social rental sector also falling from 22% to 17%. The major displacement of younger households since 1993 has not been out of the social rental sector but out of owner occupation with the private rental sector (PRS) experiencing significant growth. According to Maclennan, market shifts such as these have yet to be reflected in policy measures.
Maclennan asserts: “An urgent policy concern must surely arise from the fact that of the quarter who left social housing for the PRS, 60% were without employment and usually single with 40% aged over 35. Do we need to refashion not-for-profit provision arrangements to stem this worrisome flow or are private landlords and the market, with housing benefit support, now providing better options for some permanently poorer households?”
He adds: “If the widening gap between the wealth of home-owners and those renting is to be halted, we need to introduce mechanisms so that they can benefit from increased values of the homes in which they live. This could be translated into providing those who no longer fall within the greatest housing need with a deposit to help them onto the property ladder, thereby freeing up social housing for those in greater need.”