A house is more than just a home

Next year marks the 60th anniversary of Aneurin Bevan’s 1949 Housing Act. It was this piece of legislation that removed the restriction on public housing as a benefi t for only the working classes and ushered in his vision of the living tapestry of a mixed community.

Housing minister Caroline Flint’s announcement of a housing reform green paper and another housing bill suggest that next year’s anniversary shouldn’t pass by quietly. As we meet at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s Harrogate conference, it is timely to refl ect on this opportunity. In recent years we have made important progress on supply-side issues – progress that is being sorely tested by the current challenging conditions – but the vast majority of our housing policies and practices are still built on post-war welfarist foundations.

In the 60 years since the war we have seen massive changes in our society. Today, a home is much more than a place to live. It is also, and indeed sometimes only, an investment, a pension, an income, an office, a business and sometimes a potential liability. Society has moved on but our basic principles of public housing policy have not.

Today just less than 20 per cent of our housing stock is social. But as numbers have declined due to right to buy and demand has increased as aff ordability has tightened, wellintentioned practices of rationing this scarce resource to those most in need have altered our use of social housing from a public good for all, to one that has exacerbated concentrations of deprivation.

Bevan’s vision for universal housing provision has never quite worked. Ms Flint’s current reform programme therefore provides us with an exciting opportunity. The question is are we, and the government, prepared to revisit the very way we use our social housing? If not, will our record investment in new homes really have the long-term societal benefi ts that we should expect and demand?

I am a fi rm believer in aff ordable housing. Listen to those attending Harrogate and it is hard not to be. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect more from publicly funded housing. It should have at its heart a desire to not only provide a home but also to enhance people’s life chances and help them make the most of their talents and abilities.

It is this vision that we should pursue with as much focus as we pursue new house building. While we have rightly focused our attention on delivering new homes in recent years, it is equally imperative that we focus our attention on the people who live and will live in them.

We need not only more incremental changes to Bevan’s system, but a more fundamental rethink about what we want social housing to achieve in our society.

Richard Capie is director of policy and practice at the CIH