AFFORDABLE housing was meant to be one of the key issues of Gordon Brown's premiership. But by cruel irony a year that has seen the announcment of the biggest increase in investment since the early 1990s also saw the return of a more unwelcome aspect of that period - a housing market crash.

David Orr of the National Housing Federation joins the assessment of Brown's first year in office today by 'warmly applauding' his early decision to set the ambitious target of 3m homes by 2020 but calling for more support for housing associations in the wake of the dramatic change in market conditions. 

Caroline Flint, the housing minister who took over after the good bit and is having to make the best of the bad, does her best to sound upbeat in an interview in the Financial Times today. The paper reports that the government will announce a new package of initiatives to help homeowners and housebuilders next week, with one eye-catching proposal that the Housing Corporation will give them bigger upfront payments to improve their cashflow. 

It remains to be seen what else the package will include but it seems unlikely to be enough for the NHF. Orr argues - unsurprisingly - that ministers should 'support housing associations in developing mortgage rescue schemes that prevent households from losing their homes, and they should help associations buy unmarketable homes from private developers'. 

The government should listen both to that and to calls from the British Property Federation for action on build to rent. The housing crisis certainly needs a more radical response than has been seen so far. Otherwise Gordon Brown will be remembered as the prime minister who pledged 'an end to boom and bust in the housing market' when Labour won power in 1997 and has ended up presiding over both and as the man who promised the biggest expansion of housebuilding in 30 years and ended up with the lowest level of output in 60.

Posted by Jules Birch, June 27 

Posted in Housing associations, Housing market, Politics

HOW can 73% of people say workless social housing tenants should risk losing their home at the same time as 59% say they should be allowed to stay in that home for as long as they want? 

The contradictory responses in this week's Inside Housing opinion poll [download PDF here] are a conundrum in which voters appear to agree with both the New Labour ultras and the bleeding heart Liberals at the same time. 

They clearly say something about the nature of opinion polls. Ask how many people still believe MI6 murdered Diana or that it was the CIA that blew up the Twin Towers and you'll get a pretty high response.

The way that questions are asked also has an influence. Saying yes to 'Unemployed tenants who are able to work and who live in social housing should risk losing their home if they are not prepared to take up opportunities for support and advice in seeking paid employment' is not quite the same as saying they should lose it if they turn down a job. 

The 73% response seems to show that Caroline Flint has picked up on a genuine feeling among the electorate. But does that mean that the great bulk of the housing profession is so out of step with public opinion that it needs to radically reappraise its opnions?

Some 72% of voters also believe social tenants should get more help to become home owners while 61% say those who can afford to rent privately should do so. So why not go with the popular mood - devote the lion's share of funding to home ownership initiatives and let social housing complete its transformation into purely welfare housing for the very poorest?

One way to look at it, as Kate Davies of Notting Hill Housing Trust points out, is to ask whether those who can afford private schools should be forced to send their children to them. Another recent Ipsos Mori poll showed that 57% of parents would send their children to private school if they could afford it. So why not do that, cut the education budget and use the savings to fund vouchers for private education?

Much as Thatcherite Ultras might think that's a great idea, only a small proportion of the electorate would. Housing may not be as universal a service as education or healthcare but my guess is that few people would support a shift to purely welfare housing either. Given the state of the housing market most would see the folly of subsidising people into negative equity too - even while they told the pollsters they believed in more home ownership help. Ask the right questions and you will get the right answers - but answers are not the same as solutions.

Posted by Jules Birch, June 6

Posted in Politics , Social housing, Welfare

'WE have throughout our inquiry continually returned to the same fixed point: the supply of homes is insufficient.' That is perhaps the most significant sentence in today's report on the supply of rented housing from the communities and local government committee.

In a report [download PDF here] that reads like a manifesto of unfinished business, the committee calls for a range of measures including more mixed communities, stronger regulation and tenancy reform in the private rented sector, measures to tackle buy to leave, reform of the single room rate, an increase in family-sized accommodation,  a commitment to 50,000 social rented homes a year, more rigorous management of section 106, reform of the right to buy including reinvestment of capital receipts and local restrictions where needed, more help for mobility schemes, borrowing freedoms for almos and local authorities.

That's a heavily edited version of a report with something to say about virtually aspect of rented housing - and which makes the important and often neglected link between the social and private rented sectors.

The stark message from this all-party committee is this: 'The government therefore faces a stark choice: does it retrench, leaving social housing as the sector of last resort; or is it prepared to make the investment and policy commitment necessary for social rented housing to play a full role in the creation of truly sustainable communities?'

And it warns: 'There is no short-term fix to the current situation: sustained and substantial increases in spending, together with a firm policy commitment to the creation of mixed communities, will be needed over the medium to long term if social rented housing is to fulfil the aims envisaged for it.'

However, are the people that really matter - the party leaderships - really listening? Housing minister Caroline Flint responded by pointing out that last year was the first since 1983 that more social rented homes have been built than lost to the right to buy and that the government is investing £8bn to provide 45,000 social homes a year.

Both true, but the committee casts doubt on whether that will really be achieved - and says it's not enough. It wants the 50,000 homes a year that is still only an aspirational target for the next spending review in 2011.

Will that ever come to pass - or will another select committee be saying exactly the same thing in three years' time? 

Posted by Jules Birch, May 21

Posted in Politics , Private renting, Social housing

MOVING his tanks on to Labour's lawn? Slapping his towel down on Gordon Brown's sunbed? However you describe it, the launch of the new Homelessness Foundation looks to be at the heart of David Cameron's bid to shake off the Conservatives' image as the 'nasty' party. 

'I'm proud because it's the Conservative Party that is taking the lead in the fight against homelessness,' he said in his speech at the launch event. 'That is saying we can build a fairer society and make a difference to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in our country.

That's quite a turnaround for a party that gained a reputation in the 1990s for regarding the homeless as something you stepped over on your way to the opera [even though it was a quote taken out of context] and for dismantling the homelessness legislation.

Change one word in Cameron's speech and he would get a standing ovation at the Labour conference: 'I've put tackling poverty at the heart of my mission for the Conservative Party: 'It's just frankly unacceptable that in a society such as ours - one of the richest and most developed in the world - that some people live in truly dire and degrading poverty. I want to give everyone - no matter what their background or their circumstances - the chance to lift themselves up and make the most of their lives. And an important part of that means tackling homelessness - giving everyone the security that a roof over their head brings.'

He attacked the government for fiddling the figures on rough sleeping, ignoring hidden homelessness and failing to do enough about families in temporary and overcrowded accommodation and argued that action had to be taken on the causes as well as the symptoms of homelesness.

Tories often seem to make the right noises about homelessness only to veer off into moralising about marriage and the family. Family breakdown was there in Cameron's speech yesterday but alongside personal debt, prison rehabilitation and recognition of a fourth cause of homelessness that could be the most important for the future. 'And causes like the severe lack of affordable housing in our country. Taken year on year, there's actually been less social housing built in the last decade than in the two decades before.'

It's not exactly a cast-iron commitment to increase, or even maintain, current levels of spending on affordable housing but it is an important marker and a positive sign for a post-Labour world.

Which is why charities like Shelter and Crisis are surely right to welcome the new initiative and keep up the pressure to ensure that actions follow words.

As Inside Housing reports this week, a Tory housing green paper is due in October. David Cameron could do worse than listen to the Local Government Association and its (Conservative) chairman Sir Simon Milton. The LGA is warning of a 1m increase in waiting lists by 2010 and calling for more freedom for councils to borrow and remortgage assets to reinvest.

Why not go further than the government's plans on freedom from the housing revenue account? 'Tories back council housing' might just have the potential to be the Cameroon equivalent of New Labour scrapping Clause Four.

Posted by Jules Birch, May 16

Posted in Homelessness, Politics

SO the rumours about a new housing market package were true. The details announced in today's draft Queen's Speech are still sketchy but it is clear that it will be on nothing like the same scale as its predecessor in 1992 - £200m not £577m to buy homes that will probably cost three times as much now means it's probably worth just 10% of that in real terms.

However, the same logic applies of acquiring homes for the social sector at the same time as preventing worse problems in the private sector. After Caroline Flint unwittingly revealed yesterday the government's view that house prices will fall by 5-10% this year and 'we can't know how bad it will get', action was clearly needed.

In fairness to her, it was actually a pretty sensible assessment of the state of the housing market - unless, of course, you're the housing minister on the way into a cabinet meeting.

The scenario painted in the snatched picture of her briefing notes (if you missed it, go here) would actually be pretty good news for the first-time buyers but the government cannot afford to contemplate the prospect of things getting any worse. 

One temptation must have been to steal an idea from Tory policy advisor Kirstie Allsopp and scrap stamp-duty for first-time buyers. But quite apart from the fact that yesterday's tax cut must have cleaned out the coffers, that sounds like a fruitless way of spending government money if prices are going to fall and help first-timers out more without it costing you a penny.

But there are some other policies in the draft speech [PDF here] that also appear to come from the blue end of the wardrobe. The original housing market package was of course also a Conservative idea and making all first-time buyers eligible for shared ownership schemes subject to an income limit comes bears some distinct similarities with Boris Johnson's programme for London. 

A statement from the CLG says all first-time buyers with a household income of under £60,000 would be eligible for Homebuy. Johnson's plan helps all basic rate taxpayers.

The details will be what matter. Where will the money come from (Gordon Brown suggested it would be reallocated)? What safeguards will prevent expanded equity becoming a route to negative equity for its customers? And how will this market package avoid some of the mistakes made last time?

On the last point in particular it could do worse than ask Anthony Mayer. Appointed yesterday as head of Oftenant, he was chief executive of the Housing Corporation at the time of the last package.

Elsewhere in the speech are plans to extend Oftenant to local authority tenants, a proposed housing reform green paper 'towards the end of 2008' setting out options to 'encourage people towards greater economic independence and social mobility', yet another review of housing benefit and reform of banking regulation.

Posted by Jules Birch, May 14 

Posted in Housing market, Politics , Social housing, Welfare, Tenants