SO 12 'trailblazing' local authorities are to offer advice on training, employment and childcare to people looking for housing. The CLG announcement on housing options yesterday puts one of the key recommendations of the Hills Report into effect.

But anyone looking for the advice may be confused if they take a closer look at the local priorities for councils it published earlier this week. 

Take childcare - a key factor restricting employment opportunities and housing options. Only four of the 12 trailblazers make 'take-up of formal childcare by low-income working families' a priority.

Take concentrations of people on benefit - a key concern on housing and worklessness. Only five prioritise 'working age people on out of work benefits in the worst performing neighbourhoods'.

Or what about the supply of affordable homes? Even on this most fundamental issue, only eight out of 12 make 'number of affordable homes delivered (gross)' a priority.

Failing to tick the right boxes and speak the right management speak does not of course mean that the 12 will not deliver excellent advice. However, there is a crucial point to be made about 'options'.

As used in homelessness prevention, it has led to some invaluable work on helping homelessness people sustain tenancies and access the private rented sector. However, a strong suspicion remains among many advisors that in some local authorities homelessness prevention is really about homelessness application prevention.

Many people getting 'advice' on their housing and employment 'options' will have similar suspicions running through their heads about the real motivations behind it. And only two of the 12 authorities (Greenwich and Calderdale) can demonstrate those motivations by pointing out they make priorities of all three of the indicators above.

Posted by Jules Birch, July 4

Posted in Hills review, Local government, Social housing, Welfare

HAS the housing profession ever met for its annual conference in a state of greater uncertainty? Arguably the 12 months between the last CIH conference and the one that opens in Harrogate today have seen things change faster than in any previous year.

Imminent changes in the regulatory regime with the introduction of the Homes and Communities Agency and Tenant Services Authority (TSA), the largest development programme in 15 years and a new government agenda on worklessness were quite enough to be going on with. But the credit crunch and the collapse of the housing market have swept away many of the old certainties – including some of those on which the new agencies were based.

Previous CIH conferences have been held in the shadow of Ronan Point, felt the shock wave of the right to buy and taken place in the wake of the radical reforms introduced by the 1988 Housing Act. This one is happening in what feels like a different world to that of 2007.

Housing minister Caroline Flint tells this week's Inside Housing: 'If I had one wish, my wish would be that we could get out of this particular credit crunch as quickly as possible'. But this is not Kansas any more and wishes don't necessarily come true.

As for her companions in Oz, Sir Bob Kerslake (HCA) says the government's housebuilding targets as 'perfectly doable', while Steve Douglas (Housing Corporation) describes last year's Callcutt Review of delivery on those targets as 'fundamentally flawed' and Anthony Mayer (TSA) warns that 'a wall of water or Tsunami' is heading towards housing associations.

Whatever happens next, and few people can confidently predict that, the ripples from September's credit crunch are still spreading. The direct effects on social housing providers include development grinding to a halt on section 106 sites and the Housing Corporation warning them they need extensive risk management plans in place. 

But social landlords can console themselves that at least they are not housebuilders. There are opportunities as well as threats. The housing and mortgage market crisis may threaten development programmes and shared ownership deals but it also blows out of the water the old dogma that policy should be based on an ever-expanding home ownership sector. One thing remains as true in 2008 and 2007: there are not enough new homes. But the rented sectors - council, local housing company, intermediate, private - are now crucial to meeting that demand.

Posted by Jules Birch, June 17

Posted in Housing market, Social housing

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

AS ministers start to ponder the housing reform green paper due by the end of the year where can they turn for guidance on the complex issues generated by the debate about social housing and worklessness?

How about this? Living in social rented housing is not a barrier or disincentive to getting a job - in fact, many people find a secure tenancy brings them closer to the labour market and makes work a more viable option. However, it is not organised in a way that seeks to maximise that potential benefit.

These are the conclusions of a study for the Department of Work and Pensions by a team from Sheffield Hallam University centred on in-depth interviews with social tenants with recent or ongoing experience of worklessness and was commissioned in the wake of the Hills Review.

It found no consistent evidence of cultures of worklessness in deprived areas but did find some concentrations of worklessness in areas with strong communities and local identities with relatively low levels of population turnover. This was thanks to a combination of postcode discrimination, social routines and peer pressure that led to resistance to formal paid work and the availability of local resources to 'get by'.

In contrast to government concerns about giving preference in allocations to people moving for job-related reasons, the study found that mobility was not a barrier to work - basically because the jobs available to people were low paid and insecure and were not worth giving up established social networks for. 

However, the benefits system were found to be a clear barrier to working, with the complexities between housing benefit, tax credits and earnings making it impossible to work out the financial consequences of entering work. Few tenants seemed aware of housing benefit as an in-work benefit. The study argues that any reform should concentrate on making it clear that 'work pays'.

Other barriers included the fact that some social tenants faced multiple disadvantages, many of which were hidden from view, for example a drug or alcohol problem that was kept from service providers. Apart from explaining why the employment effects of living in social housing are being masked, this underlines the importance of integrated service provision.  

The study also concludes that there is potential for social landlords to expand their work into training and employment support but that two fundamental questions needed to be answered: why should they bother, when their primary role is housing management? And what role would they play and what partnership arrangements would be needed to help them play it? 

Posted by Jules Birch, May 19 

Posted in Social housing, Welfare