£42m HCA affordable homes contracts signed
Three more housing associations have signed contracts under the affordable homes programme worth a total of £42.2 million.
Hyde Housing Association, Hanover Housing Association and the Together Group have now agreed deals with the Homes and Communities Agency under the programme, which allows organisations to charge ‘affordable’ rents at up to 80 per cent of market value in return for development cash.
Hyde has been awarded £24.9 million for 1,030 new homes, of which 804 will be let at affordable rent and 226 will be for low cost home ownership.
The 43,000-home association’s chief executive Steve White had previously said he was concerned about some councils vetoing rent levels in agreed bids and in October asked housing minister Grant Shapps to look at the issue. But he has now felt able to sign the deal.
Together Group, formed in April through a merger of Trans-Pennine Housing, Chevin Housing and Prospect Homes, will receive £15 million for 783 homes, including 78 homes for low cost home ownership.
Hanover Housing Association, a specialist provider of retirement housing, has been awarded £2.3 million to build 73 homes in London.
The allocations mean the HCA has awarded £1.5 billion to 95 providers, with a further £300 million yet to be signed off.
Have your say
You must sign in to make a comment
Readers' comments (4)
Paul Jones | 12/12/2011 11:11 am
We need more social rent homes. "Affordable rent" wil not be affordable to those on minimum wage in major cites and it will increase the Housing Benefit bill.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
SocialHousingWorks | 12/12/2011 12:18 pm
Affordable Rent would not increase the housing benefit bill if the link between rents and benefits was broken so that people lived within their means.
Lots of people in work at levels higher than the mimimum wage are struggling to find suitable housing, so a change in the allocations policy is also needed.
1. Set universal benefit for everyone of working age at equivalent of 30hrs work @ minimum wage, after tax and NI. No other benefits unless illness/disability.
2. Allocate housing to those in need, based on under/over occupancy of their current home and whether they can domonstrate the ability to pay the rent.
People on HB in expensive houses that many workers can only dream of living in would have to move, reducing rents in those areas to more affordable levels so that people CAN afford to live there.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
F451 | 12/12/2011 3:42 pm
Social Housing Works - if people on minimum wage can not afford affordable housing and there is no benefit to top up the poverty pay: where do you propose that they live 'within their means'?
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
DaftAida | 12/12/2011 11:21 pm
To point out a timely coincidence, developers and social engineering clearing houses (social housing) can charge unnaffordable rents and get a public grant to boot out 'antisocial' or simply economically undesirable tenants. How blatant can it get when councils collude with developers to acquire or recommision land, clear it of dwellings then sit on it until the market gathers the goldust and public funds are used as bribes to build substandard accommodation at exhorbitant rents with conditions attached. No security of tenure, no tenant protection. Who and what profits from this arrangement and is it in compliance with the brief that the council are a group of public servants tasked with the job of serving their community according to the people's directives?
I'll outline the outcomes for the hard of thinking: support for fostering and adoptive parents (financially incentivised at each step; from SS assessment and kidnap of children, to private family courts and allocation of child to foster or adoptive parents). Assessments made according to personal bias and target objectives of re-placement. That takes care of the children made homeless through these policies for higher profits, using penalties to ensure compliance to the most intrusive and unlawful infringements on private family life. Parents who cannot afford rent hikes will be deemed to be a potential threat to their childrens welfare by lacking economic capacity. All because the banks have been handed compensation for unlawfully and illegally gambling away our childrens future and redirecting the immense revenues into the coffers driving this machine to destruction.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment