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Time for a sea change in housing policy
It is time for us all to decide what role we want from social housing, says Terrie Alafat
Can we call ourselves a civilised society if we do not provide a decent, safe and affordable home for everyone who needs one?
This is a question for us all. It cuts to the core of what our response to the housing crisis should be and the role social housing should play in that response.
The first stage of our Rethinking Social Housing project sought the views of people living and working in social housing on exactly these questions and we’ve been overwhelmed by the response.
Nearly 3,000 people have had their say in the first stage of the project and many told us that they valued the opportunity to take a step back and reflect on the fundamental purpose of social housing in society.
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The historian and broadcaster David Olusoga offered a crucial sense of perspective on this fundamental question in an excellent guest blog for us recently.
As he points out: “British governments that faced far more challenging economic conditions than those that have confronted the governments of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have harnessed state power and private energies in efforts to meet the housing demands of the nation. Somehow and for some reason our generations appear to lack comparable vision or a similar drive.”
So what should our vision for the role of social housing be?
Our recently released UK Housing Review characterised the options used by all developed and many developing countries into three categories:
- An ‘ambulance service’: narrowly limited to helping those in most acute need, normally for short periods of time and often with restrictions
- A ‘safety net’: offering broader, long-term assistance to people on lower incomes unable to afford market housing, and to meet other needs such as homelessness
- A ‘wider affordability’ role: available to a range of income groups, competing with private housing, encouraging higher standards and curbing excessive growth in prices
Underlying all of these models are some key questions about who should have access to social housing and for how long?
Is a social housing tenancy for life or a ‘springboard or ‘way station’ for households on lower incomes?
In releasing its green paper this week, Labour ventures its answer to this question – social housing should be at the heart of our plan to solve the housing crisis and it is the duty of a responsible society to provide housing for people who cannot afford it.
The party’s proposed affordability standard includes social rented homes, a living rent and low-cost homeownership acknowledging that the affordability crisis is affecting a wide-ranging group of people including low to middle-income working families, key workers and young people.
The shift in the funding landscape has had a huge impact on our ability to deliver affordable homes.
Our own data recently revealed just 4.3% of government housing subsidy went towards measures to boost new building in 2015/16 – down from 82% in 1975/76 – while 95.7% went on housing benefit and support for mortgage interest (up from just 18% 40 years earlier).
Meanwhile investment in social housing has dropped from £13.7bn in 1979/80 to £5.1bn in 2016/17 in today’s prices.
And government spending on the private market dwarfs support for affordable housing – 79% of its £53bn budget up to 2020/21 is directed towards private housing, with just 21% directly funding affordable housing.
“We haven’t yet seen the sea change in policy we need to shift the prevailing landscape.”
But as the authors of the UK Housing Review rightly conclude, the role of social housing is only partly an issue of resources: “It is also a question of political and societal attitudes towards the tenure and its tenants, of fostering a unique resource which continues to house almost one-fifth of the population while largely paying for itself, rather than seeing it as a drag on public resources and a political liability, ripe for short-term policy changes.”
Though Theresa May’s government has repeatedly said that solving the housing crisis is its top domestic priority, we haven’t yet seen the sea change in policy we need to shift the prevailing landscape and solve the acute housing issues we face. We hope that the long-awaited green paper outlines measures to achieve this.
It should not have taken the Grenfell Tower tragedy for this issue to pierce our national and political conscience – but now that it has, we all have to decide what kind of society we wish to live in and the role that social housing will play.
That’s the question at the heart of our Rethinking Social Housing project – one which, following the input of thousands of people who live and work in social housing, we will now be gauging the public’s views on.
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that this is the question which politicians, housing organisations and the voting public must all collectively answer.
Terrie Alafat, chief executive, Chartered Institute of Housing
