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The echoes of previous failed policies are obvious in the new shared ownership Right to Buy announcement, and the sector must fight to ensure they are not implemented, writes Philip Glanville
The patient had long been sick, but there was always a chance of revival. The much-loathed Housing and Planning Act was given royal assent in 2016, but thankfully many of its unworkable and deeply damaging policies were quietly binned by successive housing ministers.
Until now. Robert Jenrick’s announcement that new housing association tenants will be able to purchase a portion of their home under shared ownership arrangements sounds eerily familiar to David Cameron’s proposals to extend the Right to Buy to the sector more generally.
Alongside other council leaders, tenants and charities, I marched, campaigned and spoke out in parliament against these half-baked plans a few years ago. They were an attempt to undermine social housing and nobody had thought about the details. That became clear when nearly all of the key proposals – remember Starter Homes? – never made it into policy.
In Hackney, the borough I lead as elected mayor, there are more than 13,000 families on our housing waiting list, 3,000 of whom are in temporary accommodation such as hostels and B&Bs. Last week’s announcement reveals a government whose dogmatic obsession with homeownership will do little to help people desperately in need of a secure and affordable home. It might play well in focus groups, but it won’t solve the housing crisis.
Housing associations that, like councils, are juggling increases in construction costs, significant fire safety work and the uncertainty of Brexit will find it more difficult to borrow and finance building new social housing if they have no idea whether those homes could be immediately converted into shared ownership, reducing rental income.
And it’s unclear who this offer is even aimed at. A new tenant could buy an initial 10% stake, while paying subsidised rent on the remaining 90% of the property. On a £200,000 home, ministers say the tenant could make up this 10% stake through a £2,000 deposit and an £18,000 mortgage.
“Extending Right to Buy – one of the best examples of ineffective and inefficient state subsidy there is – will simply mean even more genuinely affordable social homes will be lost to future tenants”
How would a family moving into a newly built housing association property – who are likely to have been homeless beforehand – be able to afford that, let alone secure a mortgage?
Back in the real world, across London and here in Hackney, we are seeing available social lettings falling, at the same time that there are more than 120,000 children growing up in temporary accommodation. These families don’t fit a simple narrative – 50% of them are in work. Our housing system is failing them and it is addressing this challenge that ministers should be focused on.
Extending Right to Buy – one of the best examples of ineffective and inefficient state subsidy there is – will simply mean even more genuinely affordable social homes will be lost to future tenants, on top of the 10,000 former council homes already sold in my borough alone.
In Hackney, instead of waiting for meaningful policy reform, we’ve been building hundreds of new council homes ourselves, on our own land, through a self-financed in-house development team.
In a year when we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Addison Act, which enabled the first large-scale council housebuilding, we must return to that sense of national mission.
The prime minister’s ‘turbo-charging’ should be focused on funding for this, rather than repeating the mistakes of the 1980s.
Most of all, this new announcement demonstrates that the policy battles we thought had been won are far from over. While addressing the desire for homeownership is important, tackling the urgent material need for a safe, stable home – and in most cases a social rented home – is much more critical for many.
As ministers try to bring these ideas back to life, we must kill them off once and for all.
Philip Glanville, mayor of Hackney