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For-profits calling themselves housing associations? It is a major fuss over nothing

Those opposed to for-profits using the label ‘housing association’ should instead focus on more important issues, writes Chris Wood

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Picture: Getty
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For-profits calling themselves housing associations? It is a major fuss over nothing writes @Chris_Altair @Natfednews #ukhousing

“This is simply pious nonsense” @Chris_Altair urges @natfednews to concentrate on issues other than for-profits using the ‘housing association’ label #ukhousing

“Gone are the days when the term ‘housing association’ is synonymous with charity” @Chris_Altair believes for-profits using the term housing association is not a major issue #ukhousing

I could have sworn we have a national housing crisis.

Are there not major supply problems, major issues of affordability and, as Grenfell revealed, major concerns about building standards and control?

Most people in the sector agree with me.

So, I am not sure why are we getting upset about whether a for-profit registered provider has the right to call itself a housing association.

This major story warranted the major feature article in Inside Housing last month and a prominent (or major) news story the week before.

“This is simply pious nonsense and if I were a member of the NHF, I would much prefer that it directed its full attention to the major housing issues of the day.”

The National Housing Federation (NHF) was getting irrationally agitated over Major Housing Association’s refusal to drop the suffix housing association.

Come on guys, this is simply pious nonsense and if I were a member of the NHF, I would much prefer that it directed its full attention to the major housing issues of the day.

Major (an ironic misnomer) Housing Association has a stock of less than 100 homes and less than 10 of these are affordable homes.


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So what? The owners of Major Housing Association are entrepreneurs who, like lots of larger organisations that followed them, have seen an opportunity for business growth in the changing regulation of social housing.

So what? If they build and manage to good standards, make some contribution to increasing supply and offer even a small additional provision of affordable housing, then what’s the problem?

Inside Housing, reported that major players in the housing sector have joined the throng of for-profit providers in the past 12 months. The Regulator of Social Housing thinks that housing association is an older term. They are right.

Gone are the days when the term housing association is synonymous with charity, and it is not the arrival of the new kids on the block that have brought this to pass.

What is so precious about the label housing association? Maybe its nostalgia.

“Gone are the days when the term housing association is synonymous with charity.”

And it seems that quite a lot of not-for-profit registered providers agree with me.

The suffix of housing association has disappeared from any kind of prominence among the larger registered providers – Places for People, Optivo and L&Q. In fact, many of these organisations have intricate group structures, which ringfence charitable activity from more commercial activities.

I seem to recall that Cosmopolitan and Ujima were housing associations, avowedly not-for-profit but that label didn’t do their tenants much good, did it?

Chief executives of larger housing associations are rightly proud and prone to boasting about their operating surpluses – and on public platforms they regularly refer to these as profits.

Increasingly, so-called not-for-profit registered providers are engaging in outright market sale. I work with not-for-profit providers in London where 40-50% of their development programmes are ownership products and only a small portion of these are affordable.

The business model of cross-subsidisation of affordable housing from commercial development is increasingly common. Most boards and executives view this to be absolutely essential.

So come on NHF, focus on the major issues. Think modern and resist wistfully harping back to the halcyon days of yesteryear. Those days are over.

Chris Wood, partner, Altair

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