From the archive - grant cuts prompt housing association fears
Inside Housing looks back at what was happening in the sector 5, 15 and 25 years ago
1993
Housing associations were facing a third cut in grant rates to support construction of new homes, and Inside Housing reported sector worries about the impact of this under the headline: “On the brink of collapse”.
The movement had reached the limit of what could be built under a “mixed funding regime” – meaning a mix of private funding and grant – associations said at the time. The government had just announced a limit of 62% funding per home.
“This cannot go on without significant damage to the movement’s work,” said Jim Coulter, director of the National Federation of Housing Associations.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders meanwhile predicted that lenders would not be as willing to lend under these conditions, which could lead to a reduction in the 560 associations building homes.
2003
The number of families being housed in B&Bs fell 44%, as the government pushed for action on this topic. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister had set a target to end use of B&Bs. Eventually this led to a ban on housing families in this type of temporary accommodation for more than six weeks.
The reduction was welcome, and made the front page of Inside Housing. The magazine published a countdown calendar, showing there were only 201 days to go to meet the government target with 3,730 families still in B&Bs.
But sector figures were worried that most of the reduction was happening in London, and other parts of the UK were not taking the target seriously enough.
Government figures also showed the number of households in temporary accommodation had also risen by 14% in a year, to 93,480.
2013 (this front page)
Five years ago a UN investigator had called for the UK to “rethink” its entire welfare reform strategy, and restart grant funding for social housing.
Special rapporteur Raquel Rolnik also called for the suspension of the bedroom tax, as part of a visit to the UK to investigate human rights.
“I think there is a danger [the UK is breaching] the human right to adequate housing and its elements,” she told Inside Housing. “One of these elements is affordability.”
“The government should assess [welfare reform’s] impact on human rights as a whole, in order to rethink this package and redesign it in order not to cause violations.”
She was preparing a report for the UN Human Rights Council. Then housing minister Grant Shapps called a preliminary version of the report an “absolute disgrace”.
