Sociable Homes

Social housing can be a rather emotive topic, and is strongly linked in many people's minds with feckless unemployment and teenage single mothers. For what its worth, this is what I know about it.

• Social housing is not free; tenants pay rent. The level of rent is lower than in the private rental market, by approximately 50% in Cambridgeshire.
  
  
• On average, social housing is of higher quality than private rented (see this post). It is also much more secure, as the landlord is not profit motivated.
  
  
• Some social housing is managed directly by local councils, some by not-for-profit 'registered providers'. These are usually charities.
  
  
• Thanks to the 1980s 'Right to Buy' policy, the level of social housing in the UK is far below that needed. The result is that many people in poverty are living in overcrowded, poor quality private rented accommodation supported by Housing Benefit. Right to Buy allowed many people to purchase a home, but also removed the better quality social housing stock.
  
  
• Social housing is allocated on the basis of need, using a waiting list system. Anyone can be added to the list. In my area, those on the list then receive details of available properties and 'bid' for them if interested. The bidder judged to be in the greatest need gets the home. Levels of need are expressed in four bands, A to D, of which A is most acute.
  
  
• On the 1st July 2010, Cambridge's waiting list had 6299 people on it, of which 147 were in band A. The total population of Cambridge is approximately 117,700 (including around 16,000 students). The most recent figure I can find for total social housing stock in Cambridge is 11,049 (2007-8). That same year turnover was 4%, which is typical. Once in social housing, tenants are understandably reluctant to leave.
  
  
• In Cambridge and the surrounding districts, 40% of social renting households have at least one person in work. 11% are retired and another 11% unable to work due to ill-health or disability. A quarter are not seeking work; the majority of single parents understandably fall into this category.
  
  
• The total number of people on waiting lists for social housing in England stands at 1,800,000, the longest the list has ever been.
  
  
• Although some still call it 'council housing', councils haven't built social housing for decades. Recently there have been some efforts to get local authorities back into social housebuilding, but these have had very limited impact. For the most part, new social housing is provided through private housebuilding. Local councils have planning policies requiring developers to make a percentage of their housing 'affordable'. This definition includes but is not limited to social housing. As a result, when housebuilding slows down as it has on the back of the credit crunch, social housing is hit too. In Cambridge and its environs, the affordable housing target is 40%.
  
  
• Central government supports and subsidises social housing through grants. When the credit crunch arrived, the then government introduced a range of new schemes to encourage housebuilding in general and social housing in particular. As a result, 75% of new housing starts in 2009 received some sort of public subsidy. Although it would be foolish to assume that none of them would have gone ahead without support, it's fair to say that most wouldn't. For all their faults, the Labour government put significant effort and money into social housing. Not enough, but significant amounts.

What changes is the Age of Austerity bringing?

The coalition are saying that there is no more money for affordable housing. Without government subsidy, social housing will not be built. Registered Providers could borrow money to build, except for the little problem that we're in a credit crunch. Loan availability for housebuilders is limited and not improving. Meanwhile, unemployment is increasing the number of households unable to afford to own or privately rent a home. There is already a shortage of social housing, and it will get worse.

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) are also mooting the idea of somehow encouraging jobless social tenants to move in order to find work. This seems to me an extraordinary misunderstanding of the nature of 21st century poverty. If I lived in a socially rented house, I wouldn't want to move to find work! Social housing is hugely difficult to get and extremely sought-after. Why would you want to move from such a preferable tenure into vastly more expensive private rental, with only the potential of a job as an incentive? If the DWP think that people will just be able to move from one social home to another in a more sought-after area, they clearly haven't seen the waiting list numbers recently. Nor have they seen that many social tenants either already work or cannot.

The problem at issue here is that economically successful areas of the UK have huge shortages of owned, rented and social housing. This has made them fundamentally unaffordable to live in unless you already have a reasonably-paid job. The DWP's tacit assumption is that people in social housing are choosing not to move to find work, because they are lazy, feckless, etc. There's no choice about it; the unemployed cannot afford to move. The government seems to think that social housing = appalling poverty ghetto. Not a helpful assumption.

Diane Abbot, the Labour leadership candidate, has written an excellent critique of this policy here. She picks up on the human cost - loss of social capital through splitting families and breaking up support networks.

Sorry, this is not the end of the woeful tale of housing. Still to consider is Housing Benefit reform, plus my suggestions for trying to fix this mess.

(Meanwhile at the Department of Communities and Local Government, regional targets for house-building have been abolished. Again. This has been announced at least four times now. How much more abolished can they get?)