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Time to take responsibility for our housing need

September 14, 2012 11:06 am

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To have or have not: taking responsibility for tomorrow’s affordable homes today launched this week is a call to arms for all those who want to see housing crisis addressed and the jobs dividend this will lead to realised.

The report, which is of an inquiry into the affordable homes crisis by Housing Voice and chaired by Lord Whitty, describes a situation in which many households and families work hard, but still find it difficult to find somewhere to live.

Underpinning the report are four important propositions and observations that should guide a new approach to housing.

First, the government has to take a broad responsibility for ensuring that there are enough homes being built to meet demand – and that a significant number of these should be affordable to people on low to middle incomes.

This has been accepted in previous periods of history, but has not been the case for a number of years.

We have clearly been living through an era in which governments have worked on the assumption that the market should provide for all but the most needy.  But when you look at how supply has failed to keep up with demand over more recent years, and the way in which costs have increased relative to incomes, you can see clearly that this assumption does not hold true.  The report suggests that institutional investment could help to provide some of the finance for the homes we need, but it also points out that this is not a silver bullet.  Public investment and new measures such as the use of QE to purchase housing bonds are crucial too.

The call for greater interventions is as true today as it was before last week’s announcements about government guarantees of £10 billion on investment by developers and housing associations.

Whilst almost any move in this area is welcome, there is a real danger that this too oriented to supply, at a time when we need more direct injection of demand.

Second is the suggestion that local government should be in the driving seat.  Local authorities – democratically accountable to their communities – are well placed to perform a far greater role in ensuring housing is provided; they already have planning powers, and undertake some assessments of housing demand, while the recent localism act gave them responsibility for drawing up tenancy strategies and a general power of competency.

Enhancing these powers, placing a duty on them to ensure that affordable homes are provided, and putting in place a financial framework under which they can borrow more now against future rental streams, could make them key delivery agents.

Third is the importance that the report attaches to the role that public sector land can play.  Last week’s government announcement was significant for saying that developers could appeal to have section 106 requirements waived.  This of course comes on the back of the report for the government by Sir Adrian Montague suggesting that local authorities should not push too hard for section 106 on public sector land when it is to be used for private rented sector developments.

There is a real danger that the government are creating a developers’ charter, rather than trying to put in place policy that is in the public interest.  At the very least these developments reveal a failure to engage strategically with the underlying issue of affordability

An approach that prioritises different types of affordable housing, including social rented, intermediate and co-operative homes, when building on public sector land, is very useful, especially when spending is tight.

Finally, there is what the report says about the way in which working class households experience the housing market at the current time and why this needs to change:  The ever-longer journey to work times; the huge numbers with grown up children living at home; and the way in which labour market flexibility works against people’s ability to access mortgages or enter into other longer term financial commitments.

These are all indicators of a system that is breaking down and that UNISON – through both more affordable housing and better pay – is fighting to improve.  This report includes a serious package of recommendations, but they are meaningless if we do not see them implemented.

Housing Voice is an alliance of organisations committed to pushing affordable housing up the political agenda.  UNISON is a founding member.  The inquiry into affordable housing was supported by Citizens Advice, Child Poverty Action Group, National Housing Federation, TUC, NUS and Co-ops CDS.

Dave Prentis is the General Secretary of UNISON

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  • rekrab

    Good article Dave!!!!!

  • Quiet_Sceptic

    I’m not sure point 2 would actually deliver more houses. New development is often met with opposition from local communities, in many cases organised and vocal opposition.  People in need of affordable housing are less organised – I’ve never heard of locals campaigning for a new housing estate! Local democratic accountability is as likely to hinder housing development as encourage it.

    If you look at the big house building programmes of the 50s-80s, most were pushed through by central government, through the Commission of New Towns and more recently the Development Corporations.

    I think what is missing is a clear, solid link between the number of plots granted planning permission for house building and house prices and/or household formation. Rather than waiting for a housing crisis to become acute before spurring action, we need a system which steadily releases land for development inline with household formation with some aim to target or limit rising prices.

  • http://twitter.com/ThorpeRobin Robin Thorpe

    Interesting article Dave and a topic that certainly deserves more emphasis. In addition to the building of new houses more jobs can also be created in this sector through the refurbishing of existing properties to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption.

    Whilst a worthy cause I think your argument is a little light on facts and doesn’t reflect the whole picture; between 2002 and 2012 approximately 1.5million new homes were built.  The same period saw a population rise of 3.7m individuals. The average occupancy is currently 2.4 people per dwelling so the houses built provide homes for 3.6m people. Empirical evidence does also indicate that there is still some surplus housing stock in certain areas; the housing crisis is therefore not simply one of insufficient supply. 

    There is a crisis certainly and those affected most are young families. From my perspective the dwellings being built are the wrong-type,  ”affordable homes” is too often interpreted by developers as 2-bedroom flats.  Looking again at the figures I quoted, the average occupancy is 2.4 p/d and this perhaps flavours the types of dwelling built; this may reflect the statistics but does not seem to represent what people need. From my own observations I would say that this is because there are a lot of older people either living alone or as a couple and occupying a large family home. This in effect blocks up the housing market as numerous family homes are underoccupied. This issue of underoccupation is exacerbated by the rise of second homes and affects rural and suburban populations the most. This facet of the crisis is not given enough importance, perhaps because of the relative importance of the mature vote for politicians.

    Where I agree with you is that too much emphasis is placed on home ownership; the rental sector is one that could see expansion particularly if pension funds were to invest in housing developments, which would see secure long-term income from rental. People have shied away from rental because of lack of security of tenure so this is where reform is needed most, not in planning teaks that will see dubious return in jobs or housing.

    Finally one thing that you didn’t mention is that a major cause of housing price increases was due to the relaxation of financial regulation in the late eighties. It is a myth that lack of supply caused the housing boom, this is a factor but probably not as prevalent as the increased availablity of finance (now proven to be unsustainable).

    Hopefully the future will see an increase in well-planned co-operative housing developments that provided jobs for builders and comfortable, affordable housing for all.

  • williamtheconker

     ”the government has to take a broad responsibility for ensuring that there are enough homes being built to meet demand – and that a significant number of these should be affordable to people on low to middle incomes.”WHY?”This has been accepted in previous periods of history, but has not been the case for a number of years.”INCLUDING TONY/GORDON OF COURSE.

  • DaveCitizen

    Well done Dave – one additional twist on the local authority role should be to allocate lots of self build land in their local development plans. This would be a way of boosting local jobs and economy while simultaneously breaking the stranglehold that big developers have on building land (which they often sit on). Other EU countries have much higher proportions of self build going on and this supports a whole additional industry exporting self build services and hardware across the EU.

  • jonathanmorse

    I’d like to see the green belt scrapped, or at least thinned to a few hundred yards. It keeps the rich rich and the poor poor and i hope the tories will take their policies to their logical conclusion and scrap them.

    In the last but one manifesto we said we might thin the greenbelts if equivalent land was added. There is land to the east of London they want to put people but nobody wants to live there. Turn that into a national park and turn an equivalent amount of land into housing.

  • jonathanmorse

    You argue like it’s a problem that can be solved but if housing supply is kept down those who need housing will do what they can to get it, they have to live somewhere, that pushes up the values of existing houses, the haves are happier and more likely to vote for the incumbent government. Doesn’t that sound Gordon Brown to you?

  • jonathanmorse

    So what, Dave, have the unions got out of all the money they gave Labour, apart from a low minimum wage, a few ‘all women shortlist’ seats for the brothers, and, I believe, a Parliamentary Labour party not that bothered about getting back into power. If you didn’t loose your seat last time it’s about as safe as you can get, and if we went on an election footing, or worse, got into power, they’d have to again toe the party line, agree with what gets us elected, not what most of them went into politics for, i suspect.

  • LeeMatthews

    although only a small fraction of the housing need, council houses should be reclaimed from people who don’t need them, high earners etc, people who can afford to buy their own homes and release houses to those that are in group of people that the houses were originally allocated for. 

    • tombristol

      Council housing was designed to house all kinds of people. In fact, as a young professional, I would far prefer the security of a socially rented house to the insecurity of the privately rented sector.Why is there such a social difference between those who have bought , those who rent privately and those who rent socially? How about supporting a widening of social housing provision rather than narrowing the eligibility for it!

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