Changing the overcrowding standard July 19, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Homelessness, Housing need, Local government, Overcrowding.add a comment
The statutory measure of overcrowding in England is a bit of an anomaly. From Tackling Overcrowding in England: A Discussion Paper:
Although the intention of the legislators in 1935 was that the standards should be regularly updated, they have in practice been carried over unchanged into the 1985 Act. They are as a result now well out of line with contemporary expectations. For example a couple with a boy aged 15 years and a girl aged 13 years in a one-bedroom flat would not be statutorily overcrowded because the father and son could share one room and the mother and daughter the sitting room (or even the kitchen).
This hasn’t in itself increased the number of overcrowded households – that’s driven by the availability of accommodation that is both suitable and affordable – but it has reduced the recognition and assistance available to people in overcrowded homes. Changing the standard might give overcrowded households more priority when it comes to accessing social housing, as opposed to homeless households who might be living in housing that’s at least big enough even if it is temporary.
With the publication of this discussion paper it does look as though the government really wants to tackle overcrowding. The main solution will still have to be building more larger affordable homes, but changing the standard should at least go some way towards removing a major distortion in the system for allocating social housing.
Spend on housing to save on health and education? June 22, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Homelessness, Overcrowding.add a comment
From 24dash:
A new survey reveals that 92% of housing professionals believe Government targets to improve the nation’s health and education standards will not be achieved unless there is better quality housing for the most disadvantaged.
Behind the figures, lies the experience of housing workers that poor housing conditions affect families’ and children’s health, and from that school attendance and performance can suffer.
Investment in improving housing not only saves families from damp or overcrowded conditions but can give children an environment in which they can study and fulfil their potential.
File under ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they’? Well, maybe, but there is plenty of evidence that bad housing can have a serious impact on health and educational outcomes. Here’s a selection:
- ODPM: The impact of overcrowding on health and education
- Shelter: Living in Limbo (survey showing impact of homelessness)
- Various: Review of evidence on housing and health
Deluded of Tunbridge Wells May 29, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Environment, Factoids, Homelessness, Media, NIMBYs, Party politics, Planning.2 comments
Greg Clark, Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells, has a shocking tale to relate (via obliging Times journalist Rosemary Bennett):
Up to 20,000 new homes each year that ministers claim are going up on brownfield sites are actually being built in back gardens, figures show.
That “up to”, friend to alarmists everywhere, sets alarm bells ringing, as does the implication that unsuspecting homeowners are waking up to find that sneaky developers have dumped a block of flats on their geraniums. So let’s do what Rosemary Bennett didn’t and give this factoid more than a moment’s reflection.
Her article goes on:
“Garden grabbing” now accounts for 15 per cent of all new housing as family homes in towns and suburbs are pulled down by developers and replaced with flats.
The Conservatives, who obtained the figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government, said that the public was being “deceived”.
Greg Clark, Tory MP for Tunbridge Wells, said: “Most people assume that when the Government talks about building on brownfield sites it means ex-industrial land, like disused factories and railway sidings. They have no idea that much of it is actually beautiful, green, environmentally important gardens.”
That first line really is a peach. What Clark and Bennett call “Garden grabbing” actually covers any and all construction of new dwellings on previously residential land – including the land occupied not by gardens but by the buildings themselves. So if, for example, someone pulled down a block of flats without gardens and replaced them with semi-detached homes with gardens, Clark would call that “garden grabbing”. The logical extension of the argument is for all current residential land to be frozen in its current state of development for perpetuity or for it to be declared undevelopable greenfield as soon as the current dwellings are demolished. That would naturally create far more pressure for greenbelt land to be developed, but I’m sure Clark doesn’t actually want that.
The article implies that “garden grabbing” is a new or growing phenomenon, since it “now accounts for 15 per cent of all new housing” and Bennett cherry-picks 1997 as a base year since the figure then was only 11 per cent. What she mysteriously omits to say is that back in 1986 (under the Conservative government), fully 26 per cent of all new housing was built on previously residential land, and that this “garden grabbing” accounted for half of all brownfield development. This was revealed by Yvette Cooper in her answer to Clark’s parliamentary question on the matter, but he naturally chose to ignore the far more serious offences of his party colleagues, and Bennett naturally chose not to bother herself fact-checking the figures he spoonfed her.
Painful choice May 14, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Homelessness, Housing economics, London.add a comment
A fairly recent innovation that is still spreading across the social housing scene in Britain is choice-based lettings (CBL). Under this system, homeless households or existing tenants looking for a transfer are not simply placed in a new home of the landlord’s choosing but given the opportunity to ‘bid’ for homes that become available. A bidder is given points according to their priority on waiting lists (e.g. more for being overcrowded or with health needs) and the bidder with the most points gets the property.
The idea is catching on because of the inherent desirability of people choosing their own homes, and because of the assumed knock-on effects of greater tenant satisfaction and lower turnover. But there may be unexpected drawbacks too, especially in areas (such as pretty much all of London), where the supply of lettings has not increased enough (or more accurately, has fallen too much) to make choice meaningful for all but a minority of bidders. Where before they simply waited on the housing register for as many months or years as it took to be allocated a suitable home, now thousands of tenants with relatively low priority regularly endure the heartbreak of bidding for a new home (and the fresh start in life it promises) only to see it go to a more ‘deserving’ case. Living in limbo hurts, but perhaps less so when escape is not dangled in front of you every week only to be snatched away each time.
Just how seriously should we take these feelings? Some London MPs take them very seriously indeed, as this debate last Wednesday in Parliament showed. Here’s Karen Buck, Labour MP for Regent’s Park & Kensington North:
Ironically, the choice-based lettings system, which is increasingly used to supply housing, and which I wholly support in principle, is making the intensity of the competition that I have described toxically transparent. For example, a rare three-bed property in my constituency was advertised through the choice-based lettings system two weeks ago and it attracted 244 bidders from the already heavily filtered top-priority category A list alone. Given that only six three-bedroom properties have been advertised in the current financial year, most desperate people, even on that list, face an almost endless round of unsuccessful bidding, which is an injection of pure poison into already deprived neighbourhoods.
And here’s Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North:
As my Friend said in relation to the choice-based letting scheme, people on the housing waiting list go into a bidding frenzy every Thursday when the local paper comes out. Most of them are sadly disappointed. People come to my advice bureau in tears saying that in two years they have managed to visit one property with 20 other families and did not even manage to get an offer at the end of that process. Such a cruelty goes on week in, week out.
What’s the solution? Surely not to abandon CBL, but to make it meaningful. That has to mean – surprise surprise – building enough new housing to make moving into a nice new affordable family in London a bit more likely than winning the National Lottery.
The money pit, not April 27, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Homelessness, Housing investment, Party politics.add a comment
In a revealing answer to a written parliamentary question, Housing Minister Yvette Cooper makes much of the fact that “since 1997 the Government have consistently invested more in housing than they have received in receipts [from sales of council housing]“.
This just goes to show how tiny tax-funded investment in housing is: for the first six of those years, investment exceeded receipts by an average of only £1bn a year, and in 2004-05 the net investment of around £2.4bn amounts to around one quarter of one percent of England’s GDP.
To put it into a bit more perspective, consider that in the most recent year with available data (2002-03) housing accounted for 1.2% of all government expenditure, compared to 21% for health, 14% for education, and 6.5% for defence. That year, our government spent more on “Culture, media and sport” (1.6%) than on housing.
Housing didn’t always have such a low priority for government. In 1980-81 housing accounted for 6% of government spending, and even Thatcher’s government spent more on it than New Labour.
So what happened? Perhaps today’s government thinks the problem of inadequate or insufficient housing is a relatively minor one today. Is that really tenable when a million children still live homeless or in overcrowded or unfit housing, with serious consequences for their health and education?
One in fifty households in London is homeless March 13, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Homelessness, London.add a comment
According to the latest government figures, 19.7 out of every 1000 households in London are homeless. That’s 63,800 householsd, or one in fifty.
Does it seem like a lot? Remember these are not rough sleepers but people put up in temporary accommodation by local authorities who are (according to the official definition) “unintentionally homeless and in priority need” (which means the figure leaves out those who are unintentionally homeless but not in priority need and those judged to be intentionally homeless).
Mostly this ‘TA’ is leased from the private sector, often at very high rates. This has a serious impact in terms of worklessness:
Rents averaging £300 per week, reaching up to £450 per week in some cases, mean people living in private sector leased temporary accommodation are often totally reliant on housing and other benefits. The way housing benefit tapers off as income rises means that every pound earned can yield as little as 10 pence in real income … Greater London Authority (GLA) research estimates a homeless household with three children living in temporary accommodation leased from the private sector must earn £960 per week before they are ‘significantly’ better off in work.
and other costs to the families themselves, and by extension to the public purse:
The report estimates that temporary housing is costing the taxpayer over £500 million every year, including:
· £300 million on higher rents and additional housing benefit costs
· £90 million on additional take up of out-of-work benefits (income support)
· £50 million on out-of-school provision for children
· £30 million on additional take up of sickness benefits (incapacity benefit)
· £10 million on additional visits to the GP due to health problems
This all seems to come back to the shortage of permanent affordable housing for the homeless to move into. Building (or buying) more social housing would probably save money in the long run, as the government seems to have acknowledged (see under ‘Temporary v Permanent?’ here), but it seems concerned about the upfront expenditure, which would have to be funded by borrowing.
