Poverty and overcrowding in large families August 13, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Overcrowding.add a comment
Larger families are much more likely to live in poverty, according to this research from the Department for Work and Pensions: “Families with four or more children account for less than 5 per cent of all families, but more than 20 per cent of poor children”. The Child Poverty Action Group points out that solution would be to remove the child benefit taper, which currently means that “child benefit is worth £17.45 per week for the first child, but just £11.70 per week for second and subsequent children”. Further work by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that equalising CB rates at an overall higher level at a cost of around £3.4bn would bring the child poverty rate for large families down to the level for small ones.
As well as reducing income poverty, such a change should also help with the housing problems faced by many larger families. According to these tables, households with five or more members are eight times more likely to be overcrowded than the national average. The increase in their income with equalised child benefit may be modest, but could be enough to enable some to afford more suitable accommodation. It could also reduce their reliance on the means-tested Housing Benefit and reduce its work disincentive effect.
Definitively dense August 6, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Overcrowding, Planning.add a comment
The problem with handing down national planning policy is that fortunes can turn on the smallest difference in phrasing. Example: when the government says it wants to see higher housing densities, it defines ‘density’ in terms of dwellings per hectare (see its draft policy statement, PPS3). Reasonable enough, you might say, but the chronic lack of family-sized housing in higher density areas is forcing a rethink in some quarters, as described in this article reprinted from the RIBA Journal:
The definition of density and how it is measured is important, because interpretations can lead to wildly varying design approaches. The government’s preferred method of calculating density is dwellings per hectare, which works fine when considering uniform house types, but not if you are trying to encourage a variety of unit sizes. The latter produces a far lower average density than a mass of one-bedroom apartments. Alternative methods of calculation are beds per hectare, or habitable rooms per hectare.
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
Quick links 15/06/06 June 15, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Design, Environment, Housing markets, Housing need, Overcrowding, Party politics, Planning.add a comment
Sorry for the lack of posting recently – too much work, sun and football on the telly. Here’s a round-up of what’s been happening:
- Homes to be energy-saving rated: “Every house sold in England and Wales will be given an energy efficiency rating like those found on electrical goods”. Sounds reasonable to me, but will it be introduced for rented housing too? Doesn’t seem to have been confirmed, but these people seem to think it will be.
- MPs out of touch on housing concerns: “while 98% of the public think that a lack of affordable housing is a major issue, only 34% of MPs think the same.”
- Redwood all at sea: Let’s build a new city on land reclaimed from the sea, says John. Not sure if this is meant to be more environmentally friendly but it probably wouldn’t be. Maybe Redwood has been inspired by Anthony Lau’s concept of Offshore Living, part of the Sustainable Living By Design exhibition at the GLA, which involves sticking people in refashioned cargo containers stacked on decommissioned oil rigs.
- Fancy re-designing Castleford?
- A tight squeeze: “A chronic shortage of family sized homes, planning problems and economic ‘factors’ are contributing to the growing crisis of overcrowding.”
- Beware the winds of change: “Low income households could lose out in the government’s push towards homeownership, Dominic Maxwell warns”.
Housing conditions and educational attainment May 29, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in America, Housing need, Overcrowding.add a comment
In “A Room With a View or a Room of One’s Own? Housing and Social Stratification“, Dalton Conley (an ‘academic superstar’, according to the Guardian) reports some interesting findings on the relationship between family background, household conditions and educational attainment.
Echoing similar research carried out in France, he finds that “children who lived in crowded conditions … completed almost a quarter year less schooling than those who lived in more spacious conditions”, that home ownership also boosts attainment independently of family background and concludes that “housing plays an intermediary role in the transmission of socioeconomic status from one generation to the next”.
The issue of overcrowding raises interesting questions about ‘absolute’ versus ‘relative’ effects similar to controversies over absolute versus relative poverty. It’s easy to see why crowded accommodation might have direct impacts upon children’s attainment independent of conditions outside the home – Conley cites evidence for higher morbidity, less privacy and less ‘consructive interaction’ between parents and children in crowded homes. But are there relative effects too? Parents and teachers of overcrowded children often describe them as reluctant to bring friends round because of shame over conditions at home, and if they do attach a stigma to their home life they may be more reluctant to spend time there, perhaps increasing their exposure to negative influences outside the home. This is all hard to measure, of course, and if I had to say I’d guess the ‘absolute’ effect dominates, but the fact that we are still picking up clear effects caused by overcrowding measured as over 1 persons per room, even thoguh that was probably considered relatively salubrious in early 20th century London, suggests that relative effects are also important.
Two other findings of Conley’s are interesting, but perhaps more so in the American context of black-white housing segregation. Firstly,
even when a 5-year income measure, education and other demographic characteristics are held constant, blacks and female heads [i.e. lone mothers] suffer from worse housing outcomes
but
when socioeconomic and housing conditions are held constant, Africa-Americans actually demonstrate an educational advantage over their non-black counterparts of almost four-tenths of a grade.
The message is clear – if you want to close the education gap between black and white, you have to close not just the gap in incomes but the one in housing conditions too.
Housing subsidies – people or places? April 6, 2006
Posted by Brickonomist in Housing economics, Housing markets, London, Overcrowding.add a comment
Over at the Adam Smith Institute blog, Eamonn Butler asks:
Housing Benefit aims to give poorer families the money they need to rent a home. So it is bizarre that politicians want to build and own low-income housing too. Why not just pay, and let the private market provide?
US housing economist Ed Glaeser made a similar argument back in 2000:
all government-provided public housing should be sold off and replaced with vouchers that allow residents to move freely.
Glaeser’s hope was that this would de-concentrate poverty, as poorer families moved from the large-scale housing projects in the inner cities to mix among the wider population. I’m not convinced, however, that this would actually work so well somewhere like London, where the scattered distribution of social housing arguably reduces neighbourhood segregation by income, and where our limited supply of developable land and extremely high housing costs might force poor families reliant only on housing benefit to cluster together in the cheapest areas.
Back to Butler. Here’s a few other reasons why relying solely on demand-side subsidies might not be such a winning plan:
- It would be hugely expensive. The current housing benefit bill is around £13 billion a year. Most of that goes to tenants in social housing, and you’d probably be looking at doubling their chunk if they all had to pay private sector rents, which are around twice as high. The savings from bricks and mortar subsidies, meanwhile, would be neglible, since net bricks and mortar subsidies are, well, neglible. Social housing is actually almost self-financing.
- It would distort the private rented sector, as rents would rise because of the massively increased demand from subsidised ex-council tenants, which would require yet more housing benefit for those already in the private rented sector. Presto, the HB bill goes up even higher.
- It would harm work incentives. The withdrawal of housing benefit as income increases is one of the major factors behind the high effective marginal tax rates faced by low-income households, and thus a major cause of worklessness. Making all those ex-council tenants pay private sector rents will require a lot more housing benefit, which means a lot more people with less incentive to work. The solution here would be to make housing benefit a flat rate for everyone, but the cost of that would again be enormous and somehow I don’t think Dr Butler would approve.
- It would put homeownership beyond the reach of more tenants. Butler criticises social housing on the grounds that it has become too expensive for tenants to exercise their Right to Buy their council home. But private tenants have no such right, and never will, so abolishing social housing will abolish any chance that many tenants have of every becoming home-owners. Again, I’m not sure this is something that Butler would actually support.
Butler also says that the problem of overcrowding in social housing could simply be solved by reducing under-occupation. But even if it was possible or desirable to force everyone currently under-occupying to move to a smaller home – and it is neither – we would still have overcrowding, because the percentage of households overcrowded in London’s social housing is higher than the percentage under-occupying.
In conclusion, I think Butler’s right to call for more mobility for social tenants; for example, there is much to be said for a policy of selectively selling off social housing in poor areas to help poorer households move into rich areas (and, hopefully) to help regenerate the poor areas would probably be a good idea. But I fear his simplistic solution of simply abolishing social housing and throwing tenants onto the mercy of private rented landlords (who social tenants have an entirely justifiable mistrust of) would just be an incredibly costly means of increasing segregation.
