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Evidence or otherwise on Housing Benefit reform

admin / March 31, 2013 / Politics, Welfare State / Permalink

The mainstream media seem finally to have cottoned on to the fact that our welfare system is to undergo substantial change tomorrow. I mentioned a couple of months ago that the changes around the so-called bedroom tax were, belatedly, attracting broader media interest. And the media are connecting the deathly dry changes to the regulations to real life stories of hardship. They’ve also started to join up the dots to realise that it could well turn out that April is, indeed, the cruellest month.

Some of us have been banging on about the potentially negative implications of these changes for some months, if not years. It is good that they are now achieving some serious public profile. But it is a bit late to head off the chaos that could well follow their implementation.

What precisely will follow the raft of changes during April is a bit of a moot point. Will the prognostications of catastrophe be correct? Or will the Government’s much more sanguine view be borne out? Clearly, it is an issue of great significance.

It emerged as a key area of contention in the report on the impact of housing benefit reform published by the Public Accounts Committee last week. Continue Reading →

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On curbing housing benefit

admin / May 30, 2012 / Housing / Permalink

The Coalition committed itself to reducing the aggregate housing benefit bill, which stood at around £20bn per year when it took office. The seemingly inexorable growth in housing benefit payments had been identified as a problem before the Coalition’s formation. It was one indicator that the housing market was sick. So the Coalition’s policy aspirations here were not particularly implausible or objectionable. Indeed, you could argue that it showed creditable determination to deal with a longstanding issue.

The issue is how it has, then, gone about tackling the problem. And to do so it has started by introduced a range of restrictions on eligibility. Here in Bristol it is forecast that something like £11million will be removed from the annual private rented sector housing benefit bill, and the local authority has been allocated £500,000 to manage the fallout. If and when Universal Credit arrives next year the cap on housing benefit will sharply tighten again for many households. Continue Reading →

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Housing challenges

admin / May 6, 2012 / Housing, Politics / Permalink

The other day I had to give a 10 minute summary of my take on the housing challenges we currently face.

I don’t claim any great originality in what I covered. But I thought it might be useful to set the points out here.

The next stage is to draw up some thoughts on what we might do to address these challenges.

Continue Reading →

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Rent Asunder

admin / January 5, 2012 / Dale&Co., Housing / Permalink

[Originally posted at Dale&Co., 03/01/12]

The new year has opened with a couple of important housing stories. The first was another attempted crackdown on illegal subletting in council housing. The second, which attracted significant media attention, is the reform of the local housing allowance (LHA) – the housing benefit which assists low income private renters. A tranche of rule changes came into force with the New Year. The media coverage was sparked by the publication of a Chartered Institute of Housing report arguing that the rule changes render 800,000 properties no longer affordable to low income renters. A range of unfortunate negative consequences are argued to follow. The Department for Work and Pensions – which is responsible for this policy – is having none of it.

The Government arrived with a seductively plausible case. Continue Reading →

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Laying the foundations?

admin / November 22, 2011 / Housing, Politics / Permalink

Yesterday saw the publication of the Coalition’s housing strategy. It brought together policy touching upon housing from across a range of Whitehall Departments. The document represents a welcome recognition of the importance of housing to the broader economy and society. It covers quite a lot of ground, although not a lot of it represents news. There were, however, some high profile new proposals.

I have decide not to post an exceptionally long blog – even for me! – on the whole document. For a change I’ve written some of my initial thoughts up as a paper. I hope some of it is of interest. Continue Reading →

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Tax payers and ‘the right to the city’: alternative narratives on cuts to Housing Benefit

shodanalexm / April 25, 2011 / Housing, Politics / Permalink

A few days ago I tweeted that current housing policy was a “right mess”. That was in part a response to the news, reported in Inside Housing, that there is going to be an increase in the distribution of tents for homeless ex-offenders in Nottingham, in lieu of settled accommodation. But it was a more general observation that the intersection of the various current initiatives don’t seem to sum to anything bordering on coherent. A key element of the current agenda is the reform of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) for private tenants. And we’re now moving into the implementation phase of the reforms.

I’ve written about the LHA before (here and here). But I return to it because the more I think about it the more I think there has been something missing from the debate. Continue Reading →

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Private renting, quality concerns and spatial exclusion

shodanalexm / March 7, 2011 / Housing, Welfare State / Permalink

To say that there appears to be inconsistency, incoherence or complacency at the centre of Government policy is not a particularly novel observation. Indeed, it doesn’t really narrow down what we’re talking about, given the generally rushed and badly thought through nature of current policy proposals in many fields. Nonetheless the point reasserted itself with the conjunction of two pieces in yesterday’s Observer (here and here).

A perennial problem in the private rented sector is relatively poor affordability coupled with relatively poor quality. Many private renters pay a lot for bad housing. It has been an active part of the housing policy discussions for the last 15 years at least. The Buy to Let boom of the 2000s made a difference to average quality, but not to affordability.

The fundamental issue is that landlords in Britain are unwilling or unable to provide consistently high quality accommodation for the level of rent that private tenants are willing to pay or, at the bottom of the market, able to pay. Continue Reading →

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The housing policy jigsaw – a picture begins to emerge?

shodanalexm / December 30, 2010 / Housing, Politics / Permalink

[Originally posted on Liberal Democrat Voice, 30/12/10]

In yesterday’s post I set out key policy developments affecting housing. So what can we discern about the current government’s approach to housing?

For a start there is a continuing emphasis upon choice. This is particularly clear when discussing how to encourage underoccupying social renters to move. The CLG rhetoric is of increasing choice and making choices easier to realise. They neglect to cross-refer to the DWP proposals to cut the housing benefit of any social renter deemed to be seriously underoccupying. The approach isn’t all “carrot”. Continue Reading →

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The housing policy jigsaw – identifying the pieces

shodanalexm / December 29, 2010 / Housing, Politics / Permalink

[Originally posted on Liberal Democrat Voice, 29/12/10]

Yesterday, I suggested that it would be valuable to piece together the housing policy jigsaw in order to reflect on the picture that emerges. Policy in this field speaks directly to our fundamental values -freedom, equality and community – and how they are to be reconciled. My aim today is to identify more fully the key pieces of the current policy jigsaw.

So what can we make of the way policy towards housing is developing?

The key proposals on social housing reform in the Local Decisions consultation paper were heavily trailed. Many are embodied in the Localism Bill. They have been discussed in a number of posts here at Liberal Democrat Voice (for example, here and here) and beyond. The proposals are being pushed towards the statute book with what appears unseemly haste (as I discuss further here). Continue Reading →

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