No more council housing

In the housing finance system introduced by the Conservatives in 1988, local authorities were prevented from building new homes. Instead the role of developing social housing was passed to the Housing Associations. Councils retained the right to nominate tenants to new housing association homes.

Housing associations are regulated by a government quango (a non-elected body) called the Housing Corporation, and receive a development grant. This grant was cut in 1988 and housing associations were forced to borrow more money from the banks and private lenders.

This led to smaller and therefore cheaper house standards, and higher rents to pay off the higher interest. Housing associations - now called Registered Social Landlords - began building and managing much bigger estates, sometimes joining up with other associations, so that one estate had many landlords.

Under - investment

Investment in council housing has fallen drastically in the last 30 years, from £13 billion in the early 1970s to £2 billion in 1996. In the 1988 Housing Act, development grants to Housing Associations were cut, leaving them to raise money from the private sector and increase rents. During the 1990s investment in Housing Associations continued to fall. Under New Labour, gross social housing investment carried on going down, despite the new Major Repairs Allowance for council housing and the Decent Homes programme, and housing association development also plummeted. In 2004, only £1.4 billion was invested in social housing. The Decent Homes programme set a target for improvements to public sector housing stock by 2010 and put the responsibility on councils to find the investment to carry out the work. Councils were required to carry out an options appraisal of the future of their stock and this fueled the already-growing large scale voluntary transfer programme. New building of social rented homes slowed almost to a standstill. In 2005 the Barker Review of Housing Supply concluded that the government needed to invest between £1.2 and £1.6 billion a year into new social housing to meet the need.

Homelessness

In 1980 76,471 people were accepted as homeless and in priority need. By 1990 169,526 people were accepted as homeless and in priority need. Homelessness more than doubled in ten years. After a drop in the mid 1990s, the numbers accepted as homeless started to rise again to reach over 170,000 by 2003.

Right to Buy

In 1980 there were 6.5 million council homes. By 2004 there were less than 4 million. Between 1981 - 2004 2.2 million council homes were sold to tenants - one third of all council stock. It was the biggest privatisation of the Thatcher government and it continued even faster under New Labour. Right To Buy skimmed off the best housing and the best-off tenants leaving the oldest and the poorest in the worst housing. The Government recognised that Right to Buy has lead to a shortage of affordable homes and limited discounts in the areas of highest demand like London and the South East. In 2005, New Labour unveiled a range of new schemes to encourage home ownership.

Shortage of affordable rented housing

House building in the social rented sector had fallen from around 43,000 homes built in 1995 to 21,000 in 2003. In 2003 the Barker Report said that the supply of social rented housing must increase by between 17,000 to 23,000 homes a year to keep pace with housing need. Despite this, social house building has almost collapsed due to a mixture of lack of government investment and to high land prices. Housing charity Shelter argued in 2005 that 60,000 new social rented homes were needed before 2011.

The oldest and the poorest

As a result of Right to Buy and decades of under-investment, social housing organisations have been left with the worst housing and the poorest tenants. "The oldest and the poorest are being housed in the worst property" (Forrest and Murie "Selling the Welfare State"). Large numbers of people in poverty are concentrated on social housing estates. Council rents have been rising under Government direction and many Housing association tenants are already trapped in the poverty trap by high rents and Housing Benefit rules. Almost 50% of tenants in social housing today are aged 65 or over. But nearly all new tenants getting tenancies are aged 16-29 and have young children. The younger age group of tenants are far more mobile. Those families with two wage earners are likely to buy their own home. Many families move from social housing to private housing and back again. A small number move over and over again. 80% of households in social housing have a weekly income of less than £200 and 70% of heads of these households are not in paid work. 73% of new Housing Association tenants are on Housing Benefit. 21% of new Housing Association tenants are lone parents.

Low demand

In the late 1990s social housing landlords woke up to the fact that there were large areas of housing in the North and Midlands that no one wanted to live in. Parts of some estates were un-lettable - mostly because of the reputation they have gained for harassment and crime. Some property types were un-lettable because there was no demand on the housing register for them . The problem was not confined to social housing. Large tracts of private sector homes in inner city areas lay derelict and could be bought for knock-down prices. Social landlords responded by adopting estate agent-type marketing campaigns, however the main response has been to demolish. Nine Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders were set up in 2003, charged with solving the problem of low demand in the inner cities. Their plans to demolish over 200,000 homes were met with protests from residents and in many places were out of touch with the situation on the ground.

Anti-Social Behaviour

One result of the concentration of poverty and deprivation in social housing estates was a huge increase in anti-social behaviour. Ranging from crime, harassment, alcohol related disorder to nuisance from noise and pets, anti-social behaviour proved to be a low priority for the police and social landlords were equally slow to respond. Pressure from tenants led first landlords and then Government to respond and a flow of legislation, which has increased to a deluge under New Labour, was directed to deal with it. Many tenants organisations voluntarily sacrificed their rights to a secure tenancy in order to support introductory tenancies - part of the Housing Act 1996 - which supposedly would stop new tenants causing anti-social behaviour. In practice landlords have used the one year introductory tenancy to evict tenants for rent arrears and it is rare for it to be used to deal with nuisance. Under New Labour, the Anti-Social Behaviour Order became a popular tool for dealing with the serious intimidation and harassment that plagued some communities. Along with youth curfews, this legislation could be seen as a further exclusion of already deprived groups. Preventative work, like the successful Dundee Families Project, has been rare.

Sustainable communities

New Labour's housing policy is driven by a belief that the private market should provide for most people's housing needs and that government should intervene only to protect the most vulnerable. The guiding principle for New Labour is their belief in sustainable communities. This theory justifies the continued break-up of council housing, the demolition of large areas of working class housing and the prioritising of private house building. At the heart of the idea of sustainable communities is a right wing theory pioneered in the United States by Charles Murray. This is the theory that there is an underclass of people who have never worked and never want to work. This "underclass" theory was used to justify reforms of the welfare system in America. In Britain it lead to attacks by Tories like John Redwood in 1993 on single parent families on welfare. The "underclass" theory lurks underneath much of New Labour's declarations on rights and responsibilities and "respect". These communitarian ideas - again popularised in the United States - are the basis for much of the government's policy on anti-social behaviour and explain its support for tenant participation. New Labour believes that people owe a duty of citizenship and should take an active part in society, helping government to govern.

An end to social housing?

Social housing is in an identity crisis. It has sustained a near mortal wound under the political and financial policies of recent governments. The problems of residualisation have given it a stigmatised label. Current Government policy is to increase home ownership to 75% of households and to continue to marginalise social housing. Consumerist ideas are being introduced into the sector - ideas like Choice Based Lettings - which do nothing to deal with the real problems of housing shortage, lack of choice, deprivation and poverty.

The ideals of social housing are in danger of being swept away. Can the tenants movement breathe new life into the ideal they first created?