Secure tenancies are illiberal
The secure tenancy debate in one sense is very simple. Social housing is and should be provided for those with real need who cannot house themselves. If you don’t have real need you should not be in social housing.
There is for example a millionaire weather forecaster living in Camberwell who before he made his money was a tenant activist. He has secure tenancy. He could well afford to pay his own way in the world and is blocking use of that home to those on the waiting list.
There is no social liberal argument that can be constructed to defend this situation. It is not tackling poverty, it is not creating the widest possible distribution of wealth.
For socialists like the Camberwell squatter, there is a militant belief that all housing should be nationalised, they are just waiting for that to happen. But liberals believe in a caring supportive state not state ownership as an end in itself.
Simon Hughes intervention today is predominantly about process. How dare David Cameron start a debate without consulting the Liberal Democrat party conference… etc… yawn… some might just call this politics.
His underlying concern though is clearly the high level of social housing in his constituency and the perceived threat this announcement will have for his electorate. In that regard he is also concerned about the security of his own tenancy… and that is also politics.
David Cameron’s actual announcement though should reassure him. Existing secure tenancies will not be challenged. The millionaire will not be thrown into the harsh wilderness of reasonable market rents on the same estate from right-to-buy landlords.
Most arguments to defend the feudal privilege fail to convince. Breaking up communities is top of the list. All social housing ‘communities’ are constructs and have been regularly broken up since inception; through needs-based assessment, regeneration, right to buy, and upward mobility.
And thank-goodness, preserving communities based on welfare is a sure route to entrenching poverty, undermining the sustainability of the local economy, and creating sink estates. It is a policy of segregation and strife.
Simon Hughes should be thinking less about how to defend the status quo in Bermondsey, a product of decades of Labour gerrymandering and destructive housing experiments, and more about encouraging mobility and opportunity.
What Bermondsey, Camberwell and Peckham need are more aspirational young families, mixed housing, and opportunities for sustainable job creation not dependent on the state. Not policies like secure tenancy that concentrate poverty and create a weird culture of privilege without aspiration
How that debate happens I care not, and Simon Hughes should welcome the opportunity the Prime Minister has provided to showcase the public-private partnerships that have regenerated vast swathes of his own constituency without building more Council Housing.
August 5th, 2010 at 12:32 am
For once, Andy, we will agree to disagree.
The proportion of people in social housing who are not poor is low and falling.
In 1979 20% of the top decile lived in LA housing. Today it is c. 1%. The figures for the second and third decile were 32 and 36% in 1979, now they are 2 and 5%. In short, almost everyone who can leave social housing, does leave it. By international standards LA housing is very much for the poor – the average LA housing household post tax income is 50% of the UK average, compared with just ove 75% in France and Germany. More than 40% of social housing contains is occupied by households with at least one person with a serious medical condition or disability.
Secure tenure is particularly valuable for those with children, whose education could be disrupted.
It would make more sense to question whether any or all LA tenants should receive below market rents. After all, if the occasional rich LA tenant is paying a market rent, what is the problem?
August 5th, 2010 at 2:18 am
It’s not a question of percentages Tim, it’s a question of need. We don’t pay unemployment beneift for life to people who happen to have been unemployed once.
And those small percentages are deceptive. A quick check of Social Trends suggests the UK housing stock is 26m, of which 19% is social housing or 5m. 1% of that is 50,000, 8% is 400,000. With an average household size of 2.3 that’s around 900,000 people living in social housing that don’t need to be there.
And if the national waiting list is 1.8m that’s half the problem that could be solved… assuming the cutoff is the bottom 40% of earnings.
The market rent case I agree can be made. But it still wouldn’t explain why we would wish to retain a scheme guaranteeing a social home to someone who doesn’t need a social home
On the education point how is this meaningfully different for someone with secure tenure versus someone of equivalent means without. Does having a need for social housing once mean you are more entitled to a consistent demise than someone who never qualified? On what basis is that fair?
August 5th, 2010 at 9:05 am
the harsh wilderness of reasonable market rents
Where can I find this?
Market rents are not reasonable, they’re massively inflated thanks to government interventions in the economy all over the place.
Planning laws and historical land ownership/acquisition are the most obvious, but also transport policy and undoubtedly other actions feed into this.
August 5th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Let’s take someone I know, who is now around the median by household income. She has social housing in near Lambeth Palace, and clearly would not qualify for it now. If you evict her, does she have any reasonable chance of getting secure housing near her daughter’s school? I doubt it. So her incentives are clear: don’t get a job, and don’t provide a good role model for her daughter.
By all means consider increasing the rent, which you can then use to subsidise other housing for people on the list. But what do you gain by evicting her?
What we need are more houses, so that housing is cheaper. Once social housing is no longer let at a significant discount to market housing it doesn’t matter to the rest of us whether people get to live there for life.
Best wishes, as ever -
Tim
August 5th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
It’s a challenge, and I think the market rent suggestion has some merit as an option, but I think you overstate the case. There are clearly still fairness issues around why someone who once needed social housing but doesn’t now should expect the stability you suggest.
The main problem with your case study though is the implication your friend could afford to pay a market rent on her council flat, but can’t afford to stay in the area if forced to move from that flat. Surely there are buy-to-let rentals in the same block which would be the benchmark for setting the market rent.
Second what about equity with her neighbours in those flats. Your friend is being offered five years notice. Private tenants get a few months. Those tenants could also have children in the same school. Why should your friend have special privileges they do not?
In addition to your market rent option your friend could exercise the right-to-buy and now even the right to part-buy to retain her demise.
Suppose further we agree market rent is the way forward in this specific case, what happens when her daughter leaves school, what is the case for secure tenancy then? At that point your friend is denying a young family who would love a place at that school access.
Finally someone who was so passionate about their daughter’s attendance at that school that they were prepared to throw away their self-esteem, future career prospects, and every other good thing their income brings to retain social tenure, would certainly also commute to remain in school. If the rules on attendance don’t allow that in the state sector, perhaps they should for all parents, private tenants included, to avoid the disruption you suggest?