Humpty Dumpty Housing Policies?

David Walker, Bishop of Manchester, has a longstanding passion for housing issues, and huge experience and expertise. Here he identifies some key policy questions on which to press political candidates.

 It’s almost 35 years since I wrote to my then diocesan bishop setting out my concerns that Housing and Homelessness were likely to be as major social issues for both church and society in the 1990s as Unemployment had been in the 80s. I could have rewritten that letter again at any time over the intervening years. It hasn’t got better. Indeed, the fact that Archbishop Justin Welby chose Housing as the theme for the first of his series of Commissions, underlines that the problems have not gone away. So, as the election campaign gains speed, party manifestos will, no doubt, make some reference to Housing as an issue, if only so that candidates have consistent, approved lines to use when confronted on the doorstep or at hustings. But what can we expect and how might we press for better?

 One much tried, tested, and ultimately futile way to tackle home ownership affordability is to attempt to intervene in the markets. Subsidies to allow first time buyers onto the “Housing Ladder” have the immediate plausibility of being a “hand up, not a handout” but they are very quickly priced into the costs of properties, as prospective buyers feel able to offer more than otherwise. The real winners are those who do well when markets are rising – house builders, older households downsizing, and the beneficiaries of wills. I would not place much trust in any manifesto policies that think subsidies for home ownership will help solve the problem. Moreover, property costs are kept high by large builders holding back development land in order to grow or maintain profit levels. Would any party be interested in placing sanctions on land-banking, so that it was no longer in their interests?

 Another market intervention, by successive governments, has been to cap the Housing element of benefits to a figure known as the Local Housing Allowance (LHA). Initially set at the half way mark – half of properties for private rent in an area should be within the limit – that was later reduced to the 30% level (less than one in three properties covered). It was then frozen in cash terms for several years, including the high inflation period of 2022-3, until finally being restored to the 30% mark in April 2024. The expectation was that the capping regime would persuade private landlords to pitch rents at or below the benefits figure. They haven’t. What we have seen is landlords moving away from traditional markets towards student lettings, benefitting from the large increase in the proportion of young adults who go to university, many backed by parental subsidy. Others have moved into the AirBnB and short term letting markets. It would be good to see parties committing themselves to restore LHA to its original half way mark.

 Social Housing remains the best route to affordable accommodation, but supply has been outstripped by demand for many years. For those who are not classed as having a priority need, it can take years of waiting on a list before any hope of a property other than in an area so blighted that few feel safe living there. Requirements on developers, often referred to as Section 106 agreements, encourage the building of social housing as part of a wider development. Sadly, present regulations provide loopholes that builders have become adept at exploiting, whilst local authorities with very depleted budgets are only too happy to accept cash for other purposes instead of the social homes their residents need. So I’ll be interested if any party seems willing to close the loopholes, ring-fence the money, and ensure that a significantly higher number of social homes are built each year.

 In Lewis Carroll’s wonderful Alice adventures, Humpty Dumpty claims the right to define words to mean exactly what he wants them to. It’s a strategy deployed by modern politicians with equal arrogance. The official UK definition of ‘affordable’ Housing is that the rent level is no more than 80% of the market rate. To my more traditional way of thinking, ‘affordable’ means ‘can be afforded’. Measures of affordability, if they are to have any meaning beyond a political slogan, need to be based on what the purchaser can afford, not some arbitrary percentage of what the market can demand. Affordable could instead be linked to a figure that is no more than (say) 30% of the average household income of those currently living in social housing in a given area. If candidates want to talk about Housing being affordable, push them to go beyond the present facile definitions.

 Elsewhere in Housing, look out for any commitments to solving the Building Defects scandal, that has, since Grenfell, left many residents in high and medium rise blocks facing impossible bills for remediation, whilst unable to sell unmortgageable properties. Despite firm efforts in the Lords, we have not yet established the ‘polluter pays’ principle, which would place the costs of repair on those who designed and built unsafe homes. Meanwhile, there are grounds for hope that the Renters Reform Bill, which fell with the dissolution of Parliament, will be revived in some form, whoever wins the Election. But are parties really committed to giving tenants the rights and security they need, freed from eviction without cause, or will they cave in to vested interests? Now may be the moment to press for binding commitments.

 A combination of the Manchester Homelessness Partnership, which I founded and led until last year, with the drive and commitment of our city region mayor, Andy Burnham, has seen street homeless in my local city centre fall back from the high point reached in 2018. But the problem hasn’t gone away, and in many parts of the country it is worse now than ever. Increasingly homelessness is caused by the rapid rise of private rents; substance abuse is more often a consequence of living on the streets, not the initial cause. One former cabinet minister recently suggested that being ‘smelly’ should be cause for police intervention. Watch out for any punitive proposals in the manifestos. Those who have ended up homeless need positive programmes, which we achieved, and achieved rapidly, with ‘Everyone In’ during COVID19. They don’t need further harassment.

 Housing is unlikely to be the dominant issue in the present campaign, too many of us don’t care as long as we and our loved ones are currently adequately housed. But for those who lack homes that are safe, stable, sustainable, sociable and satisfying, to use the key concepts from the Archbishops’ Commission Report, it won’t be far from the top of their list. If we advocate for them, maybe by 2029 I’ll no longer be able to claim it as the crisis I first did in the late 1980s.