Social rent/housing
It is fairly clear that national government really doesn't want councils to be social landlords. Many councils have sold off their housing stock and left housing associations to be the providers of social housing in their areas. This is an acceptance that the private sector, in theory the provider of all goods and services, cannot, for some reason, provide low cost housing for those that cannot afford the private sector.
Where I live the council has historically been a big provider of social housing, but this is changing and many people refuse to accept it. Despite the massive funding cuts made to council funding in recent years and the general opposition of the government to councils being direct service providers, rather than just place shapers and commissioners of services, people continue to blame the council for social housing woes and persist in claiming that if only the council were more efficient and less extravagant it could basically carry on as before.
I think the attitude of some people towards the council is that it is a general purpose provider of services - all encompassing within its area. I don't think this attitude is healthy and in this respect the demise of council housing may be salutary.
But housing is too expensive for many, many people, so what should they do? Are they wrong to look to 'the authorities' as the only bodies likely to be able to help?
My own local authority has set up a wholly-owned (by them) company that provides sub-market rate housing (so-called 'affordable'). This is an interesting attempt at gaming the system imposed by the government.
They can't charge social-rents for the properties, because social rent properties have to be allocated according to need - the queue is not orered by waiting time except among those whose need is the same. If they did that they would prevent themselves from providing reduced cost housing to people that live and/or work in the borough, but by doing it they open themselves to accusations of profiteering, gentrification, etc, especially from the many people that can't afford 'affordable'.
Incidentally, Ian Mulheirn is an interesting and very intelligent writer on the subject of housing affordability. He argues, convincingly in my view, that there is not a shortage of supply - more properties are being built than households are forming and supply per head of population is rising. The perception of shortage of supply comes from forecasts of household formation that are consistently too high.
He also says that rents (including the rent equivalent portion of non-rented properties) have risen at the same rate as median incomes. The affordability issue arises straight out of income inequality.
(This is a summary or gist of his views - I hope accurate enough. He gives goos evidence to support his own argument.)
Where I live the council has historically been a big provider of social housing, but this is changing and many people refuse to accept it. Despite the massive funding cuts made to council funding in recent years and the general opposition of the government to councils being direct service providers, rather than just place shapers and commissioners of services, people continue to blame the council for social housing woes and persist in claiming that if only the council were more efficient and less extravagant it could basically carry on as before.
I think the attitude of some people towards the council is that it is a general purpose provider of services - all encompassing within its area. I don't think this attitude is healthy and in this respect the demise of council housing may be salutary.
But housing is too expensive for many, many people, so what should they do? Are they wrong to look to 'the authorities' as the only bodies likely to be able to help?
My own local authority has set up a wholly-owned (by them) company that provides sub-market rate housing (so-called 'affordable'). This is an interesting attempt at gaming the system imposed by the government.
They can't charge social-rents for the properties, because social rent properties have to be allocated according to need - the queue is not orered by waiting time except among those whose need is the same. If they did that they would prevent themselves from providing reduced cost housing to people that live and/or work in the borough, but by doing it they open themselves to accusations of profiteering, gentrification, etc, especially from the many people that can't afford 'affordable'.
Incidentally, Ian Mulheirn is an interesting and very intelligent writer on the subject of housing affordability. He argues, convincingly in my view, that there is not a shortage of supply - more properties are being built than households are forming and supply per head of population is rising. The perception of shortage of supply comes from forecasts of household formation that are consistently too high.
He also says that rents (including the rent equivalent portion of non-rented properties) have risen at the same rate as median incomes. The affordability issue arises straight out of income inequality.
(This is a summary or gist of his views - I hope accurate enough. He gives goos evidence to support his own argument.)
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