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Out of the ashes
Published 18 February 2024
Can a national choice-based lettings scheme emerge from this recession?
Despite housing being the trigger for our economic woes, housing professionals have not covered themselves in sackcloth and ashes. Most are sensibly looking for a silver lining in the falling housing market and opportunities are beginning to emerge.
The sharp fall in demand for affordable home ownership has raised questions about how stock developed for this purpose can be put to alternative use.
At last, calls for intermediate renting are getting a hearing, and some housing associations are exploring straightforward market renting. When it becomes clear that the sky does not fall in if housing associations blur the demarcation lines between social and private renting, some may even offer their services as managing agents to private landlords. Many have built up experience by managing temporary accommodation in private sector leasing schemes.
We must also ensure that mortgage rescue schemes protect privatetenants whose landlords default on their mortgages.
‘The recession may not be an ideal time to implement such a scheme, but it’s a perfect time for planning it’
Housing providers and lenders are now looking at ways to revive low-cost home ownership schemes. There are discussions on how to bridge the affordability gap, take advantage of government initiatives to get banks lending again and simplify the products available to increase accessibility. And there’s a move to involve those working in money advice so applicants for affordable home ownership receive adequate financial advice.
What is not yet receiving adequate attention is the potential to increase choice through mobility. Far more could be done to increase awareness among the general public, not just among people making homelessness applications, or those in hostels and bed and breakfasts.
Training and employment initiatives are springing up. But the goals are usually to reduce the benefit dependency of social housing tenants – not raise their sights to new housing opportunities elsewhere in the country. It’s time we linked housing aspirations to nationwide mobility.
People often have good reasons for wishing to stay in their existing homes or localities. But for others, it’s a question of not knowing what alternatives might be available. As one of my clients said: ‘I would be happy to live anywhere in London but not outside. I’ve never been outside London, so I’d be too scared’.
A big step forward would be a national choice-based lettings scheme, with information about employment as well as housing schemes of every kind of tenure, ownership, management arrangement and landlord type.
The recession may not be an ideal time to implement such a scheme, but it’s a perfect time for planning it. Is it such a complex notion to get off the ground?
What we need is a coordinating body able to bring together housing providers of every type, along with trainers and employers, and a website that combines information with links to other sites. The site should give consumers an opportunity to comment on their experience of the housing offered. A search engine could match housing and employment needs with what is available across the country.
Of course we would need to ensure that the standard of accommodation on offer (and the standard of management for rented homes) did not fall below an acceptable level.
So it’s important that the registration of private landlords and the licensing of managing agents, as proposed by Julie Rugg, is in place and that the Tenant Services Authority brings all social landlords up to scratch.
Does the government have the foresight to commission a feasibility study for a national scheme?
Jacky Peacock is director of Brent Private Tenants’ Rights Group.
