Tag Archives: social housing

The horror of black mould in social housing

By Andy Boddington | Thu 1st December 2022 - 3:34 pm

Some details in this article have been changed to ensure anonymity and safeguarding.

Last week, I got a message from a young woman with a two year old in a social property built around 1990. Her son had been seriously ill and in hospital with bronchial issues. She had been complaining to the housing managers about black mould for a long while. This case is proving to be the tip of the iceberg.

The death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in Rochdale has heightened concerns. Tenants have always known that black mould is dangerous to health but housing associations and councils have too often blamed the issue onto tenants or failed to make it a priority.

Since Rochdale, we have had a steady stream of cases coming in via messenger. A baby not yet two months old and returned home on oxygen into a house riddled with black mould. I can’t publish details or photos but they made me cry.

A decent home is fundamental to health and happiness.

We are getting a positive response from the housing associations. One chief executive, currently away, emailed me in the earlier hours to ask for the priority cases, which we have sent. There are many more.

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Eleanor Rylance

It’s probably not the budgie

By Eleanor Rylance | Fri 25th November 2022 - 10:11 am

Katie (not her real name) put out a desperate plea on her community Facebook page, the battle cry of a mother at the end of her tether. A tenant of one of the region’s largest housing associations, she was living on the ground floor of a newly built block of flats in the ward I had represented for just a few weeks.

It was 2017 and Katie had lived for 3 years in the two-bedroom ground floor flat with her partner and their two tiny children, one 3 years old and the other a fragile 3 month old newborn who’d been born prematurely. The baby had had multiple trips to hospital with bronchitis in his very short life, and multiple courses of antibiotics.

Katie was convinced that the source of her baby’s health issues was the mould and damp in their flat. Shoes and toys left overnight on the floor went mouldy. The soft furnishings had had to be replaced twice in three years because they were rotting into the damp carpet. Katie spent every day cleaning, bleaching, and washing, and overnight the mould would return to anything left on the ground. Walking across the carpet in socks led to wet socks.

Katie’s mental health was suffering badly. She was cleaning all day, wiping down surfaces obsessively, but still failing to keep her children safe and healthy. She could get nobody who ought to have cared to take any interest. She felt judged at every turn. She feared being kicked out by the housing association for complaining too much. She felt as though she had no rights.

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Benefits to Bricks and Boris Bluster

By Andy Boddington | Sun 12th June 2022 - 1:25 pm

This government is stuck on the letter “B”. Build Back Better. Bus Back Better. And now Benefits to Bricks. And, of course, there is the perennial Boris Bluster. The speech Boris Johnson gave in Blackpool on Thursday seemed to be more about keeping Johnson in his home at No 10 than getting others into homes. Although billed as a “housing speech” it was more a rambling justification for Johnson’s position. Although the main topic was meant to be housing, we heard of olive oil and bananas, Suez and Ukraine, inflation, policing, health, cost of living, riots and much more on the way to mortgages and a right to buy for social housing tenants.

We were told we are living in good times: “People don’t face the misery of the 1980s or 1990s”. Johnson failed to mention that all but three years of those decades were under Conservative governments. And that there wasn’t then a food bank in every community. And when he said, “Everyone can see and feel the impact on household budgets”, I briefly fantasised that he too was flat broke and was facing the cruel choice between fuel, heating and food.

This government is out of touch with how hard times are for many people. And that shows in its current announcements, including Benefits to Bricks.

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Peter Thornton

Help tackle the housing crisis

By Peter Thornton | Fri 18th February 2022 - 9:28 am

Embed from Getty Images

England’s housing market is fundamentally unfair; it has left millions of people in insecure, unaffordable and low quality housing, whilst many others have seen their wealth increase dramatically. For many people, especially the young, the prospect of a secure home is a pipedream. The Federal Policy Committee’s working group on Homes and Planning wants your help to fix the English housing market and deliver the homes the country needs.

Although housing and planning is a devolved matter, we would welcome contributions from members outside of England about how their approach works and if there are any lessons we can learn from them.

There have been a wide range of estimates of how many homes England needs to build, ranging from 380,000 to around 200,000 a year. We believe that with a shortage of labour, skills, materials, available sites for development means that we should prioritise building social homes first and foremost – since the sector is currently struggling to build its current number of homes. These meet those in the greatest need, and can help bring down rents more generally.

We also want to ensure that homes are built to the highest standards. At the last election, we had robust and ambitious proposals for making homes fit for a carbon-neutral future, but we’d welcome any ideas you have to improve on those proposals.

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Mark Valladares

8 January 2019 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Tue 8th January 2019 - 11:50 pm

It seems that, no matter how late I publish this feature, the Press Team are still up and working. Last night, the final press release came out at 11.58 p.m., so is included in today’s batch…

  • Drone reforms are vague and lack resources
  • Social housing neglect due to lack of political will
  • Dover delay is a national embarrassment
  • Cable: Bumbling Govt taking ‘Dad’s Army’ approach to Brexit
  • Lib Dems: Govt defeat shows no deal not an option
  • Lib Dems: Drone sighting shows urgent need for regulation
  • Lib Dems defeat Govt on loan charges

Drone reforms are vague and lack resources

Responding to the Government annoucement that the police will …

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Mary Reid

LibLink: “The supply of social housing has almost dried up” – Dorothy Thornhill

By Mary Reid | Thu 5th July 2018 - 9:54 am

If, when I was Elected Mayor of Watford, you had asked me what kept me awake at night, I would have said the number of families we had in bed and breakfast (it was once a matter of pride that there were none), and whether we had enough temporary accommodation.

Dorothy Thornhill (now an active parliamentarian in the House of Lords) has been writing in PoliticsHome about her worries about the supply of social housing. She writes:

It tells its own story that the rise in evictions from the private sector is now the top reason for people ending up in council temporary accommodation. Private rents are now out of reach for too many working families. The supply of social housing has almost dried up.

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Housing – where should it go?

By Kirsten Johnson | Fri 6th April 2018 - 4:00 pm

I’ve been doing some research into housing as it has become a hot topic in Oxfordshire where I am a county councillor.

Young people want to get on the property ladder but can’t, houses are just not affordable.

Keyworkers wish to take jobs but can’t afford to live locally.

Our social housing register in Oxford city has over 3000 people on it.

There is a housing crisis, but it won’t be solved by landowners building houses which can only be afforded by London commuters.

At the same time, government is pushing for growth in the south – we have a Growth Board in Oxfordshire which comprises all the district, city and county councils, and we have just signed a Growth Deal with government which commits us to building 96K homes in Oxfordshire up to 2031.

But shouldn’t we be growing our economy in the north? The country is already unbalanced, and it will become even more so if plans to build a million more houses along the proposed Oxford to Cambridge Arc proceed. The National Infrastructure Commission report on that proposal is here. On p. 28 there is a chart showing housing planned for 2016-2050: 130K extra houses for Oxfordshire as “additional development required to meet corridor-level housing need”, plus another 70K homes for Oxfordshire required “to reflect pressures from land constrained
markets”.

To get my head around this topic, I’ve been looking at recent government data on where houses need to go across the country as a whole. It includes economic growth and population analysis. Evidently, we don’t need as many houses in Oxfordshire as the last Strategic Housing Market Assessment of 2014 shows. However, all local plans are using the SHMA figures, not latest government figures.

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The Voice

Wera Hobhouse argues for more social homes for rent

By The Voice | Thu 7th December 2017 - 11:55 am

99 families stand to lose the chance of a socially rented home in Wera Hobhouse’s Bath constituency after the Planning Minister failed to call in a planning decision. In what Wera described as “social cleaning”, these families will be forced out of the city.

In an adjournment debate last night, Wera took her argument directly to the Housing and Planning Minister. She outlined the direct consequences of the lack of social housing provision:

What about the 99 most vulnerable families, who will now simply be moved out of their home city of Bath? They cannot stay because there will be 99 fewer social homes for rent under the current plans. This sort of social cleansing is unacceptable and it gives the Government the reputation of being uncaring. The Minister will know that I requested him to call in the planning decision that reduced the number of social homes for rent by 99, but he refused to do so. The implication is that this reduction in social homes for rent is in line with Government policy, but on Monday the Secretary of State, in a quick reply, said it was not Government policy to reduce the number of social homes to rent. It cannot be both things in this specific instance, so what is the answer?

Wera outlined the scale of the problem. The number of houses being built for social rent is plummeting:

Government statistics show that nearly 40,000 social homes for rent were built in 2010-11, and the figure for 2016-17 was just 5,380. In the 2016-17 financial year, 12,383 council homes were sold under the right-to-buy scheme. Year in, year out, the number of social homes for rent is being reduced.

The human consequences are horrific:

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The Voice

Economic Implications of Autumn Budget

By The Voice | Thu 23rd November 2017 - 8:30 am

Liberal Democrat Brexit Spokesperson Tom Brake commented:

“Instead of a bright future for Britain, Conservative plans will see a £65bn hit to tax receipts, slashed wages and higher borrowing.

The Government found £3bn to spend on Brexit, but nothing for our police or social care.

The Chancellor has completely failed to show the ambition needed to tackle the housing crisis, build the infrastructure the country needs or fix Universal Credit.”

And here is the breakdown of the economic costs:

1. £65bn hit to tax receipts: Tax receipts have been downgraded by £65.4 billion over the five-year period compare to …

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Emily Davey

The next housing crash

By Emily Davey | Sat 1st August 2015 - 10:25 am

It’s not only the Tory crackdown on tax credits for families that will hit the working poor: it’s the Conservatives’ multiple mistakes on social housing that will do the most damage to our society. The problem is, these are less well-understood. Yet added together, they are set to cause a social housing sector crash almost comparable to the banking crash.

This is probably unintended – not least because there’s not one single policy that’s driving this. It’s the combination of a series of separate decisions that are coming together to fatally undermine the finances of many social housing providers, especially housing associations. More cuts in tax credits and benefits of course cause problems to the social housing sector by themselves – because they are certain to lead to greater rent arrears. But it’s only when you add in other changes, like the way benefits will be paid in the future, imposed cuts to housing association rents and the ideologically driven extension of the Right to Buy to Housing Associations, that the full disaster facing us becomes clearer.

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Teena Lashmore

Opinion: Let’s keep social housing in London

By Teena Lashmore | Tue 30th September 2014 - 2:45 pm

As the ‘housing crisis’ debates continue and all political parties table motions to attract voters for the 2015 elections, we in Hackney Downs feel it’s time to raise our campaign which is in support of social housing in London.

Our bold online petition is calling for London Local Authorities and Chief Executives to publicly declare their non-attendance and to actively refrain from selling our public land for housing at the property fair in October 2014 and thereafter.  The host boroughs have already done so and it is time the remaining boroughs follow.

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Stephen Williams

Stephen Williams writes: Social housing stock rises back above 4 million

By Stephen Williams | Tue 11th March 2014 - 3:11 pm

Houses being builtWhen the Liberal Democrats entered government in 2010, it was clear we had inherited a housing crisis. House prices and private sector rents were becoming more and more unaffordable. House building had slowed to its lowest level since the 1920s and social housing waiting lists had soared to 1.7 million households. Added to that, successive governments had also let the social housing stock wither on the vine, with 1.5 million homes lost by Labour and Conservative governments alike since 1979.

I know that if we are to solve the housing crisis, we need to reverse the decline in social homes and build more. That is why I was delighted recently to see new statistics published by my department (DCLG) showing that the number of social homes has increased for the fifth year running, taking the overall stock back above the 4 million mark for the first time in a decade.

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John Shipley

Conference: There is an urgent need for more social housing

By John Shipley | Sun 15th September 2013 - 1:09 pm

Lord Shipley gives some of the background to Amendment 2 to the Economy Motion. 

A year ago our Party committed itself to building up to 300,000 new homes a year. The proposals were outlined in the housing policy paper Decent Homes for All. The aim was to achieve this by supporting private investment and by giving greater powers to local councils and social landlords.

A shortage of homes has made it extremely difficult for young people to buy their own home. Rents continue to rise to unaffordable levels for many and 500,000 people in work now receive housing benefit because …

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Mike German

Lord German writes… Monitoring the removal of the spare room subsidy

By Mike German | Thu 12th September 2013 - 4:40 pm

Like many people reading the front page of the Guardian this morning, I was worried by the headline on the pronouncements by the UN special rapporteur on the removal of the spare room subsidy. But it is important to look behind the headline to see that these comments were based on a very brief visit from this adviser, who did not have the time for a detailed discussion with the Department for Work and Pensions to understand the policy. If she had done she would have been able to understand that this policy brings the rules for the social …

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“Yes to New Homes” – time to cure the housing deficit disease

By Andy Boddington | Fri 6th September 2013 - 12:12 pm

Housing completions by tenureWe used to be good at housebuilding. As the economy recovered after the Second World War, house building in England grew to reach a peak of around 352,000 in 1968. That level of housebuilding seems inconceivable now.

The ugly truth is that we have not been building enough houses to cope with our growing population and shrinking household sizes since the late 1970s. We need something like 250,000 new homes a year, yet we are barely building more than 100,000.

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Mary Reid

Vince Cable’s concerns about Help to Buy

By Mary Reid | Mon 29th July 2013 - 12:37 pm

Vince Cable - Some rights reserved by Liberal DemocratsOn the Andrew Marr Show yesterday Vince Cable expressed concerns about the Government’s Help to Buy scheme. He claims that the government’s mortgage guarantee scheme could inflate the market, leading to another housing bubble.

Under Help to Buy, launched earlier this year, anyone purchasing a newly built home costing less that £600,000 will be able to apply for a 20% government guaranteed loan with just a 5% deposit. This is clearly intended to boost the housing market and to create new jobs in the …

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Stephen Tall

Margaret Thatcher, the 1983 election and the ‘bedroom tax’

By Stephen Tall | Tue 2nd April 2013 - 8:35 pm

margaret-thatcherLike Caron, I spent more than a healthy amount of my Bank Holiday Monday watching BBC Parliament’s re-run of the 1983 general election.

It’s not an election I remember (I was 6). But the symmetry of yesterday’s hyperbolic Guardian (‘The day Britain changed’) front page and the televised reminder of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide seemed calculated to confirm the left’s view that 1st April 2013 marked the ultimate victory of those on the right who wanted (and still want) to destruct the welfare state.

What Mrs T, Geoffrey Howe …

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Stephen Tall

LDV poll: 80% of Lib Dems back wealthier households in social housing paying full market rent

By Stephen Tall | Sat 9th June 2012 - 12:20 pm

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 560 party members responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

4-in-5 back change, just 1-in-10 oppose outright

The Coalition last month announced it was consulting whether to charge a full market rent to those in social housing whose household income is over £60,000. We asked our sample of Lib Dem members for their views…

LDV asked: At the moment, rents in social housing are capped at 80% of the market value. It is estimated …

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Mark Pack

If you’re earning over £60,000 should the state subsidise your rent?

By Mark Pack | Sat 19th May 2012 - 3:57 pm

The government is bringing back to life earlier talk about removing the rent subsidy for those in social housing whose household income is over £60,000.

At the moment, rents in social housing are capped at 80% of the market value, but with around 34,000 homes in England occupied by families with a household income of over £60,000 the government is commencing a consultation on removing the 80% limit for them:

Government research shows that as many as 6,000 social rented homes in England are lived in by people who earn a combined income of more than £100,000, including Bob Crow, leader of

…

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Mark Pack

Housing: six things that could be done

By Mark Pack | Tue 1st November 2011 - 8:46 am

As Tim Leunig pointed out last week, housing plays an important role in most people’s concept of social mobility, a point highlighted in Stephen Gilbert’s piece over the summer recounting his own personal circumstances:

Last year I was probably the only MP to be elected while still living with my parents. Of course, I’d moved out of home and, like many others, had to move back again. It’s a symptom of the fact that housing policy in the UK is in crisis. We have millions of people languishing on social housing waiting lists, first-time-buyers priced out of the market

…

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Alex Marsh

Opinion: Boosting housing supply

By Alex Marsh | Wed 5th October 2011 - 11:50 am

The Conservatives’ proposal to resuscitate the Right to Buy through increasing discounts appears to be an attempt to bask in some of Mrs Thatcher’s reflected glory. Unlike the 1980s version, though, Mr Cameron and Mr Shapps are emphasizing that each property sold will be matched with a newly built property at “affordable” rent. This is an attempt to head off criticisms that the Right to Buy reduces the supply of “social” housing. So, it would appear, this initiative could lead to a net increase in the housing stock.

Of course, things are never as they first appear. It is not yet …

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Helen Duffett

LibLink | Andrew Stunell: Social housing to get first boost in 30 years

By Helen Duffett | Mon 18th July 2011 - 2:17 pm

Andrew Stunell, the Communities and Local Government Minister, has an article in the Huffington Post today, announcing Government plans to increase social housing after decades of declining numbers and soaring waiting lists:

Liberal Democrats in government are ensuring this trend is reversed. We fought hard to make sure that the Comprehensive Spending Review last October included money for a social housing building programme of 150,000 new social and affordable homes to be built up to 2015. A key part of this was the new Affordable Rent model that we introduced, with an invitation to social housing providers to bid for

…

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Alex Marsh

Opinion: The housing policy jigsaw – the changing picture

By Alex Marsh | Fri 31st December 2010 - 1:25 pm

I started this discussion of current developments in policy towards housing by noting that it is an area in which the tensions in inherent in balancing “the fundamental values of freedom, equality and community” are absolutely central. Housing policy needs to strike a balance between the individual and the aggregate – neighbourhood, city, regional – outcomes if it is going to deliver economically and socially (and environmentally) successful settlements. In this last post I will reflect briefly on changes in where this balance has been struck over time.

In the post-Second World War period housing policy was directed at improving …

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Alex Marsh

Opinion: The housing policy jigsaw – a picture begins to emerge?

By Alex Marsh | Thu 30th December 2010 - 11:25 am

In yesterday’s post I set out key policy developments affecting housing. So what can we discern about the current government’s approach to housing?

For a start there is a continuing emphasis upon choice. This is particularly clear when discussing how to encourage underoccupying social renters to move. The CLG rhetoric is of increasing choice and making choices easier to realise. They neglect to cross-refer to the DWP proposals to cut the housing benefit of any social renter deemed to be seriously underoccupying. The approach isn’t all “carrot”.

The Local Housing Allowance (LHA) proposals more generally are framed in terms of housing …

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Alex Marsh

Opinion: The housing policy jigsaw – identifying the pieces

By Alex Marsh | Wed 29th December 2010 - 11:25 am

Yesterday, I suggested that it would be valuable to piece together the housing policy jigsaw in order to reflect on the picture that emerges. Policy in this field speaks directly to our fundamental values -freedom, equality and community – and how they are to be reconciled. My aim today is to identify more fully the key pieces of the current policy jigsaw.

So what can we make of the way policy towards housing is developing?

The key proposals on social housing reform in the Local Decisions consultation paper were heavily trailed. Many are embodied in the Localism Bill. They have been …

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Alex Marsh

Opinion: Piecing together the housing policy jigsaw

By Alex Marsh | Tue 28th December 2010 - 11:25 am

The Coalition government is seemingly intent upon drowning us in a blizzard of consultation papers, green papers, white papers, and hasty legislation. No doubt there is also a bit of kite flying taking place for good measure. One problem with all this activity is keeping track of overlapping agendas. How do we sum the parts in a way that allows us to get a sense of the likely cumulative impact of change?

One area in which this is particularly acute is housing. Policy which impacts upon housing and the housing market sits with a number of government departments. Housing policy and …

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Jonathan Featonby

Opinion: Why the Government’s social housing reforms are flawed

By Jonathan Featonby | Wed 24th November 2010 - 10:54 am

The Coalition announced its plans for the reform of social housing on Monday and Andrew Stunell – our man inside the Department for Communities and Local Government – summarised the main points and the reasoning behind them here on Lib Dem Voice.

These plans, especially when coupled with the previously announced changes to housing benefit, are sure to spark a great deal of debate on these pages and we’ve already seen this happening in response to Stunell’s article.

At first glance, the main idea behind the reforms is admirable – to make social housing fairer. Most people are aware of …

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Andrew Stunell MP

Andrew Stunell MP Writes: Your Chance to Influence Coalition’s Housing Policy

By Andrew Stunell MP | Mon 22nd November 2010 - 7:45 am

There have been plenty of Housing posts on Lib Dem Voice over the past few months. Social and affordable housing is rightly a hot issue and has been the subject of much debate. I have been keen to get stuck in myself, so I’ve had face-to-face meetings with party members, conference calls with my local government colleagues, and been online in this forum, all aimed at us having an informed and full dialogue.

The next step of that begins today with the Coalition Government’s Social Housing Consultation paper, which I launched this morning.

So far a lot of the housing …

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Alex Marsh

Opinion: Disposing of that pesky homelessness problem

By Alex Marsh | Thu 11th November 2010 - 1:53 pm

It was entirely predictable. The opening moves in a game that could see another hard-won component of the welfare state undermined have now been played.

It may have been predictable, but it is no less distasteful for all that.

The Coalition’s proposals for restricting housing benefit in the private rented sector have been greeted with a chorus of disapproval from informed commentators and the housing policy and practice community. Many grassroots LibDem members are equally concerned. Dire consequences are forecast.

The Government believes that landlords will happily adjust their rent downwards to reflect benefit cuts. Informed opinion says otherwise. (I discuss this issue …

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Alex Marsh

Opinion: Spinning the death of affordable housing

By Alex Marsh | Wed 3rd November 2010 - 4:03 pm

At the heart of politics lie battles over meaning. In an uncertain world there is plenty of scope to contest the definition of problems and the perceived effectiveness of solutions. Under Labour we came to think of agenda management as “spin”, and to condemn it. But the Blairites were simply the most egregious and effective exponents of the political arts. All politicians face decisions about the message and how one would ideally like it interpreted.

This seems particularly pertinent in relation to current discussions about affordable housing. We’re seeing the government providing some creative readings of what is on offer.

One component …

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