[Ben Reeve Lewis had a narrow escape this week...]
Had a narrow escape this week.
I foolishly went to the property of a rogue landlord on my own, simply to oversee a lock change.
Said landlord had however sent a group of men to disrupt proceedings, two of whom I happen to know have recent prison sentences for GBH behind them.
45 minutes later the bailiffs hadn’t arrived and neither had my police back-up, leaving my bum firmly hanging out of the window as the saying goes.
Who’s that man?
The mood started turning ugly as they began talking about the council this and the council that and it dawned on me from the conversation that they didn’t know where I was from. I have no idea who they thought I was.
Taking the opportunity of the confusion and that tight little window where Mr Discretion doffs his cap to Mrs Valour I duly legged it.
Lesson learnt? Never wear an ID Badge, keep your stab vest hidden under your parka and your furry trappers hat pulled well down so people don’t recognise you.
Are you happy to give your landlord 42% of your salary?
Rum stuff this old rogue landlord enforcement malarkey. Still, another day another dollar…….and I certainly need that dollar if what I read in the Evening Standard Homes & Property Section are anything to go by.
There are now only three London boroughs where you can rent a two bed for less than £1,000 per month. Bexley, Havering and Barking & Dagenham, all on the fringes of the capital.
Johnny Morris (no not that one………….readers over 50 take note) of Hamptons stuck a positive note on it though:
“Of course, the more centrally you live, the less you pay in travel costs”
Mystifyingly presuming that everyone works in the same place.
The article also informed us:
“A recent study by estate agents Knight Frank found Londoners are prepared to spend 42 per cent of their pre-tax monthly salary on rent”.
“Prepared to spend”???? I have my doubts about that, same as I have a doubt about the word “Choice” when it comes to renting and it seems I’m not the only one.
Giving tenants the choice … (or not)
Writing in the Guardian Hannah Fearn echoes my own thoughts in saying:
“It’s the word “choice” that is so aggravating. What choice can there be, when there is so little opportunity to exercise it?”
Expanding with:
“The private rented sector is growing for two reasons: a shortage of new social housing, which forces councils to place homeless families into the private rented sector, and prohibitively high property prices, which lock people out of home ownership, possibly for decades. In neither case are people are making a choice to live in a privately rented house.”
Like many in Generation Rent, circumstances are the only reason I rent privately, it isn’t a choice. Some do choose to rent privately but most don’t. Please get over this notion.
The Right to Buy has denuded social housing stock and I notice, as I tend to do surfing housing news stories each week, a trend towards challenging the social wisdom and even the morality of the right to buy scheme.
Wrong to buy
The blog of Halton Housing Trust offered some views on this titling an article “When right to buy becomes wrong to buy”.
Housing Associations are at the business end of things and some stark figures are delivered here that I make no apologies for reproducing in some detail:
“What stops us (Halton) offering more homes to those who really need them is Right to Buy. For housing associations the Government promise of 1:1 replacement just isn’t working. It’s more like 5:1.
Since the discounts were increased in 2012, nearly 23,000 social homes have been sold for a total of £1.5bn under Right to Buy. However these figures include only the number of homes sold under RTB by local authorities and is just the tip of the iceberg.Figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government also show that construction has begun on just 4,795 replacement homes since April 2012 by Councils. This is around one in five of the total sold”
On the same subject over on inside Housing and with the same title “Wrong to buy” (Come on….its a pun waiting to be picked up) Colin Wiles who pointed out:
“Nearly two million properties have been sold and about a third of them have been sold on to private landlords, who often charge significantly higher rents and rake in billions of pounds in Housing Benefit. Forty percent of the soaring HB bill now goes to private landlords.”
Throwing down the guantlet to the Tories
Meanwhile at the other end of the spectrum sits Telegraph journo Alistair Heath, who thinks the right to buy is a wishy-washy, namby-pamby bit of old socialism and that the Tories should go the whole hog:
“The Tories should pledge to launch a great council house giveaway – not a mere sale – if they are elected. Anyone who lives in social housing, including those owned by local associations, and who has been in work for the past year should be gifted their council home”.
Of course he isn’t completely barking. Tapping the side of his nose and leaning conspiratorially over his Brandy balloon, he offers:
“Anyone who sold their newly-acquired house within the first three years would be hit by a 35 per cent tax on the overall sale value, a rate that would fall over time to 20 per cent. All the money raised would be legally earmarked to build more homes”.
And I liked his final paragraph, as Heath places hands firmly on hips, tosses back his mane of hair and throws the gauntlet down to that spineless Trotskyite David Cameron:
“Will the Tories have the courage to unveil such a revolutionary, epoch-defining set of policies? We shall soon find out just how hungry for power they really are.”
I’d never heard of Alistair Heath before but I like the cut of his jib.
There’s nothing like an old Thatcherite buffoon to cheer you up with bizarre announcements on a regular basis. Not since Shapps was moved from Housing anyway. I’ll keep and eye on him and of course Nigel Farrage, who is also on my Christmas card list of bewilderingly popular court jesters..
What made me smile this week.
Well escaping with all my teeth from the scrape with the landlords thugs is one thing but I particularly enjoyed a friend’s 50th birthday party which saw her at midnight entertaining the pub, completely pissed and singing her lungs out on the microphone to “Daydream Believer” by the Monkees, in a key so flat it would have slipped entirely off the stave altogether.
If you cant do that at your 50th where can you?
And anyway, I joined in with “New York, New York” and “Cant take my eyes off of you”.
I even managed a few dance moves to Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” the finest chart single I’ve heard for some years.
See ya next week.
Morning Ben,
You just knew I wouldn’t be able to let this one ride-
“Some do choose to rent privately but most don’t. Please get over this notion.”
What evidence do you have to back that up?
I am sure it is true for members of Generation Rent but they don’t represent the majority of the country’s private renters and they aren’t an accurate cross section of society.
I work on the front line* of private renting and the majority of people rent from choice. I specifically ask them- not for any political reason but in order to tailor lettings to make more money from them (like the capitalist pig that I am).
Many people may not choose to rent privately but it is certainly not a majority.
Unless you can prove otherwise?
*Everyone else claims to be on the front line and I’m feeling a bit left out.
Haha I think we are both on shaky ground with this one mate. Your evidence to back up your assertion is exactly the same as mine, the people you have spoken to in your career.
Its just that mine is more accurate because…..well…..mine is true!!!!!!!!
What Halton HA should have said is this:
“What stops us offering more homes to those who really need them is our internal inefficiencies and that we’re not building enough new stock ourselves or re-investing our surplus efficiently. Oh, and we’re converting our social rented stock to affordable rents, making it all more expensive.”
Halton Housing Association, by definition, are supposed to be about regeneration right? Their surpluses are supposed to be ploughed into re-development right?
Well that’s not quite what they’re doing. Lets look at their annual reports shall we…..
Surpluses for the last three years:
£2.5m, £1.5m and in 13/14, £5.9m
Total revenue reserves over £9 million.
They also secured an additional £60m facility in 2013 by restructuring debt.
Guess how many new social homes they built last year (allegedly)?
70
The net increase in homes on their books was a paltry 45 last year. Taking into account the additional 57 market rented units they bought (which doesn’t help social renters or add to the housing stock) it actually means their stock of social/affordable housing declined.
They converted 81 units from ‘social’ to ‘affordable’ housing (i.e. by increasing the rents by £60k). They plan to convert 220 more this year.
They employ 268 people to manage fewer than 6500 homes. That’s 28 units per employee. We manage 50 units per employee and have higher customer satisfaction levels. They have 12 paid non-execs and their chief exec is paid £121,000 (50% more than ours).
They claim to build at £55k per unit. They could have doubled their output just by spending their surpluses without any additional cost-cutting (which is required).
I’m not defending Right To Buy, but they really shouldn’t be blaming it for their lack of stock.
Great Friday Newsround Ben – put a smile on my face as I’m sure you intended.
And the comment from HB Welcome “Many people may not choose to rent privately” must surely count as a some sort of small victory on your part? :D
Though it is true it would be nice to have some sort of big independent survey. I have a feeling Generation Rent may have done a survey of sorts? I could be wrong but I guess cynics wouldn’t swallow the findings of it anyway.
If I were you Ben; I wouldn’t waste your breath.
Jamie 10 minutes surfing on Halton’s website to provide figures to throw back at them in some sort of attempt to make Halton look inefficient is a limp argument.
Similarly Generation Rents 1,000 person survey hardly digs deep enough for a real insight (Yes Paul they did do one)
£9m surplus may look big when compared to our own bank accounts or the coffers of a small business but in terms of a housing trust, if I were the chief exec I would be a bit worried we were sailing close to the wind.
And lets not forget who foisted the insanity of ‘Affordable rents’ upon RSLs. Did they dream it up themselves? No government ushered it in.
You say “Halton Housing Association, by definition, are supposed to be about regeneration right?…..Wrong.
Regeneration is just one function of any social landlord and it’s only really an approach to homes as part of the wider world of community. For the past 30 ‘Regeneration’ has been a bit of a buzz word and isnt easily defined.
RSLs are about stock management, business management, The Decent Homes Standard, maintaining financial stability etc.
Unlike truly private companies they are board led, often tenant board led and subject to unwelcome legislation imposed on them. Unlike PRS letting agent for whom their is no control at all, hence the cowboys and gangster that have been moving into the business in the past 10 years (And no I’m not accusing you there)
The only way they still manage to survive in a country growing increasingly hostile to the notion of social housing is through creativity and positivity so often lacking in Local Authorities. Sometimes this clicks over too far, for instance it is now difficult to tell whether London & Quadrant are still a social landlord or a property development company but Halton, as with Aldwych, Bromford and Midland Heart should be thoroughly commended for the efficient, creative and responsible way the manage their stock and generally go about their business.
They were the ones blaming someone else for the lack of housing. I’m just looking at the evidence before swallowing their PR. It’s not a limp argument, those figures are direct from their annual report. Where else am I supposed to look?
HAs are there to provide low cost housing to those in need. Any surplus is used to maintain and increase stock. There is no hiding the fact Halton’s social/affordable stock levels have gone down and yet they’re buying market rented stock. Who is that going to help?
By the way, I wasn’t proposing they spend all their surpluses, that wouldn’t be very prudent. Only about half of it would be required to double their stock increase.
Jamie I agree with you, as outsiders we have nowhere to look BUT their reports but neither you nor I can present their figures as evidence that they are inefficient.
The truth is we dont know the internal machinations of how they balance the books.
What I can offer is that social housing providers are weighed down by a range of factors unknwon to those in the PRS, for instance an RSL, as well as being a housing provider also has a duty as local employer which impacts on decisions on where to spend their money.
There is a concept built into all procurement processes known as VFM (Value for Money) which is a government proscribed set of rules that dictate how they go about enacting their ideas.
In the past couple of years all social housing providers have to evaluate service tender applications in line with the social value they provide, as well as being cost effective.
RSLs and councils didnt invent this, it was pushed on them by government.
The truth is that government, in it’s hatred of the social housing ethos are trying to neuter their processes with seemingly inconsequential changes to regulations that strike at the very core of how social housing providers operate. The result being they look inefficient and incompetent.
Doe sit mean that social housing providers arent inefficient? No not at all. Councils are worse offenders than RSLs to be honest, but what isnt evident to the casual observer is the level that hands are tied behind backs.
It is a mistake to look at Halton’s reports and make a simple equation between revenue and new-build. It really isnt that simplistic
I work very closely with a large housing association. I’m more than aware of all the reporting, benchmarking, VFM, procurement and tendering processes etc. etc.
They’re still not very efficient.
No they arent…..I totally agree with you there but RSLs operate in a business environment that is different from local authorities in that they are part private part public. A hybrid breed.
But the PRS isnt encumbered by the hoops that government legislation makes RSLs jump through and THAT is why a PRS mindset doesnt accurately create an effective comparison.
The question for me is Are the inefficient practices simply because they are social landlords or are they forced into an appearance of inefficiency because of the deluge of regulatory red tape foisted upon them by Westminster in an attempt to corner them?