Social housing bosses need formal qualifications? Yes but....

Today the Government has announced that it will change the law to make it compulsory for Social Housing Managers to hold formal qualifications in a similar way to social workers and teachers. The reasons given were "both Grenfell and the death of Awaab Ishak showed the "devastating consequences of residents inexcusably being let down by poor performing landlords who consistently failed to listen to them"

Personally, I would support this requirement. I am a London Councillor and work in social housing. I happen to have a post graduate diploma in Housing and I am a Practitioner member of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIOH). I would also agree with the housing campaigner, Kwajo Tweneboa, that this should not be just senior managers but all housing officers should hold these qualifications.

But if it is right for Housing Associations and Council Housing managers, what about the huge Private Rental sector? A sector well known for problems regarding damp and fire safety. Would this requirement also apply to the private sector managers who maintain ministry of defence" properties plagued also by damp or those who provide often substandard homes for Asylum seekers.

Damp is often caused by overcrowding and/or fundamental design faults. I often see families of 5 or 6 living in a one bedroom flat with no adequate washing or drying facilities. Where is the money to build the new homes desperately needed to overcome overcrowding and rebuild defective housing?

It is going to cost a huge amount of money to really tackle fire safety, damp and mould. As well as making our housing stock green and low carbon. At a time of below inflation rent caps (welcome obviously to tenants) where is this money going to come from?

The simple truth of the matter is that many Housing Associations and Councils are already being forced to compromise on management standards in order to "sweat" their assets (cut costs) to find the funds to build more affordable housing due to grossly inadequate state provision. 

My final point for now is that since there is little meaningful, independant and democratic tenant representation, who will make sure that landlords will actually "listen" in the future?

Octavia Hill, Housing, the Diffusion of Beauty (& other things)

On Monday it was the 100th anniversary of the death of Octavia Hill. She was one of those remarkable, talented, passionate strong willed, Victorians whose influence is still live and kicking a 100 years on. While I don't actually agree with everything she did or believed in - if you work or have an interest in social housing you simply cannot ignore her.

She is credited with the development of social housing, the Army Cadet Corp, the National Trust, and even being "a forebear of occupational therapy". I love the fact that she was once a treasurer of the "Society for the Diffusion of Beauty".

She believed that the poor deserved decent, affordable, well managed housing. However, she did not believe either in state subsidised housing, female emancipation nor even social security. She was also a very hard taskmaster with regard to rent arrears or anti-social behaviour, which I believe would be popular on modern day housing estates but produce a field day for human rights lawyers.

Octavia also believed in the role of women in housing management. This was of course at a time when women were excluded from nearly all "professions". Women trained by her later founded the Institute of Women Managers in 1916. This much later eventually became the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIOH).

One final thought is that I remember attending a meeting of the London branch of the CIOH in middle 1990's. They had an elderly female speaker (whose name I am sorry I have long forgotten) to speak about the history of housing management. I remember her clearly talking about the significant role of women in housing management since Octavia Hill. She looked around at the (majority male) audience in the room and asked what has happened in housing management in recent years - "Where have all the women gone"?

Housing Matters 20 September 09

I’m going to try and post every weekend on the weeks topical Housing issues. This will be usually from a Public (aka Social) Housing perceptive.

My main source will be of course the trade bible “Inside Housing” which is run on behalf of the CIOH - but if anyone has any other news or opinion then please let me know (email via “view my complete profile” and “Email”).

So...

Anchor Trust Boss pockets “£391,000” annual pay – this story is just unbelievable. His increase this year is 20%, his average employee increase is 2% and the average salary of an Anchor Care assistant is just £12,500. Check out this, and that and even this. Labour ministers I have tackled before on this issue had hinted that “something will be done” about such pay increases. Yeah. I don’t think that salary restriction in the private sector will ever happen but in regulated organisations dependant on the public purse (housing benefit and Council tax) we simply expect better. I will continue my whinging at next week’s Labour conference.

“Yvonne Hossack wins disciplinary hearing” – The scourge of the sheltered housing establishment defeats an attempt at the Solicitors Disciplinary tribunal to take action against her. She even had the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, in his capacity as a MP to give evidence in her favour. It appears that Alan rewards good service with large G&T’s in Strangers Bar. What an excellent idea!

Housing News reports that the RBIA want 4 million homes to be retrofitted within the life time of the next Parliament for energy conservation. Another good idea but is this ambitious enough?

UNISON speaker Rose MacGregor at the Housing debate at the TUC conference calls for over a million new homes to be built and for all new developments to include 30% of homes for social rent. The debate also noted that there are 1.7 million households on the housing waiting list and 63,000 registered homeless. So maybe a million is far too low?

Deflation not as bad as feared – Which is good for RSL’s and maybe for their staff. Some Housing associations are trying not to pay their staff any rise since they fear rents will be cut by as much as 2-3%. Tenants may of course see things differently?

Finally, somewhat off message but sort of Housing news - tonight I spoke to my old Mum on the phone. She is a tenant of a Welsh Housing Association in an over 50 block (which use to be her primary school when she was a young girl) and she was really happy because her landlord had agreed to replace her bath with a shower! A pleased and contented tenant.

Stop the Press!

(Picture of East London skyline from the Leopold Estate in Tower Hamlets)

End of lifelong tenancies?

Social housing tenants to face eviction if they get a well paid job or their children leave home? This is pretty revolutionary for the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIOH) although not wholly unexpected.

Inside Housing web site (see here) reports that an institute paper has been published which calls for all new social housing tenancies to be “regularly reviewed” on need. This apparently includes even vulnerable and elderly tenants.

If a tenant no longer “needs” social housing then the logical conclusion of this review is that they should face eviction. Traditionally assured or secure tenants have enjoyed life long tenancies provided that they pay their rent and keep to their tenancy conditions.

Ending this "Right" will (and has – look at the comments on the web site) quite rightly caused an enormous row.

This proposal is also just bonkers. A madness no doubt born out of desperation by housing providers about meeting demand for homes for desperate families. However, in the future will I have to stand bye while bailiffs bash in doors of elderly tenants whose kids have left home, because they are deemed to be “under occupying” bedrooms?

Will this encourage the long term unemployed to enter training courses and learn new skills if they fear that the end result will be a Certificate together with an eviction warrant from the County Court?

Do we really, really want social housing estates to be only populated with young unemployed or disabled families with no-one in work nor any Grannies, Grand-dads or grown up sons and daughters living in the locality?

Is this future a recipe for disaster or what? Why is it completely normal in most European countries to rent secure high quality homes from public or private providers regardless of whether you pay your rent with the help of benefits or not?

There is plenty that could be done to reduce under occupation of family sized homes that is just not done. We still don’t have a workable national mutual exchange scheme, the payments and encouragement for elderly tenants to move to smaller dwellings is woefully inadequate. Successful communities are mixed tenured communities, socially and economically. We should not ghettoise our so-called “Undeserving Poor”.

This idea needs to be knocked on the head.

It is as daft as when I first got really involved in housing issues when I lived in Edinburgh in the 1980’s. I remember being at a meeting of a housing campaign group when the Labour Party Convenor of the City Council Housing committee came late into the meeting really excited and pleased. She proudly announced to the meeting that for the first time in the Council’s history as a landlord the previous year they had evicted NO tenants – this was as a matter of Council policy.

Now as a local Welfare Rights advisor at the time, I was very pleased that the Council was not “eviction happy” however, I knew that the Convenor was aware of some pretty bloody awful “problem tenants” that were causing an absolute misery to their estates, who frankly should have been evicted. Believe me comrades, despite the insistence of the Daily Hate, anti-social behaviour is not a modern phenomenon.

We’ve now gone full circle. Enough is enough. Time to pull back and realise that the “talibanisation” of the housing profession has just got to stop.