1. Housing policy overview
Terrie Alafat CBE, chief executive, CIH

2. What I’m going to cover
A bit of context – what are the challenges we’re facing at the moment?
The Housing White Paper and the Homelessness Reduction Act - what do they cover? Why are they significant?
Our analysis of what is still needed – three priorities for government
Working together – initial findings from our council/housing association round tables on how we as a sector need to collaborate

3. Context - supply Long term undersupply of new homes
We need to build around 250k new homes p/a and government want to build 1m by 2020
Latest figures – 141k completions in 2016 or 190k net additions
Private developers cannot build the numbers we need alone

4. Context – affordable housing
Declining levels of affordable rented housing
Just 32k new affordable homes completed in 2015/16, the fewest since 1991/92
Only 6k of these were for social rent
We estimate 250k fewer homes for social rent by 2020

5. Context - affordability
A worsening affordability crisis
There are substantial regional variations
But overall house prices are high relative to earnings, and this is likely to worsen
And private rents are now on average 35% of incomes, rising to 68% in London

6. Context – private rented sector
A growing and changing PRS
Now the second largest tenure (20% of all households), and continuing to grow
Now the most common tenure (46%) among 25 – 34 year olds
Increasingly a tenure for the long term, 36% of private renters have children
Quality highly variable. 28% of PRS homes are ‘non-decent’

7. Context - homelessness
Homelessness now rising again
Although there are significant regional variations
60k acceptances in 2016/17
76k in temporary accommodation
Estimated 4k sleeping rough on any given night

8. Context – demographic change
An ageing population
10m Brits are over 65, 3m are over 80. By 2050 be 19m and 8m.
There are 800k people living with dementia in the UK and by 2050 this will have more than doubled
Many young people are unable to access suitable housing
Levels of home ownership among under 35s are down from 54% to 34% in a decade
Welfare cuts price many young people out of renting

9. Context – devolution The ongoing rollout of devolution
A total of 12 city deals now agreed
Mayoral elections taking place in 6 of these next month
An opportunity to join up investment in new housing supply with transport, health etc
But some areas are better advanced than others – eg: Greater Manchester has a long tradition of joint working
And the extent to which housing is a central part of these deals is variable

10. Housing White Paper (i)
The Housing White paper aims to increase supply by…
Ensuring we are planning for the right numbers of homes
Strengthening requirements for local plans
Introducing a standard method for assessing housing need
Making information about land ownership readily available
Speeding up build out rates
Introducing a ‘housing delivery test’ for councils
Requiring large house builders to publish build out rates
Encouraging the use of compulsory purchase orders on stalled sites
Diversifying the housebuilding market
Enabling councils to enter into bespoke deals to build
Supporting small housebuilders and off-site construction

11. Housing White Paper (ii)
The Housing White paper represents a significant change in strategy
It is significant because:
policy will no longer be focused exclusively on home ownership
government will focus less on ‘demand side’ interventions and more on boosting supply
government will take more of a long term view of the housing crisis
we have argued for some time that councils should play a much larger role in building the homes that we need

12. Homelessness Reduction Act
The Act introduces new legal obligations on councils to provide meaningful help to all eligible households, irrespective of priority need:
assess and agree a plan if someone is homeless or threatened with homelessness
take reasonable steps to help someone avoid homelessness take reasonable steps to help to secure accommodation for homeless
It is significant because too many people are turned away under the current system
But councils must be given the resources to implement it

13. Our priorities for government (i)
We still need to do more to get the right mix of new homes
25 – 30% of people can’t afford, or don’t want, to buy
Government will spend £51bn on housing by 2021 but (even after recent changes) only 16% of this on new affordable homes to rent
Government should shift funding further towards building affordable homes to rent (including for social rent)
Councils built just 2k homes last year. Policy changes have cut their capacity to build from 500k over 30 years to 45k
Government should strike deals with councils who want to build, allowing them to borrow more and exempting them from further rent reductions

14. Our priorities for government (ii)
Government needs to join up housing and welfare policy
We support government’s plans to reduce homelessness but are concerned that welfare cuts may undermine this
By 2020/21 claimants will lose £25bn as a result of cuts
Government should return the benefit cap to £26k p/a
Plans to remove support from year olds and to extend LHA caps to the social sector should be abandoned
The 7 day wait for universal credit should be removed

15. Our priorities for government (iii)
3. Government must adequately fund supported housing
Uncertainty around future funding is already leading to stalled schemes
Any new funding framework must reflect the actual costs of supporting some of society’s most vulnerable people
Both demand and costs are likely to increase in the future, and funding must be flexible enough to respond to this
There are substantial regional variations (eg: LHA caps have a bigger impact in low cost areas) which must be taken into account
And we need to particularly consider the impact of any new arrangement on short-term, emergency accommodation

16. Working together
We are running roundtables on improving relations between councils and associations
Current arrangements for working together are variable, but there is a consensus that this could be improved
There is an appetite in several regions to work together to develop a shared vision for an area and/or to increase the supply of new homes
But there are also further opportunities around, for example:
Regeneration
Homelessness
The development of new housing options for young people

17. Thank you for listening Terrie.alafat@cih.org