A decline by four -fifths of social housebuilding in the UK in the past 10 years is appalling but hardly surprising, says Martin Bellinger, executive chairman, Guildmore.
In the past decade we have lost focus on providing safe, affordable and quality homes for the most vulnerable people in our society.
It has become a major driver of the disconnect between the haves and have-nots that is driving the “new” Labour Party and the massive shift in the goal posts for our tottering political system.
Behind the headlines and accusatory numbers there are facts we must consider.
Firstly, actual social additions rose by 9.5% on 2016/17, when they hit a low of 5,901.
Secondly, affordable additions – rents set at around 80% of market value – were up by 10%.
“Affordable” rents are controversial as they typically are not very affordable in high-cost areas such as London. Campaigners often point to them as another symbol of developer greed as they have less impact on development values or income streams.
However, in other areas they provide a valuable mid-market product. Where development margins are genuinely thin they are the only way to enable building.
Furthermore, the shaming numbers are housing completions, not starts, which means we are looking at homes started two or three years ago in a vastly different housing market.
It is easy to forget the difficult conditions that have accompanied house building outside of London since 2008, but we have been in a severe period of austerity following the greatest financial crash of the past 90 years. That has affected building.
National policy that until two years ago was clipping the wings of housing associations – the main builders of social housing – has not helped either, but the sector that has emerged from austerity is leaner and better prepared for the future. But that will take time to deliver.
I am not defending the figures, but we should not forget the background of their creation.
Finding solutions for the social housing shortage is more difficult, but over the past two years there has been movement.
To start with, the Conservative government has changed its stance on housing delivery.
The headline-grabbing abolition of council borrowing caps – unthinkable three years ago – is a concession that authorities can start to build, because they know what their residents need better than national government.
The wealth of private sector partnership models that have emerged over the past five years also show they do not have to do this alone.
Less tangible but perhaps more important than this is a real focus on multiple tenure solutions to address the housing shortage, not just housing for sale. This means more social homes, but also shared ownership, private rent and open-market sale.
We should be building genuine mixed communities that reflect all classes in our society. This means schemes that are not all housing for sale, but also not all for social rent, to avoid the creation of ghettos as much as gentrification.
A focus on multiple tenures will support that while also speeding up delivery.
I would argue that we need to stop thinking only in terms of social, affordable and private housing, and be hyper-specific in terms of what type of and level of affordability each scheme needs, but this could complicate viability further.
Housing associations, gearing up financially, emboldened in model and social purpose, are clearly well placed to start this. Either with the private sector, through partnerships with councils or alone.
But again, all of this takes time.
Two years ago, housing associations started change their models, and we are just beginning to see the fruits of that. It will take councils, cash and skill starved, longer.
However, given the altered political climate I mentioned earlier, the entire housing sector has a responsibility to act much more collaboratively to find solutions to this longstanding problem.
The time for finger-pointing is over – now we need to act.
