With 1.76 million people on the waiting list for a local authority home on 1 April 2009, I can see why David Cameron might want to focus on ending tenure for life in council rented homes. But would it really deliver more homes to those who need them and a more efficient housing system?
It seems to me that the housing system is a bit like trying to pin down a jelly – if you try to nail down only one part, such as council housing, the jelly is bound to spill out somewhere else. In a recent JRF Housing Market Taskforce-hosted debate someone asked the question 'what share should different tenancies have of the overall housing stock?' Quick as a flash the answer came back 'well, you need 150 per cent of current housing supply to have a sensible discussion about that'.
So you might offer people time-limited tenancies, but with limited existing housing supply where do they go when that tenancy ends?
As David Cameron said 'there is a bigger question here, which is: how do we make sure that people are able to move through the housing chain?' Focusing on this question does, I think, open up a more constructive debate about what housing offer is being made to people. My work at JRF on young people and housing and the Housing Market Taskforce demonstrates how we need to think more creatively about diversifying current housing options. There are already housing providers offering more choice than straight council or housing association tenancies – like rented properties that allow you to save part of your rent for a deposit, or to rent at below private rents but above social rents - or to rent the home you plan to buy.
Of course I’m not suggesting that these approaches will meet the requirements of those in the most severe housing need. But what they would do is let people to take more control of their housing choices and offer housing providers more scope to meet a wider range of housing needs across the market.
For me, this would offer more choice to us housing consumers, with the added benefit of allowing housing bodies to get more creative in how they fund and deliver new housing, hopefully without public subsidy – vital in the current climate of public spending cuts. So let’s not get distracted by a ‘homes for life’ debate at the expense of how we innovate in the marketplace!
Kathleen Kelly is the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's Policy and Research Manager. This post also appears at www.jrf.org.uk
