The scale of the housing crisis is not lost on Theresa May. In a major speech yesterday to the housing association sector, she acknowledged that it ‘remains one of the great challenges of our time’. The product, May said, of ‘decades of neglect’, the housing crisis did not ‘come about overnight’, but rather has emerged because for ’too long and under successive governments’, social housing ’has been pushed to the edge of the political debate’. However, while May’s speech marked a thaw in relations between government and housing associations perhaps, it was hardly a turning point for the millions of people made miserable by their housing situation. These people – the 1.2 million people on social housing waiting lists, or the 79,000 households in inadequate, temporary ‘B&B’ accommodation, or the almost 5,000 a night who sleep rough on the streets – suffer the worst of the housing crisis, and the policy neglect. At the conference, the prime minister (again) asserted that it is her ‘personal mission to fix our broken housing system’. But perhaps for the first time, her words came close to matching the scale of her ambition. But what is missing, and has been missing entirely from May-era housing policy, is anything like the level of investment, or bold policy-solutions, to make this happen. May’s rabbit-in-the-hat was an additional 2bn funding for affordable housing. Considering the scale of the crisis, this is almost pitiful. It will build just 40,000 new affordable homes, when we have a need for more than a million. And the funding itself won’t be available until 2022, at which point are very likely to have a different government and/or prime minister. Despite this, the speech and announcement were met with solid‘praise’ from Housing Association chiefs. This is perhaps because social housing in general, and Housing Associations in particular, were held in such low regard during the Cameron/Osborne era, that now, anything is better than nothing. And with almost no mention of local authorities and social-rented council housing - the primary vehicle for successfully solving housing crises in the 20th century - housing associations are clearly central to her housing strategy. The warm reception may also be because the funding is not attached to any particular type of home. For almost a decade now instead of just ‘social housing’, social housing providers have been building a range of different ‘affordable products’. These homes often cost up to 80% market rent, making them unaffordable to many people in need of social housing, and are less secure than traditional social rent. Many housing associations have also been busy converting existing, genuinely affordable, secure social housing homes into less affordable, less secure ‘affordable’ housing. As austerity became entrenched in social housing policy, and government funding almost completely dried up, larger housing associations developed a new means of building affordable housing: cross subsidy. Funding-deprived housing associations began building expensive private market homes for sale on a site, and using some of the proceeds from the sale to fund some affordable housing. This affordable housing would usually be closer to market rent, or shared ownership homes, rather than genuinely affordable, social tenancies. There would also be a lot less of it. In addition, housing associations would often just purchase the new affordable homes produced by private developers to meet their planning obligations, and not actually contribute many more affordable homes themselves. For a number of years, big housing associations have been behaving more and more like private developers. May was quite right yesterday when she said they are ‘major multi-billion pound businesses’. And as the number of homes they build increases, their new model is proving so lucrative that private providers, pension funds and other investors are coming along for the ride, reinventing themselves as ‘affordable housing developers’, seeing a clear business opportunity for doing something that apparently has a social purpose. But the homes they are building are not the houses we need, and the social purpose is often harder and harder to see. By far the greatest need is for social housing, and we are building the lowest levels of that since the Second World War, despite the pretty high housing outputs of housing associations. Yesterday’s speech, and its announcement of funding for housing associations, might be good news for bigger housing associations. It helps secure their long-term future, growth and business model. But whether it is the same unalloyed good for the millions of people whose lives are most damaged by the housing crisis, is another question. What is good for housing associations’ balance sheets is not necessarily what is going to solve the housing crisis. It is occasionally said that housing associations have lost their ‘social purpose’. As they look and act more and more like private property developers, and they build fewer and fewer social rented homes, it is easy to see why. If May is going to fulfill her ‘personal mission’ and start to solve the housing crisis, she will need to rapidly ramp up funding for social housing to levels much higher than they currently are, and match words with action. And if housing associations want to regain their social purpose, the largest among them should be leading the call for investment social rented housing before everything else, and taking the challenge to government.<doc-sep>Get US and UK politics insight with our free daily email briefing straight to your inbox Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Theresa May will today make another effort to remind people she has not totally forgotten the domestic agenda with a speech on housing. The Prime Minister will tell the National Housing Federation conference that “our friends and neighbours who live in social housing are not second-rate citizens.” Leaving aside how many of her friends and neighbours in her wealthy Berkshire village actually live in social housing, Mrs May’s speech is a bit rich from someone who voted against making rented homes fit for human habitation, imposed the bedroom tax, put up council taxes for council tenants, introduced market rates for council house tenants, forced housing associations to sell off properties and continues to break the promise for like-for-like replacements for every council house sold . (Image: Getty) Then there is the Tory obsession with right-to-buy which helped promulgate the stigma of council housing while leaving many families unable to live in the community in which they were brought up. And there is the help-to-buy scheme which primarily benefited those on middle incomes and fuelled housing demand when the focus should have been on supply. Just as with her just about managing speech on the steps of Downing Street, the Prime Minister identifies the problem but is blinkered to the damage caused by her own policies. Mrs May is promising housing associations an additional £2billion in funding but it is not clear where the money is coming from (that supposedly mythical magic money tree is being shaken to its roots) or over what time period it will be delivered. (Image: AFP) Mrs May then flies to Salzburg for a summit of EU leaders where she will try to sell her Chequers proposals over dinner. For the benefit of her domestic audience we are being briefed the PM will tell her fellow EU leaders to drop their “unacceptable demands”. This hardball posturing may carry more weight if her track record had not been to cede to almost every demand requested by the EU however unacceptable. The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier offered a more conciliatory tone yesterday by saying the EU was prepared to improve its offer on the Irish border issue. The language may be warmer from Mr Barnier but there has been no dramatic shift in the EU’s position. He is still talking about a border in the Irish Sea which Mrs May has repeatedly said is non-negotiable. The conversation tonight could be as chewy as the schnitzel. Today’s agenda: Theresa May addresses National Housing Federation conference. The PM then travels to Salzburg for a special summit of EU leaders. What I am reading: The Spanish city which is thriving after banning cars What I am listening to: The latest Ayes to the Left podcast: I am joined by Kevin Maguire and Ben Glaze to discuss Vince Cable’s dreary leader’s speech and what’s in store at Labour’s conference<doc-sep>"We should never see social housing as something that need simply be 'good enough', nor think that the people who live in it should be grateful for their safety net and expect no better," she said.<doc-sep>Announcing plans to invest £2bn in social housing on Wednesday, Theresa May made a series of comments about how residents in council houses feel. According to the prime minister, some people who live in social housing “feel marginalised and overlooked, and are ashamed to share the fact that their home belongs to a housing association or local authority”. “On the outside, many people in society – including too many politicians – continue to look down on social housing and, by extension, the people who call it their home,” she added. But are these assertions correct? HuffPost UK asked residents on the Girdlestone and Whittington estates in north London what they thought. Natalie Rincon, an 18-year-old who grew up on the Girdlestone estate, shrugged off May’s comments. “I don’t feel it,” she told HuffPost UK. “Other people can have that problem because it depends how much they pay [for rent] as well, how much they receive and what other people think. But for me, this is home. “Everything is close, I’ve got the station and bus stops, I’m very close to everything I need.” HuffPost UK A view of the Girdlestone estate For Gerry Hunt, 64, being able to get a council house was a “lifeline” when he found himself with nowhere to live 16 years ago after being evicted by a private landlord. “I’m very proud of my house,” he said, adding that he does worry people in his position couldn’t have the same option today. “Nowadays they [council houses] are like goldust,” said Hunt. “How many thousands of people are on the waiting list now? I’m very, very lucky.” However, not everyone feels the same way and a 71-year-old man, who did not want to be named, told HuffPost that he had experienced being “looked down” on for living in social housing since around 2009. The retired cashier lives in this house with his disabled child, after moving in with his wife – who has since died – and two other children. Citing cultural factors, he said: “When you are living in a council house and your son or daughter is getting married, people who own their houses can look down.” He also recalled feeling similar emotions around colleagues, adding: “If they come to know that if you live in a council house, they could look down a bit.” When it comes to being “overlooked”, a fourth resident – who has lived on the estate for around three years – said he felt as though the local authorities did not do enough to help tenants. HuffPost UK The Whittington estate was built in the 1970s<doc-sep>
The problem with social housing, David Cameron and George Osborne believed, was that it “just creates more Labour voters”. This attitude was confirmed by their policies. Rather than building more affordable homes, the Conservatives focused on selling off yet more social housing (through Right to Buy) and enriching homeowners (through Help to Buy). But Theresa May’s speech today confirms a marked change in Tory housing policy. Having previously announced £9bn in public funding for council and housing association homes, May announced a further £2bn for the latter from 2022-28 (the Tories previously ended almost all state funding for council homes). Labour has rightly noted that this remains insufficient to compensate for a severe shortfall (the number of homes built for social rent last year fell to a record low of 5,900). But a new trajectory has been set. Equally notable was May’s implicit rebuke to her Tory predecessors. “Many people in society – including too many politicians – continue to look down on social housing and, by extension, the people who call it their home,” the Prime Minister observed in her speech to the National Housing Federation. Who could she possibly have in mind? The rebirth of social housing reflects the wider leftwards drift of British politics. Austerity is far from over (most areas, outside of the NHS and international development, face further cuts in the next spending round). But the Thatcherite ambition to remorselessly shrink the state has been abandoned. Faced with a decaying public realm (as charted in the New Statesman’s Crumbling Britain series), and the threat of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, the Conservatives, for the first time in a decade, are embracing higher spending. Though overshadowed by the absurd claim of a “Brexit dividend”, Theresa May’s pledge to raise taxes to sustain the NHS (£25bn extra by 2023/24) was a significant concession to the Tories’ ideological opponents. Rather than challenging the state-funded model, the Conservatives have acknowledged that the public favour a social democratic approach. Polls have repeatedly shown that voters are willing to pay higher taxes to sustain the NHS (“the closest thing the English people have to a religion” in former chancellor Nigel Lawson’s imperishable description) – as they did when Gordon Brown increased National Insurance in 2002. The past Tory aim of achieving an overall budget surplus by 2019/20 has been entirely disregarded. And on the right, few now talk of cutting the top rate of income tax from 45p to 40p, still less of reducing the state to just 35 per cent of GDP (as was Osborne’s ambition). The May government, unlikely its predecessor, has borrowed to invest in council housing. This shift reflects both public weariness with austerity and Corbyn’s rise. Such is the right’s fear of a left-wing Labour government (whose renationalisation programme, for instance, enjoys overwhelming support) that they are prepared to break with ideology in an attempt to appease voters. As a Tory MP told me in 2016, the Labour leader has “moved the Overton window” – the spectrum of policies deemed acceptable by voters and the political class. But the UK's leftwards trajectory also owes something to Brexit. Though many Tory Leavers, such as Daniel Hannan and Liam Fox, are small state libertarians, their campaign was a collectivist one. The promise of £350m extra a week for the NHS (now pledged by May) was an appeal, albeit cynical, to socialist instincts. Brexit was framed as a post-austerity project. Government would expand to better care for British citizens – and to keep others out. As May’s domestic announcements show, far from heralding a a libertarian age, as Tory Leavers once hoped, Brexit is ushering in a statist one.