Can’t see the words for the trees

These books will not be published until the 22nd Century

Some authors have been known to grouch about the length of time its takes conventional publishers to release their books. Well, the writers taking part in the Future Library project will be dead and gone before their works find an audience – that’s the point

 By Mark Cantrell

 MANY writers worry about posthumous success, their works picked up for publication after they themselves have been packed away in their boxes (coffins), far too late to enjoy the recognition (or the royalties), but the authors taking part in the Future Library project relish the prospect of a 22^nd Century book launch, even if it means they’ll only be there in spirit.

Okay, so a lot can happen in the space of a hundred years; given some of the increasingly near-apocalyptic projections around climate change, peak oil and resource depletion, not to mention old-fashioned human recalcitrance, there’s a hell of a lot that might go wrong in the meantime to leave this literary time capsule forever unopened.

But for now there’s plenty of optimism, not to mention the 1,000 trees planted specially for the project at the forest of Nordmarka, near Oslo in Norway. In time, these will be pulped to make the paper on which to print the collected authors’ works.

Future Library is a century-long public art project that aims, ultimately, to transform those trees into an anthology of books. Every year from 2014 until 2114, an author will be selected to contribute an unpublished manuscript to be held in a special repository, sealed away and never seen, until its publication in the 22^nd Century.

Make no bones about it, most of the authors who contribute to this project will be dust long before those trees surrender their cellulose flesh to provide life for the manuscripts held in their century-long stasis. So too its creator.

At 75, Canadian author Margaret Atwood certainly will: as will the Scottish artist Katie Paterson, 33, who devised this century-long endeavour. But don’t we all hope to leave behind a little something of ourselves for the generations to come, some legacy of our existence, even if signing up to an arboreal literary mausoleum is a little, well, out there in the uncertain currents of time. Still, it’s one hell of a tribute to literature, and the way it has tangled its roots deep into the human experience.

”Future Library is a living, breathing, organic artwork, unfolding over 100 years,” said Paterson. “It will live and breathe through the material growth of trees – I imagine the tree rings as chapters in a book. The unwritten words, year by year, activated, materialised. The visitor’s experience of being in the forest, changing over decades, being aware of the slow growth of the trees containing the writers’ ideas like an unseen energy – that’s something that has to come into being.”

Atwood is one of the (too few) grand dames of the science fiction genre, though she herself has famously stepped back from claiming her writing as such, preferring to refer to it as more speculative in nature. She’s written poetry and fiction, both for adults and children, been translated into more than 40 languages, and has won numerous awards, including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C Clarke Award for best science fiction, and the Canadian Booksellers’ Lifetime Achievement Award.

One might say from her CV that she certainly doesn’t need the posterity of the Future Library project, but as a committed environmentalist and political activist, no doubt the Future Library is a little hard to resist. As the inaugural contributor, she certainly adds some gravitas to the affair.

”The longevity of this artwork will make it resonate with the people of Oslo for the next 100 years and it holds a treasure for future generations to enjoy,” said Anne Beate Hovind, project manager with Bjorvika Utvikling, the organisation that commissioned Paterson’s art project. “The warning voice of Margaret Atwood has resonated through our lives for decades. Her personal commitment to global and environmental issues makes her an ideal author for Future Library. I am moved by the thought that my descendents will receive this gift from her.”

Atwood, the author of The Handsmaid Tale, Oryx and Crake among others, is currently working on her manuscript and this will be handed over at a special event to be held in May 2015. From then, each and every year, one more author will be invited to add to the collection.

”I am very honoured, and also happy to be part of this endeavour,” said Atwood. “This project, at least, believes the human race will still be around in a hundred years. Future Library is bound to attract a lot of attention over the decades, as people follow the progress of the trees, note what takes up residence in and around them, and try to guess what the writers have put into their sealed boxes.”

The manuscripts will be held in trust at a specially designed room in the new Deichmanske Public Library, which is set to open in 2018 in Bjorvika, Oslo. According to Paterson, the room is intended to be a place of contemplation. It will be lined with wood from the forest, and the authors’ names and titles of their works will be on display, but the manuscripts will remain sealed away, ever a mystery; none shall read what they contain until their publication.

The artist will have a hand in selecting and inviting authors to contribute to the project in coming years, but obviously she’s not going to live forever. To that end, the project will be managed by the Future Library Trust, which will consist of leading publishers, editors and other curatorial types.

”Katie’s project offers depth, reflection and perspective,” said Kristin Danielsen, director of Deichmanske Bibliotek [Public Library], which will house the manuscripts. “Knut Hamsun famously said that ‘a hundred years from now, all is forgotten’. In this case, he could not be more wrong. Well, we might be forgotten. In 2114 none of us will be around, but the Future Library will. This artwork is like a century long pregnancy growing ever so slowly and ever so secretly, like a locked diary. This is a beautiful orchestra of time.”

Paterson added: “Future Library has nature, the environment at its core – and involves ecology, the interconnectedness of things, those living now and still to come. It questions the present tendency to think in short bursts of time, making decisions only for us living now.

”The timescale is 100 years, not vast in cosmic terms. However, in many ways the human timescale of 100 years is more confronting. It is beyond many of our current lifespans, but close enough to come face to face with it, to comprehend and relativise.”

An interesting perspective for sure. For those who might contemplate the vastness of cosmic time, the sheer indifference of those incomprehensible aeons, it is nevertheless the mayfly moments of human temporal spans that truly reveal the dispassionate cruelty of time.

We live in an era of rapid change, where technology is transforming everything in its path towards the future, vowing to wash away everything we might once have taken as solid and eternal; print is expected to be dead, the future undeniably digital. The tech gurus have decreed it so; what, then, for the trees in this anticipated post-analogue future?

A hundred years from now, the world might still turn, civilisation may well be as rowdy as it ever was, but can we be so certain that it will remember how to make a printing press, let alone bind a book? Or maybe we’ll have fallen so in love with those trees, we’d rather hug them close, rather than see them sacrificed for the revival of dormant works of century-old literature.

Time will tell. Until then, the trees will keep their authors’ secrets.

This article was orginally written for the author's blog and first appeared 6 September 2014

Cover Story: The truth is out there

Samizdat for social housing

The social housing sector has been on the losing side of a fierce propaganda war, but with a general election looming, the time has come for a renewed fight to win the hearts and minds needed to secure its future

By Mark Cantrell

From Housing magazine, October/November 2014

WE may not like it, but we’re talking propaganda.

The word has long-since fallen out of favour, seldom used these days, and hardly surprising since it has sinister connotations but it’s alive and well and in use all around us to this day. Generally speaking, it’s considered a ‘bad guy’ thing, even though the ‘good guys’ perfected many of its techniques.

The propagandists of old bequeathed their dark arts to a range of modern day commercial and political functions, generally accepted as respectable: advertising, marketing, communications, public relations.

In a sense, these discrete (but overlapping) functions are the media savvy descendents; they do much the same and so much more.

“Public relations uses many of the tools of marketing and may be used to promote a particular product but often it is employed in pursuit of a slightly different goal... PR is often concerned with selling persons, government policies, corporations and other institutions,” said the organisation Corporate Watch in a 2003 overview of the industry.

“In addition to marketing products, PR has been variously used to attract investments, influence legislation, raise companies’ public profiles, put a positive spin on disasters, undermine citizens’ campaigns, gain public support for conducting warfare, and to change the public perception of repressive regimes.

“In a modern democracy the mechanisms of propaganda and control must necessarily be far more subtle than those employed by more repressive regimes, and PR or ‘spin doctoring’ has become ubiquitous in the Western political economy.”

Corporate Watch highlights something that is ignored at the sector’s peril: and that’s the overt – and covert – political purpose that public relations (marketing and communications and all the rest) serves in the wrong – or the right – hands. It’s a partisan venture; less about the disinterested dissemination of information, and more about setting agendas, claiming the ‘common sense’.

Propaganda, or public relations if you want to be polite, aims to manage public perceptions, shift attitudes, encourage lines of thinking, shape social attitudes, and – to paraphrase Josef Stalin – become “engineers of souls”. The reasons for all this may be well intentioned, even necessary; conversely they may be cynical and self-serving.

A propaganda war, if you want to be uncouth about it, is where truth must wrestle in the mud with lies, until observers may find it difficult to distinguish one from the other, but that’s not to say that truth inevitably becomes a casualty.

No doubt that sounds a little strong for social housing’s ears, but it ought to be familiar with the darker aspects; it’s long been on the receiving end of negative stereotyping, especially in terms of how tenants are portrayed. Indeed, one might say the cruel caricature of tenants as ‘workshy scroungers’ is an example of a marketer’s dream – it’s a ‘brand’ that long-since went ‘viral’. Sadly, disdain for the poor has long been an easy sell.

So, where does all this leave social housing? Caught in the thick of it. The sector – landlords and tenants alike – is on the receiving end of a propaganda onslaught. But it’s not helpless. We live in a raucously pluralistic society, one of the reasons so much effort is put into such attempts to shape public perceptions; the sector doesn’t have to cede the field. It can challenge how it is perceived.

“Barack Obama’s first election campaign was focused on one word, ‘change’. For social housing it should be two words, ‘more homes’,” said Mark Thomas, chief executive of Word Association. “It’s pleasing to see that the sector is united behind the Homes for Britain campaign launched during the Autumn’s party conference season. Similarly focused campaigns such as the NHF’s Yes to Homes, and SHOUT (Social Housing Under Threat) need to reinforce, work together, and be part of this overall ‘more homes’ message. This call has more clarity and mass appeal than other messages debated within the sector.”

Audience is an important factor; the sector has many, so its campaigns to win hearts and minds in the run up to the next election inevitably involve multiple fronts. This is going to push its marketing and communications teams, whether external agents such as Thomas’s company or internal teams to the fore in their campaigning efforts. But they can’t rely on one strategy for all fronts; with so many audiences, targeted strikes work best.

“As with all good marketing communications, knowing the audience and crafting appropriate messages is key and this is no different in social housing,” said Jean Clarke, customer communications manager at Merseyside’s Liverpool Mutual Homes (LMH). “Our audience is wide-ranging and includes but is not limited to tenants and residents, staff, stakeholders, the sector, local councillors and MPs, business, community groups and industry bodies. Communicating with all these groups is not an easy process; we’ve got to tailor the message accordingly and use the most appropriate medium.”

Even politicians aren’t immune to the seductive wiles of a well-conducted campaign, as a recent effort by the First Ark Group revealed. Posters are a mainstay of propaganda campaigns, and the organisation put this to good effect when it teamed up with the Social Economy Alliance (SEA) to let those in the Westminster village know in no uncertain terms – the revolution is coming.

For Left and Right alike, there was much to catch the eye in these mashed up portrayals of well-known political figures, some of them iconic figureheads of ideological movements that have rocked the world. We had Margaret Thatcher as Che Guevara, or was it the other way around?

Then there was Winston Churchill as the last Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev; Boris Johnson as Karl Marx; a striking Ronald Reagan as Fidel Castro, complete with Havana cigar; and finally a rendition of Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Lord John Prescott.

The aim was to push the SEA’s 2015 election manifesto, which is pushing for greater emphasis on social enterprise and the social economy; the best ideas of Left and Right, as it were. By all accounts, this unashamedly political campaign caught the eye, and the attention, of its intended audience and more.

“We call it our manifesto for UK-wide prosperity and it’s about how we can create more enterprising places so that we have stronger local economies that can contribute to the UK. We want responsible business where society profits,” said Bob Taylor, First Ark’s chief executive. “The [posters] are an attention grabber, but the important point is it’s got to have some substance and solutions underneath. We’ve had a lot of feedback from MPs and MPs’ agents wanting to know more about what we’re doing. The campaign was trying to raise awareness among potential policy makers and MPs so in that respect it’s worked exceptionally well.”

Alone, this social economy campaign obviously won’t win sufficient hearts and minds needed for social housing to secure its future, but it demonstrates how the sector can challenge – even change – perceptions.

There’s another word to consider alongside propaganda, one that emerged out of the old Soviet Union dissident movement – and that’s samizdat.

Propaganda doesn’t have to be a dirty word. As the election looms, perhaps it’s time the sector started pushing a little samizdat of its own. There are hearts and minds to win; an established order to crack. Go to it.


This article first appeared as the cover story for the October/November 2014 print edition of Housing magazine. It was subsequently republished on the Housing Excellence website, 17 November 2014

Don't let the bedroom tax bite

A bad business for everyone caught in the bedroom tax trap

Collecting the rent is a basic function for any landlord, but a succession of reports has made it clear that the Government’s so-called bedroom tax has undermined this existential necessity by pushing more people into arrears

By Mark Cantrell

From Housing magazine, August/September 2014

ENOUGH with the bedroom tax, already. Sadly, it’s not so easy to wish it away; as those on the receiving end – landlords and tenants alike – know only too well.

Some might prefer to use a less contentious term, like ‘removing the spare room subsidy’ or the ‘under-occupation penalty’, but whatever the moniker, the bedroom tax is proving mayhem for those trying to make ends meet – and that includes collecting the rent.

Even the ministers and their minions at the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) appear to be cottoning on, quietly, to the hardships the policy is causing. They must be. Why else slip out a damning report while attention was distracted by David Cameron’s Cabinet reshuffle?

The interim report – ‘Evaluation of Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy’ (RSRS) – was produced by Ipsos MORI and the Cambridge Centre for Housing & Planning Research. Initially, at the onset of the bedroom tax, some 547,342 households were affected, but by August 2013 this was down 4.6% to 522,342. That decline is pretty much accounted for by the 4.5% of affected households that managed to downsize to another property. A further 1.4% – mostly in the North – shifted to the private rented sector.

That leaves the majority potentially stuck with a shortfall in their ability to pay the rent; a headache for household and landlord alike. During the first five months of the bedroom tax, 41% of tenants managed to pay that shortfall in full, 39% have paid some, and 20% have paid none at all.

“There was widespread concern that those who were paying were making cuts to other household essentials or incurring other debits in order to pay the rent,” the report said. “57% of claimants reported cutting back on what they deemed household essentials and 35% on non-essentials in order to pay their shortfall. A quarter of claimants (26%) said they had borrowed money, mostly from family and friends (21% of all claimants); 3% had borrowed on a credit card and 3% taken payday loans, although we do not know whether they have a history for borrowing for other purposes. In addition, 10% had used savings and 9% been given money from family.”

As it is, the interim report played it rather coy with the rent arrears question. It found that total arrears have gone up by 16% between April and October 2013, but added that the “cause of this is uncertain and we cannot directly attribute this increase to the RSRS”.

There’s no doubt over why as far as the National Housing Federation (NHF) is concerned. As the organisation’s chief executive, David Orr said: “We have published a series of reports highlighting the flaws of the bedroom tax, as have many of our members. Time and time again it has been shown that the bedroom tax is pushing people into rent arrears and people have been unable to downsize because of a lack of smaller properties. Now the figures from the DWP prove it is not working; surely now it is time for the Government to admit they got it wrong and repeal this ill-thought policy.”

Back in May, the NHF released its own report on the impact of welfare reform, and in particular the bedroom tax, on tenants. Carried out by Ipsos MORI, the research found that:

• 67% of affected tenants were finding it difficult to pay their rent, compared to 31% of non-affected tenants
• Affected tenants were nearly four times as likely to say they had needed to borrow money to help pay the rent since 1 April 2013 (46%) as before that date (12%). Non-affected tenants were not significantly more likely to say they needed to borrow money to pay the rent
• 42% of affected tenants said they were in arrears at the time of the survey. This compared with 25% of those not affected by the measure. All told, 31% of tenants surveyed said they had been in rent arrears for most or all of the time since 1 April 2013
• 69% of affected tenants said that prior to 1 April 2013 they had never been in rent arrears
• 35% of affected tenants said they had never been in arrears either before or after 1 April 2013

The study went on to say that of those tenants affected by the bedroom tax, 32% had cut back their spending on food, while 26% had reduced their heating/ energy use. Meanwhile, 18% were found to be spending less on nonessentials, and 10% were applying for Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP). A quarter of those affected had said they hadn’t done anything in response to the size criteria.

“People stung by the bedroom tax are being forced to make difficult choices on which bills to pay and which essentials to go without. They are living in fear that they will lose their homes and have resorted to borrowing from friends and family to try and get by,” Orr said at the time it the NHF released its findings.

“Housing associations have spent millions of pounds working more closely with their tenants, introducing projects to tackle fuel poverty and working with food banks to help alleviate food poverty. But these services have costs, which leaves less money for building new homes. The results of [this] survey are depressing. As we feared and warned, the bedroom tax is having a disastrous impact. The only solution is to abolish this policy which fails on every level.”

And it’s not just housing association tenants. Councils, too, are feeling the pinch, with over a third of stock-retaining authorities’ tenants in arrears nine months after the introduction of the bedroom tax, according to research published ahead of this summer’s CIH conference.

The result of a joint research project by the National Federation of ALMOs (NFA), the Association of Retained Council Housing (ARCH), and the Councils With ALMOs Group (CWAG), which between them represent over 1.3 million council properties, this report found that more than half of their tenants affected by the bedroom tax are in arrears – an increase of 27%.

“[W]elfare reform is still adversely affecting both tenants and landlords,” said Chloe Fletcher, policy director at the NFA. “Housing organisations across the country have put a great deal of effort into reducing the impact of reforms such as the bedroom tax and it is certain that without this support and assistance, the situation would be even more serious.”

However, Andrew Warburton, the policy director at ARCH, believes that “we are yet to see the full impact of these reforms”.

“The majority of under-occupying tenants are still trying to ‘pay and stay’ but few will be able to sustain this approach,” he said.

Rent collection is an existential basic for any landlord, and it ought to be a relatively straightforward function, but the above reports and others have amply demonstrated that the bedroom tax has served to undermine not only the sector’s social purpose – but its bottom line too.

The sector may not be suffering arrears as a result of direct Government decree – but it might as well be.

# # #

Damage limitation

Housing associations may not have much room for manoeuvre when it comes to dealing with the ramifications of the bedroom tax, but that’s not to say they are entirely helpless.

Thrive Homes, for instance, braced itself for impact by budgeting for an increase in rent arrears ahead of its introduction. From October 2012 it also put into effect a series of measures to mitigate its impact. The organisation must have done something right, because it claims to have seen a decrease in arrears from 1.53% in March 2013 to 1.1% in March 2014.

Among the measure it implemented, Thrive identified those tenants likely to be affected by the bedroom tax and contacted them directly, offering help with such things as managing their finances, looking at their benefits entitlement, as well as looking at options such as moving to a smaller home.

“Thrive has put in place a flexible allocations policy allowing it to provide the best solutions and support for people to get off benefits and into employment,” said chief executive Elspeth Mackenzie. “This has included offering practical advice and assistance, and financial support to move where needed. Additionally, highly popular speed-dating-style events that get people together to discuss mutual home exchanges.

“[We] also review transfer cases and tenants registered with Home Swapper to establish chain mutual exchanges by directly matching tenants in different sized homes. This is providing tenants with additional housing options and helping Thrive to provide sustainable communities.”

Liverpool Mutual Homes (LMH) has also found itself changing the way it operates in an effort to mitigate the impact of welfare reforms.

“We have had to do a great deal of ‘hand holding’ – really intensive work with tenants who are being impacted by multiple changes, not just the bedroom tax. Many are vulnerable and have little or no money management or debt management capability and are financially excluded,” said Angela Forshaw, LMH’s director of housing and customer services, who also chairs Merseyside’s Welfare Reform Group. “Our approach is to try to make a difference on all fronts. To do this we have moved resources into welfare reform awareness and welfare rights advice work. We now make applications for DHP on behalf of tenants. We are picking up people who have been sanctioned and signpost them to foodbanks.”

The organisation is also trying create a culture of self help, with an officer from the DWP seconded to help tenants find local training and employment opportunities. It has also created a small team to work with tenants who need additional support, such as sorting out utilities, rent payment methods, and so on, to help them make a success of their tenancy.


This article first appeared in the August/September 2014 print edition of Housing magazine. It was subsequently re-published on the Housing Excellence website, 1 October 2014

Interview: Steve Stride, CIH president

Stop throwing rocks at politicians

Swallow the cynicism and stop throwing rocks at the politicians (however tempting it might be), because as Steve Stride, president of the Chartered Institute of Housing tells Mark Cantrell, the next two years are going to be “make or break” for the sector 

From the August/September edition of Housing magazine

Steve Stride

THIS is a critical time not just for the housing sector, but also for the millions of people across the country looking to secure a decent home at a price they can genuinely afford.

Whether they are looking to the social sector, or private rent, or cling on still to the faded dream of owning their own home, people are depending on the housing industry and politicians to work together to find a solution to the undersupply of housing and the crisis in affordability, which is chewing its way through the social ranks.

“The Government needs to work with us, with housing professionals, because the housing crisis is affecting across the board now, across all communities, all classes if you like; they need to listen to us because of that,” said Steve Stride, president of the Chartered Institute of Housing.

But that’s not going to happen if the sector keeps on “throwing rocks”, as he puts it. Stride is adamant that it must engage with the politicians, especially now; the sector has plenty to say that’s worth hearing, after all, and the politicians are willing to listen, if housing professionals can ditch the cynicism about the political arena.

In this, the sector is doubtless reflecting the wider public disquiet and sense of detachment from the political process that has cast a pall over national democratic discourse for a number of years. But with a general election looming, the sector has a critical window of opportunity to make its case heard fully – finally – and get it implanted into the heart and mind of the next government, regardless of whether Conservatives or Labour or another coalition finds itself occupying the control rooms of State.
“In the past, as a sector, as an industry – and I am talking in the broadest sense – we have tended to throw rocks at whichever government is in power and we haven’t looked at ourselves enough. We have done things wrong in the past – we haven’t got it right – so we need to change ourselves. As a sector, as an industry, we’ve got to challenge ourselves,” he said.

“The other key point is that we need to engage with politicians, so it’s not just about throwing rocks at them, it’s about recognising we need to change as well. A lot of people in the industry, not just housing professionals, but wider than that, we distance ourselves from the politicians too quickly – we’re too cynical about them. So we need to get close to our MPs, speak to them about the issues, especially with this general election year coming up. It’s an opportunity we can’t afford to miss.”

So, it’s a make or break year; no, it’s a “make or break two years”, Stride emphasised. “It’s a unique opportunity because other issues will come [along] and cloud politicians’ minds… and at the moment everybody does see the housing crisis. It is a real opportunity to influence, and to combat some of the negativity that’s around at the moment about social housing.”

He refers here to the programmes such as Benefits Street and How To Get A Council House that have caused consternation among the social housing sector for the way they fed stereotypic views of council – and by extension housing association – tenants. Such programmes help stir toxic perceptions that make it that much harder to tackle the under-supply of social homes.

“Again, I say to people, yes that is bad and frustrating, but we have got to fight back,” Stride added. “Council Homes Chat and Housing Day [social media initiatives] and the SHOUT campaign, and all those things that are trying to go back against that are good. So it is as much about influencing and getting a positive view about us as well as putting the case for the whole housing system, and getting the investment to sort out the housing crisis.”

Staying positive, resisting the urge to throw rocks at the politicians, and engaging with them, reflects something of the theme of Stride’s presidential year – leadership. One might say, then, that he is calling on the industry, to play a part in leading them towards a solution, rather than browbeating or berating them into submission.

For that matter, one might argue, that when in ministerial office at least, politicians have access to bigger sticks. The signs are promising, however, that the politicians are prepared to listen, and are looking to those who have potential answers to the perennial question – how do we solve this crisis? For Stride, and with no disrespect to Kris Hopkins, that’s why the appointment of Brandon Lewis as minister for both housing and planning – at once promoting the housing brief, as well as ‘joining the portfolio dots’ – is a positive signal about the status of housing in Government circles.

“That’s a big step forward to combine those roles and to promote it in status. I’d almost say that’s quite exciting, because the Government is recognising that they’ve got to do something about planning,” said Stride. “What’s going to be interesting is that, whoever wins [the election], even if the Conservatives are back, they’re going to have to bite the bullet on localism.”

Even before Lewis’s appointment, it was clear that those in Government and Opposition circles have begun to sit up and take notice; before, during and after the CIH conference, rhetorical salvoes have been loosed that make it clear that housing is set to become a major election issue.

The election certainly places Stride – and his eventual successor Geraldine Howley – in a curious position. Sure, they stand aloof from the political machinations – it doesn’t do for a professional body to pick sides – but as the politicians start looking beyond the ‘Westminster Village’ to succour support, and develop election-winning packages, it opens up the scope for the kind of engagement Stride was talking about.

“I say to everyone that the pre-election year is important, because the manifestoes are being influenced, but as important is the year after. So next year, for Geraldine Howley, it will be a key year because that’s when the [new Government] is fresh in, whatever political party is in, and they’re going to be open to new ideas,” said Stride.

“That’s what we’re going to be getting over to them: that there is a housing crisis, that people think it’s important and they don’t think [the politicians] have got the answers, so they need to work with us and engage with us and listen to us. It can be a very big win for whichever political party picks it up.

“There are two big asks in that, and this is where my role as president comes in: that the next Government commits to solving the housing crisis in a generation, and to publish a plan to do so within a year of taking office, which brings in my point that it is not just this year, but the year after, that matters for influence.”

Time, then, not for throwing rocks, but for inserting a crowbar to apply a little careful leverage – and open up the political mindset to the possibilities of enabling housing of all tenures to deliver a solution.

This interview first appeared in the August/September print edition of Housing magazine. It was subsequently republished on the Housing Excellence website, 7 October 2014

Cover Story: Lord Richard Best, Peer of the Housing Realm

Lord of the Hanover

Lord Richard Best may not be a roundhead, but he certainly takes pride in being a parliamentarian – and he thinks it’s time the Government stopped being cavalier about the housing crisis

By Mark Cantrell

From Housing magazine, June-July 2014

THERE are times when a question misfires, and this was possibly one of them. In a sense, though, the answer it provoked seemed to encapsulate the essence of the conversation.

Lord Richard Best had spoken frankly and thoughtfully on a range of housing topics, but that final question – was he hopeful that we’ll find a solution to this protracted housing crisis? – casually thrown in as an invitation for an upbeat closure, inadvertently struck a rather sombre note.

“No,” he said, simply. “It’s going to take 20 years, and actuarially I might just be around to see the better times that follow, but I am quite close to ‘not in my lifetime’, I think. People have got to raise the stakes – a greater sense of urgency is needed.”

That’s a sobering thought. Lord Best isn’t alone in facing up to mortality’s ticking clock; none of us are getting any younger. The housing crisis, meanwhile, continues its rampage, ravaging dreams and aspirations, cramping lives, and curtailing opportunities for both social and economic progress. At the heart of it all, however, the housing crisis is in fact a human crisis; a lot of people won’t live to see the easing of this critical lack of affordability in housing, if not for themselves then certainly for their children or grandchildren.

That’s easily overlooked in the deluge of statistics and guidance, political rhetoric and policy goals, corporate mission statements and technocratic homilies.

But despite his frank prognosis, Lord Best is anything but a defeatist; the beast can be tamed, if we’re willing to tackle the problems decisively, and to break from many cherished totems of the past.

One of these is to bring to heel an ideological trope that has long-held the main political parties enthralled: the belief that the market, and nothing but the market, is the best arbiter of what needs to be done. Not so, suggests Lord Best. It has its place, but the time has come for government to bite the bullet and take a strong interventionist approach to rebalance the housing eco-system.

“[A solution] requires the action of governments, local and central, to make things happen. We’ve got to the position now where we just cannot leave things to the market to handle. We’ve tried that. We’ve had about 20 years of seeing whether the market could fill the gaps [in supply] – and it hasn’t worked,” said Lord Best.

“We know, we’ve tested this theory to destruction; we know that the market on its own will produce about half, maybe just a fraction above half, of the homes that we need, so we’re left with the question, what do we do about the other half?

“For three decades it used to be roughly 50:50 council housing and housebuilding for sale, then we cut out the council housing bit. We talked about the housing associations taking the place of councils, but they only did about 25-30% of what councils did, so that left a wide gap.

“The housebuilders also dip in times of recession, of course, so they are not a reliable source of their half. They’ll do half in ordinary circumstances but they won’t do much better than that in the good times. We had the boom years; they still only did about half of what was needed, and we’ve had them in the bad times and they fell away then like anybody else.”

The failure down the decades to ensure enough homes are built is what has more or less landed us in this mess, as Lord Best reminded, and it has ‘snowballed’ over time, with housing delivery plodding contentedly behind hastening demand.

“The next generation is held to ransom by the market, it has to pay through the nose, either getting not brilliant, not secure accommodation in the private sector, or really enormous monthly outgoings on mortgage repayments,” he said. “Neither of these is satisfactory; they’re very bad for the wider economy and very bad for the families bringing up children, so we have really got it wrong. We need to get back into building big time, and I don’t think that happens through relying on the housebuilders.

“They will do about half of what’s needed; they always did do about half. The mistake we made was to think they would do the other half as well. It’s never been in their interests, or in their whole business plan, to produce all the houses everybody needs. They need a tight market; they need rising prices to make their profits.”

And that’s where intervention comes into play, to establish – or rather re-establish – a mixed economy in housing. The Government, Lord Best suggests, is far from ready, but there are signs that the understanding is beginning to shine through the tinted spectacles of political outlook.

“They recognise the need to build a lot more homes, but I think that the radical steps that will eventually become required in crisis – in an emergency, which is really what we’re working ourselves up to –they’re not yet ready for that,” he said. “It’s going to take more than the measures we’ve got so far. In incremental steps, they’re doing some good things… So they’ve come up with some bits and pieces, which haven’t been all bad, but the package as a whole, the mix, is not strong enough. We’re going to need more interventionist policies. They’re not up for it yet, but there’s some signs of interest in taking more drastic measures.”

But what of the Labour Party’s emerging position? Well, much of a muchness, Lord Best suggested.

“Labour is saying rather similar things to the current Government, which is more should be done and more homes should be built, but they’re not coming out with a bold set of policies as are going to be needed to make a real difference – yet,” he said.

“They are talking about 200,000 homes a year. It’s actually about 250,000 that we need, but who’s counting? We’re only doing about 130,000-something at the moment, so it’s a big change and improvement. I think we will see more from Labour, but whether it’s Conservative or Labour, or even LibDems who might be in coalition with either of those two after the election, it’s about interventionist policies that do things on some scale, and recognise that we’ve got such a big issue that you’ve got to take big decisions.”

As a crossbench peer, Lord Best is beholden to no party, and has none of the political baggage that comes with a party rosette, but it means he’s in no position to make those decisions, only seek to influence the decision-makers. In that sense, you could say he’s not unlike those working in the wider housing sector; he can present the evidence, make the arguments, lobby ministers, pull together the experts to make their case, but as a peer, he is located in the very heart of the political process, and that makes him harder for ministers to dismiss.

Just don’t call him a politician; Lord Best very much regards himself as a parliamentarian. The distinction is subtle, but important, and has been rather lost in the hurly burly of modern politics; it’s one MPs might once have made, too, with some sincerity, before the rise of those vote-harvesting machines known as political parties.

Not a problem Lord Best faces; he can serve as a principled pragmatist, representing the housing sector according to his own judgement and experience born of his long and distinguished career as a housing association chief, head honcho of the National Housing Federation’s forerunner, and chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, to name but a few. Indeed, it’s kind of ironic, and perhaps a tad disconcerting for those interested in constitutional reform, that a peer in the upper chamber is effectively fulfilling Edmund Burke’s notions of representative democracy once expected of the elected lower chamber.

Outside of Parliament, Lord Best retains an active engagement with the sector. Among his ongoing roles, he’s been the chair of Hanover Housing since 2006. The organisation provides retirement housing and extra care facilities, with around 19,000 properties on its books, and that returns us to that nagging issue of age. Lord Best confesses a “fascination” with demographic change and the challenges of housing an ageing society.

“This is not least because of my own great age and the recognition that you don’t get younger each year – it seems to work the other way,” he joked. “Because of that I am absolutely fascinated by this debate on how we are going to sort the costs and hazards of an ageing population, with housing as a really central instrument in doing that, and I think that we can. It is the key to an awful lot of the ways in which people can retain independence.”

More than that, he believes addressing the problems of housing an ageing society will go a long way towards tackling the wider crisis; the key is in delivering the kind of housing that those in ‘extended middle age’ will find attractive enough to be encouraged to downsize. Lord Best set out his ideas in a collection of essays Hanover published to mark its 50th anniversary. The organisation invited thinktanks from across the political spectrum to present their ideas on the issue of an ageing society, and Lord Best provided the final chapter, appropriately entitled ‘Accommodating an Extended Middle Age’.

“Nothing happens nowadays between 55 and 75 and then you get old. It can happen quite quickly, or not – some people keep on going – but it is really an extended middle age,” he said. “During that time, people in extended middle age can solve the problems for the next generation by moving out of three- and four-bedroom houses. They can [also] solve the problem for the older generation themselves by getting sorted now in somewhere that’s manageable and they can afford the costs.”

Hanover is on a “mission” to do just that, he said, by providing homes that will appeal to people in this extended middle age group and so encourage them to downsize. In so doing, it will test Lord Best’s theory about it being the key to our long-standing housing woes.

“These people in extended middle age hold the key to solving the problems of young and old on either side of them, but they don’t see it,” he said. “They sit there and dig in: ‘you’ll never move me, I’ll go out in a box’. We’ve got to change that.”

One might say the same for the politicians.


This article first appeared as the cover story for the June-July 2014 print edition of Housing magazine. It was subsequently republished on the Housing Excellence website, 18 July 2014

Cover Story: New campaign to fight for social housing’s future

SHOUT at the devil

For too long social rented housing has been the tenure that dare not speak its name, but now a small group of housing professionals have broken ranks to challenge the silence – and demand it be rebuilt as an essential public asset

By Mark Cantrell

From Housing magazine, April/May 2014

A long time ago, at the Peckover Street conference in Bradford, a rallying cry was heard that heralded the birth of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) – the antecedent of Ed Miliband’s party today – that set out to win political representation for working class people, and with it the reforms necessary to improve their lot in life: “It’s time we had a party that will.”

In a sense, the founding members of the Social Housing Under Threat (SHOUT) campaign have picked up that rallying cry, or at least its echo, but their aims are less overtly political and more tightly focused: they are looking for a party that will acknowledge social rented housing as a public good, and which will endeavour to save it as a public asset for current and future generations.

That may or may not be a tall order. In a more immediate sense, SHOUT answers a ‘call to arms’ issued last year in the Guardian newspaper (16 December 2013) by former Labour housing minister John Healey MP, who effectively challenged the sector to show some guts and fight for its future.

“If social housing’s own won’t stand up and speak out loudly, then present [government] policy will prevail by default,” he said. “Eighteen months out from the general election, we need to refresh and remake the case for public housing. That’s why I ... will continue to campaign in parliament. But politicians can only get you so far and it will be a wider swell of pressure from those who believe in the economic and social case for public housing that really matters. For those people and organisations, it’s time to stand up and be counted.”

SHOUT intends to count a great deal and make its collective voice heard – loud and proud. Although Labour is the primary target of its lobbying efforts, when it comes to finding the ‘party that will’, the colour of the rosette is neither here nor there.

“The main focus is going to be on the Labour Party because that’s where most of the potential for action is,” said Colin Wiles, a columnist and independent housing consultant, who is also one of the founding members. “But one of the things we’re aiming for is to go back to that kind of post-war consensus where both Conservative and Labour parties were almost competing with each other to build the most homes – and the most affordable homes – and that’s what we want to get back to. We are a cross-party campaign and we do want to appeal to all sensible people across the political spectrum.”

The ‘we’ at present consists of Wiles, along with Alison Inman, Tom Murtha, Kate Murray, Aileen Evans, Martin Wheatley, and a few others. Together they form the steering committee, which is currently putting the organisational structure in place. A formal launch is planned for next month, and in June SHOUT will be taking its message to the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) conference and exhibition.

“It’s early days as yet but we did feel that it was urgent and that we needed to do something quickly,” Wiles added. “The view we all took is that social housing – or social rented housing, which is really the focus of the campaign – is a most precious resource that’s been built up over generations. Selling it off without replacing it is very short-sighted and it’s going to add to the numbers of homeless and also add to the housing benefit bill.”

The campaign may be in the embryonic stage, but with its submission to the Lyons Review, authored by Wheatley, it has clearly and succinctly placed its cards on the table.

The submission is pretty much a ready made manifesto for social housing (see below); one that is open for any party to pick up and run with. The core of it is the simple premise: to end the residualisation of the tenure.

“We don’t want social housing to become residualised, as in just housing the most needy and the poorest, because that’s part of the narrative that’s come up about social housing being a place for ‘losers’ and being stigmatised,” said Wiles.

The document claims that the Lyons Review’s stipulated target of 200,000 homes a year by 2020 cannot be achieved unless 100,000 are social rented homes. Moreover, so much else depends on increasing the supply, not least welfare reform and the efforts to drive down the housing benefits bill; making ‘social’ housing more expensive via Affordable Rent just doesn’t add up, as far as SHOUT is concerned.

“’Social housing’ must mean housing at rents comparable to traditional social housing rents. The ‘Affordable Rent’ tenure introduced under the current government is not in fact affordable for hard-working families, it cannot be financed sustainably by social landlords, and it is poor value-for-money for the taxpayer,” said the document.

“We can afford 100,000 new social units a year. Its cost is equivalent to just a few days of welfare spending. Even if the entire £4.5bn a year cost beyond current housing capital had to be found within spending totals, it could be accommodated. In fact, the net impact on public spending totals would be significantly reduced by savings on welfare, health and other programmes, and the provision of units by private developers through s106. It would be an investment which could carry on producing benefits to the taxpayer and society indefinitely.”

Where there’s a will there’s a way, and in its quest for the ‘party that will’ save social housing, SHOUT is laying bare the heart and soul of the Labour Party, given the echoes of its founding idealism; in another sense, however, it also invites the Conservatives to undertake some serious soul-searching. The Conservative Party, after all, has long prided itself on being the party of business, supportive of the entrepreneurial spirit, the stewards of sound economic management.

With its ‘manifesto’, SHOUT has effectively presented Conservative ministers with the opportunity to peruse a business proposal for investment in the essential infrastructure supporting the enterprise that is the United Kingdom; a chance to prove the mettle of their self-image as shrewd and rational managers of a modern economy.

But, of course, it’s not just about the economy; there’s the notion of the good society, too, one that strives to meet social need for all its citizens. Taken together, you’d think there’d be plenty there to unite both Conservative and Labour alike to a common cause.

Wiles added: “We think social housing is worth preserving because it has a good track record and it’s housed millions of people. Selling it off cheap without replacing it is going to cost the country in terms of added homelessness and housing benefit.

“A lot of properties that have been sold under Right To Buy are now being let privately at much higher rents and therefore the people in them on housing benefit are having to claim higher levels of housing benefit. We think that’s a mad situation when you could have retained those properties at lower rents. If people wanted to buy, they could have bought elsewhere.

“The whole thing is a false economy in our view. So that’s what we’re campaigning for: we think it’s worth preserving before it’s too late.”

# # #

Demand and deliver

SHOUT’s submission to the Lyons Review sums up the campaign’s essential purpose. It has made a number of key demands, in what amounts to a line in the sand for social housing. Those key points call on any future Government to:

• Provide grant funding at adequate levels to deliver social housing at a standard and scale that “makes a difference” to housing need. Doing so will control levels of debt and keep rents at affordable levels, while saving public expenditure over the long-term by bringing down the housing benefit bill
• Remove or raise “significantly” the HRA borrowing caps to give councils real freedom to build new social housing
• Government must set a target of surplus public land to be made available for social housing at low cost
• Any new towns or garden cities must contain a “significant” amount of social housing
• Social housing to be “properly regulated” so that “high quality management” can be encouraged and tenants involved to the degree of their choosing
• To continue basing social housing rents on an affordability formula
• To refrain from describing ‘Affordable Rent’ homes as social housing. To call it such is “misleading” and it “contradicts the Government’s own definition”
• The Affordable Rent programme in its present format must be “wound down” and replaced with a programme to build social housing
• Any future government must address land and supply issues to drive down the overall cost of housing provision
• Social housing must be viewed as a “tenure of equal status” to others
• The loss of social housing through Right to Buy, voluntary sales, and conversion to ‘Affordable Rent’ should be ended, unless there is a like for like replacement
• End the “stigmatisation and demonisation” of social housing and the people who live within it
• Registered providers should refuse to sign up to the ‘Affordable Rent’ programme in its present format

(Source: SHOUT submission to the Lyons Housing Review, February 2014)

First published as the cover story for the April/May 2014 print edition of Housing magazine. It was subsequently re-published on the Housing Excellence website, 30 May 2014

Interview: Geeta Nanda, Thames Valley Housing Association

It turned out fizzy in the end

Geeta Nanda’s tenure as chief of Thames Valley Housing Association began in a baptism of fire when the credit crunch struck, but as she tells Mark Cantrell, for those organisations willing to embrace change, there are lessons to be learned in turmoil 

First published in Housing magazine

YOU might say, wryly, that Geeta Nanda (pictured) certainly picked her time. When she took the top job at Thames Valley Housing Association (TVHA) back in 2008, all of the old certainties were to be swept away in the sudden calamity of the credit crunch.

At the time, she recounted, TVHA had its largest ever sales programme on the go – over 600 shared ownership homes – and then the “bottom had fallen out of the market”. For Nanda it was certainly a baptism of fire.

“We were all working through the fact that we’d had a big bang, and a big change had happened; you have to roll your sleeves up, place your feet on the ground and work through that,” she said. “So, it was an interesting time to come in to an organisation as a new CEO, but it was good as well because everybody really worked together and we came through it successfully; sometimes you learn the most when an organisation works through problems, rather than when everything is plain sailing.”

In a sense, it’s all been something of a microcosm of the wider housing sector’s experience; those seismic shifts have demanded a fleetness of foot to stay balanced.

“You have to be much more innovative and creative; you can’t do things the same old way because the same old way doesn’t work,” Nanda said. “You can’t have a five year plan which you check every year is working; you’ve got to be a much more dynamic organisation that solves problems and looks for solutions as you go along, to see where the opportunities are, to think more creatively about how you are going to solve them.”

With the launch of Fizzy Living in 2012, TVHA has certainly been putting that creative outlook into practice by becoming one of those organisations exploring the frontiers of diversification to create a ‘mixed economy’ of housing.

Fizzy Living is a commercial venture, a subsidiary created and owned by TVHA, that aims to provide professionally managed market rental homes to “aspirational young professionals” who are otherwise priced out of the conventional private market. What the tenants get is a good quality, well-managed home at a market price they can afford; what TVHA gets is a brand it can build upon, a lever for investment into the business, and an income stream from the profits that can be ploughed back into the mainstream social housing business.

“When we set it up we wanted to have attracted significant external investment into the business within two years – and we’re on track to do that,” Nanda said. “We didn’t want to use our own borrowing balance sheet – our social housing assets – to borrow against in order to build private rented sector [properties]. What we wanted to do was attract in significant investment into a platform that we’ve developed.

“That’s what all investors are looking at: they want to see a model that works, something that they want to invest in, [where] there is a team that can deliver it. The whole thing, for us, about setting up a brand and a platform for Fizzy Living was to make sure that we attract that investment, so we could expand it massively without impacting on our ability to produce more affordable homes.”

Such commercial vehicles – and TVHA is by no means alone in experimenting with such enterprises – are a source of misgiving in some quarters as a potential diversion from the core social business, but Nanda is adamant this doesn’t have to be the case.

“We are very clear about why we’re here and what our social purpose is, and every association I speak to is clear about what their purpose is. What we will have to do is find different ways of making money in order to feed that social purpose and I think that is what organisations are doing,” she said.

“Housing associations have been around a long time and over that time there’s been different grant regimes, different rent regimes, but there’s always been a very strong purpose. I think that purpose is still there; that we widen out who we house just reflects the fact that we’ve got a very different market now.

“There’s a lot of people that do need housing, and there’s a massive need to build more homes and the economic benefits of housing are huge. The purpose is still there. It’s very strong. Some organisations will choose to house a wider group of people, so they’re still meeting housing need, they’ll still have their purpose, they’ll still invest everything back into the organisation.”

Given this is London, where these days even the high-earning high-flyers tend to struggle with housing costs, it makes you wonder how they can possibly make it work. “Well, we’re purchasing properties and building properties in areas that are more affordable – so they are not central London,” said Nanda. “They are on good commuting routes into town. The rents are market rents but they’re based on the ability of somebody earning 30-40K to be able to afford them. We have also developed a sharers model... so we have got people who are earning as low as £14-15K, as well as those who are earning a lot more, into this market.”

For TVHA, then, this is a long-term strategy; it pays its keep but it will only really come into its own over the long term. Meanwhile, the housing crisis continues apace. London’s influence exudes into the surrounding hinterlands. The boundaries become blurred.

As Nanda said: “People don’t think in terms of London borough boundaries, or the boundary of where London stops and the South East starts, they just think about their job, their commute, and we can see that ripple very much with people moving further out and commuting for longer in order to be able to afford a place to live. The prices in London have rocketed far greater than the South East, but we’re seeing that catch up beginning to happen now. You can say London extends a very long way outside its own boundaries.”

Enterprises such as Fizzy Living demonstrate a willingness to actively meet the crisis head on, but of course any one organisation can only do so much. A difference can only come from a sector-wide – a society wide – response, and a concerted one at that. Ultimately, that puts the ball into the politicians’ court; whether in London’s City Hall, or in Westminster’s corridors of power, or in the parochial remit of the council chamber. Here are solutions enabled, or indeed disabled, according to the calculus of politics.

Well, politics often moves in mysterious ways, but one thing the sector certainly needs is less turmoil if it is to brace itself to make a difference; a breathing space rather than yet another wave of change. As Nanda said: “We need things to take effect and to be able to achieve things. If we have another wholesale, massive reform then some of the good things that have come about won’t ever be achieved because we’ll be trying to cope with yet another change.”

It’s time, Nanda said, for politicians to open their ears, stop tinkering, and get out of the way so that the housing sector can get on with the job.

This interview first appeared in the April/May 2014 print edition of Housing magazine. It was subsequently re-published on the Housing Excellence website, 29 May 2014

Asset management in social housing

Knowing the stock is an asset in itself

These days managing assets is as much about market intelligence and financial performance as it is repairs and maintenance to the housing stock

By Mark Cantrell

From Housing magazine, April/May 2014

THERE'S a difficult balance to be had for social landlords these days, between maximising the commercial potential of assets in support of their social purpose – but not taking things so far that the bottom line becomes the purpose.

Like it or not, this tension goes to the heart of asset management processes; it’s no longer just about repair cycles and maintenance timetables, but targeted investment, knowing the value of stock and its likely returns, calculating the numbers to find ways of gaining more bang for the buck, and ensuring resources aren’t wasted.

“The role of asset management within housing associations has never been more important,” said Sara Woodall, director of corporate housing services at the Accord Group. “Across the sector, and partially as a result of the changes to benefits, there has been a renewed emphasis on asset management that delivers increasing value-for-money, whilst meeting customers’ diverse needs.

“An important way of making the most of assets is to regularly review them, their costs and their benefits, and to ensure asset management and stock disposal strategies are intrinsically tied into business objectives. We have developed a model which allows us to do this successfully, while also supporting our wider goals of creating jobs and stimulating local economies by investing in them and local businesses.”

These years of austerity have certainly taught the sector lessons in change, across a wide swath of activities, and asset management has been no different in terms of the shifting culture. As Mark Kirkham, a director with assets and facilities management software firm, Service Works Group (SWG) has observed, there has been a definitive shift from the passive to the “pro-active” in asset management.

“The fundamental principle of asset management is to intervene at strategic points in an asset’s normal life with optimised repair and maintenance activities, in order to maintain the performance of an asset and extend its life. Proactive asset management provides a holistic view of what the organisation owns (or leases), where it is, what state it is in, and when it will next be maintained or replaced,” he said.

“Social landlords are now increasingly focusing on the concept of active asset management. The previous modus operandi was largely passive and focused around a ‘rip and replace’ every five years. If something broke down in the meantime it was repaired, but there was little notion of routine inspection and pre-planned preventative maintenance.

“That is changing, with social housing landlords offering a whole package of lifestyle support to their tenants to enable them to look after the properties and associated assets. The pressure to reduce costs and waste is also forcing a change in the ‘rip and replace’ strategy to ensure assets perform to their life expectancy.

“Proactive maintenance is at the very heart of asset management. A well-thought-through maintenance plan will improve the condition of, and extend the life of the asset. Conversely, poor maintenance can reduce the useful life of an asset. Although an asset may be designed with a life of 20 years, good maintenance may mean that it could perform well beyond that period.”

Meanwhile, as the sector seeks to enhance and tighten up operations, one small group of social landlords are pushing the boundaries of this culture shift by experimenting with the Investment Property Databank (IPD). This is a commercial benchmarking database created for the commercial sector, which it is hoped can be put to work for the benefit of social housing.

“It is a crucial tool in the ever-increasing commercial and value-for-money landscape of the sector,” said Steve Coffey, chief executive of Liverpool Mutual Homes (LMH), one of the organisations leading on the pilot programme. “This will allow landlords to take a comprehensive view of their assets to optimise value and take a more strategic approach to asset management to ensure portfolios best meet the various demands placed upon landlords. It will also help position organisations to attract new investors.”

The aim is to get a better understanding of the social housing stock in terms of its financial performance: what each property is costing the organisation on its upkeep, what it is earning in terms of rent, and how its capital value is behaving in regard to the market, that kind of thing. LMH is working with fellow RSLs Genesis, Helena Partnerships, Spectrum, Gallions, Circle and Orbit, to carry out the three-year-long pilot.

As Maggi Howard, LMH’s director of assets and enterprise, said the IPD is a “can opener” to understanding the how and why of stock performance.

“We need to make sure we are managing our assets as effectively as we can and we need the tools to be able to do that,” she said. “The idea of Investment Property Databank is about measuring your total return on investment and understanding how your stock is performing.

“IPD was established for benchmarking in the commercial sector, it talks the language that investors understand. I think investors find housing associations and their way of working a little bit alien. This will help investors understand how individual housing businesses are performing, which could help us attract investment. And if we can demonstrate we manage good performing stock, we might get better rates than an outfit that doesn’t rate such a healthy return.”

The use of IPD is something of a first for the sector, and if applied beyond the initial pilot partners, Coffey said it has the potential to “go down as a key milestone in social housing’s history”. The end to these means, of course, is to lever in financial investment – to create the conditions for LMH and others to “better fulfil our social purpose”.

“Our sector talks a different language to the capital markets and this is partly due to the lack of economic understanding of our assets,” Coffey added. “The index lets us communicate in their terms; it allows them to read the sector better and understand our values more. Not only does it allow us to understand our costs and returns but it will also aid us should we want to raise funds on the market... The benefits for the sector are significant and the more landlords that take part, the greater the opportunities for all.”

Assets speak louder than words, you might say; in both the commercial and the social sense.


This article was first published in the April/May 2014 print edition of Housing magazine. It subsequently reappeared on the Housing Excellence website, 27 May 2014

Interview: Darren Johnson AM

Concerned with the human habitat

London Assembly member Darren Johnson tells Mark Cantrell why securing cheap housing for ordinary Londoners is critical for saving the city’s future as a high-rolling international metropolis

From Housing magazine, March 2014

CHERNOBYL seems a far cry from the housing crisis in the UK, but as anyone familiar with the haunting scenes of the abandoned Ukrainian city of Pripyat will comprehend, both touch on the essential fragility of the human habitat. Both are, essentially, man-made disasters.

Darren Johnson

More pertinently for our purposes here, it was his concerns over that 1986 nuclear disaster that first drew London Assembly member Darren Johnson into politics, as a local Green Party activist; from such tender shoots has his career grown. Today, as well as serving as a councillor in Lewisham since 2002, he serves as chair of both the Assembly, and of its housing committee.

“I’d always considered myself left-of-centre on social issues, was particularly concerned about environmental issues, and then I came across the Green Party’s manifesto. For me, it actually drew it all into a coherent philosophy rather than just a ragbag of random issues, so that’s why I got involved,” Johnson said. “I thought I’d just be handing out a few leaflets and that’d be it, but 20-odd years later I’m still at it. I didn’t expect that it would become any sort of career.”

Johnson has been in the Assembly since its inception in 2000. Back then, and for many years thereafter, transport was the resounding issue for a sizeable section of Londoners. “When I first stood for election, transport was absolutely top of the agenda and we did have some real problems; a crisis of underinvestment and big congestion issues,” Johnson said. “It’s far from perfect, but we’ve seen some significant improvements in transport over the years, but at the same time the housing crisis has just shot up the political agenda and now it is absolutely one of the top issues for Londoners: the fact that housing is becoming more and more unaffordable.”

Indeed it is. London’s housing crisis may not quite parallel the wider country’s problems, but the two nevertheless are bitterly intertwined. In a sense, the capital – as much as the provinces – is paying the price of its success.

“The housing crisis is cutting so deep now it isn’t simply the lowest income Londoners who are hugely disadvantaged by this, there’s also problems across the board,” he said. “Many professional people on relatively good incomes can’t find appropriate housing in London.”

As a councillor, as well as an assembly member, Johnson gets to see some of these problems at the local level; over the years, it’s proved a valuable insight.

“We see frustration about new developments being proposed that have very low levels of affordable housing … strong local concerns about the lack of genuinely affordable housing,” he said of his local authority. “Lewisham has been doing some good work identifying where new council housing can be built in the borough. What we’re seeing now in London is a number of boroughs coming forward with plans, for the first time in decades, identifying land and building their own housing.

“At the moment, we’re talking hundreds rather than thousands. The main problem is the borrowing cap on local authorities, which is hampering more ambitious projects in terms of social housing. There is a very strong desire, cross party, in the housing committee, but shared by councils across London, that the borrowing cap needs to be lifted to allow local authorities to invest directly in new housing.”

Last month a consultation on the latest revisions to the Mayor’s housing strategies closed. He set forth a target of 42,000 new homes a year for the next decade, 15,000 of these of the “affordable” kind. That the Mayor stipulated a proportion of Affordable Rent Programme (AHP) homes be capped well below the maximum 80% of local market rates was widely taken as an acknowledgment of the need for sub-market rents below the intermediate level. Mention of the 80% rent levels provoked a wry laugh from Johnson. “You’d still need to be a millionaire to afford those prices in central London,” he said.

Part of the problem, he suggested is that the Mayor is dazzled by the glamour of the luxury property markets. “I think, unfortunately, he’s often so enthralled to the property developers at the top end of the market that he’s simply just blind to the needs of ordinary Londoners,” Johnson said. “We are seeing more luxury developments being built, not being used to live in by buyers, or let out. That is unacceptable.

“Given this housing crisis we’ve got, we can’t be seeing our precious land in London, which is very scarce, being used to build yet more luxury developments that are then simply being left empty while investors make huge amounts of money out of them. It’s absolutely not what we need. I think we need a housing strategy that really prioritises the real needs of Londoners.”

This must all seem terribly parochial for those reading this beyond the borders of London’s bubble; Johnson, however, maintains that the capital can form a useful laboratory for testing solutions to the crisis.

“London has the opportunity to do some groundbreaking work in housing, which could have a very positive impact on the rest of the country. Things like piloting the introduction of rent controls, for example. London could be a real trendsetter,” he said.

There’s a lesson too for the country’s big cities and regions in the existence of the London Assembly: “There is a real benefit in a big conurbation having a strategic authority beyond the level of individual local councils that can really speak up for the people there,” he said; a body that can use its clout to secure investment in transport, housing, and environmental improvements. On that score, he’d quite like to see the London Assembly invested with greater powers.

“Unlike boroughs, we can’t call in individual mayoral decisions for scrutiny before they are signed off, which is something that happens in local councils,” he said. “We do need more powers to hold the Mayor to account and there is agreement cross party that we do need our scrutiny powers enhanced, but that’s not to say we haven’t made an impact with the relatively modest powers we’ve got already.”

As for the future, and the capital’s housing crisis, Johnson is adamant that something must be done if London is to avoid killing itself. “If it’s a city where ordinary Londoners can’t afford to live, then in the long term how is that city going to function? How are we going to provide all the services that are needed to keep a city running? I don’t see how it could be a global player if ordinary Londoners can’t actually afford to live in the city to make it work on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

Back to our Chernobyl link: if London is an economic powerhouse then it’s a nuclear one, running without control rods, and heading towards a critical meltdown. Without more genuinely affordable housing to cool down its frenzy, then the capital’s future might be an economic and social desolation akin to Pripyat.


Originally published in the March 2014 print edition of Housing magazine, and subsequently re-published on the Housing Excellence website, 7 April 2014

Interview: Campbell Robb, Shelter

Shelter chief speaks

It’s good to talk, but as Shelter’s chief executive Campbell Robb tells Mark Cantrell, with the housing crisis tightening its cruel grip on people across Britain the country needs to see some action – and soon

From Housing magazine, February 2014

Campbell Robb

POLITICIANS have been making a lot of noise over matters housing of late, but it’s not enough to make pledges and fine speeches that end up forgotten in the archives of yesterday’s news – sooner or later words need to become deeds.

In Shelter’s view – and in this it’s hardly alone – action can’t come soon enough, but it’s taken as a positive sign at least that housing is moving up the political agenda; if the politicians are talking the talk, there’s scope to encourage them to take the walk. It’s a start, in other words.

“Political polling shows that [housing] is now tracking at fifth in the main issues that people think needs to be dealt with at the next General Election. In London, the single biggest unprompted issue is around the cost of housing, so what we are beginning to see, finally, is a whole range across the political spectrum and within the public that recognises this is not an issue we can put off any longer,” said Campbell Robb, the charity’s chief executive.

“The failure is of successive governments; not just this one, but the previous government, should have – could have – built more homes and should have done more about this earlier. Moving forward, I’m pleased that politicians are talking about it. All three main parties are talking about it in England, and in Scotland the SNP is talking about housing as well. They’re making pledges, they are making promises. What we need to see is that being turned into reality.”

Shelter, of course, operates at the sharp end of the failure to build sufficient homes, dealing with the human cost and fallout from the housing crisis. The Festive season is typically a busy time for the charity, as the pressures of Christmas and New Year mount, but it’s generally not until January that the cold harsh realities hit home. That’s when its helpline heats up.

“Generally, what we get is a lot of people who have scrambled and struggled to try and get through Christmas and then they face up to those January bills, so we are expecting to see a significant level of people seeking advice throughout January,” Robb said. And this after a year that’s already seen increasing demand for its assistance.

“The number of people who contacted our helpline in 2013 compared to 2012 about not being able to pay their rent or their mortgage went up by a third. That was in a single year. We’re beginning to see people hit by welfare reforms, losing money because of the spare room subsidy and those types of things,” he said.

Hectic though this time of year is, Shelter reckons it’s not as busy as it could be – or should be – because not everyone facing difficulty reaches out for help. Pride or shame – even denial – means that many of us can’t even confide in friends or family about problems meeting housing costs; paradoxically, perhaps, some have turned to risky payday lenders to help meet their rent or mortgage payments.

All told, Shelter’s research presents a grim snapshot of ever-more households facing a precarious housing situation. Naturally, that’s a worrying trend for the charity to contemplate.

“We are going through a very significant change in the way that people in Britain are now living,” said Robb. “Last year was the first time in nearly 40 years that there were more people living in the private rented sector than are living in the social housing sector. Ownership has been dropping for years now. Housing costs – rents and house prices – are on the rise, so what we are seeing for the vast majority of people is the cost of housing is a much more significant part of their income than it has been for a very long time. And when you combine that with transport costs going up, and inflation (just now stabilising), it is a depressing snapshot of a broken housing market.”

Shelter itself hasn’t escaped these difficult times unscathed either, but it has soldiered on. Hit by the cuts to the legal aid budget last year, it was forced to lose some frontline staff and close nine of its offices, but several housing associations stepped up to help. “We raised over £300,000 from housing associations, which was a fantastic response,” said Robb.

“We’ll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Shelter in a couple of years, and many of the housing associations were originally set up with grants from Shelter, so it was nice for them in our time of need to come back and support us.”

But the focus is on the future, working as a critical friend to the sector, raising awareness, campaigning and keeping the pressure up on those who hold the levers of power. So, as the politicians begin to talk up 2015, what’s Shelter’s ‘big ask’ to the party (or parties) that finds itself forming the next government? For Robb, it breaks down into three things.

“Fundamentally, at the heart of the problem we face is that we need to build more decent affordable homes across the country – genuinely affordable homes – that eases the pressure. So we need an extensive building programme from any of the political parties. That’s the first thing,” he said.

“The second thing we need is a commitment and understanding that some of the most vulnerable people in this country are beginning to fall through a housing safety net that has been severely changed and challenged by some of the welfare cuts. There are more people struggling, so we need to construct a really good comprehensive safety net because we shouldn’t have people falling through the net – we should be able to support them.

“The third thing we need is a genuine commitment to reform the private rented sector, because until we build all those houses we’re going to have a lot of people, in particular families with children, living in unstable, unsecure rented accommodation and we need to give them something that really makes a difference.”

Ultimately, however, these asks are all rooted in one firm foundation: “we need to build more homes”. And that takes action.


This article first appeared in the February 2014 print edition of Housing magazine. It was subsequently re-published on the Housing Excellence website, 1 April 2014