At the end, all but a couple of tenants taking part voted in favour of keeping a council home for life. There were moving contributions about how a council tenancy had enabled people to feel safe and secure and to begin to put whatever trauma had taken them on the route to homelessness, behind them.
Everyone agreed that the strain of being reassessed as still in need of council home every two or even five years was bound to increase anxiety and tension. I know this for a fact because some worried tenants I have met at our Get Togethers have (literally) begged me not to evict them - and the proposals are not even law yet.
Being a coward of the highest order, I asked the Federation if I could present the case in favour of a council home for life. Seriously, I was worried that if I presented the case for the other side, more Wolverhampton tenants would think they could risk losing their home.
We looked in quite a lot of detail at the impact on local communities of the increased turnover on estates should shorter tenancies come in. People understood that if you make it clear at the start of a tenancy that your home will not be for life, new tenants are less inclined to make improvements to their homes, care for their garden and get involved with their community. We discussed how difficult it would be for staff to accurately judge peoples' circumstances and how there were bound to be increased challenges in the courts.
In Wolverhampton a guaranteed stable home is essential because the job market can be volatile, with people going in and out of work, from part-time to full-time and from benefits to wages. We do need to work hard to support people who haven't worked for some time but are capable of doing so - we need to offer training and support, job experience and help with finding jobs.
We know the value for this at Wolverhampton Homes where we have created more than 700 jobs in the building industry, through the Decent Homes programme, the vast majority for local people. How will we interest new tenants in these opportunities when to better yourself could mean losing your home?
I must say that the Federation's debate was a superb way of involving tenants and other residents in important policy issues and I do hope they do more. They had managed to get a number of teenagers from a local school to take part; some of whom lived in council housing. One young woman said that a tenancy should be for life because the idea of not being able to return home after you had left was inconceivable.
I am really anxious to do more to get people into the right sized homes. In Wolverhampton, we have the usual pattern of mismatch - about 3,000 homes are under occupied (that is have two or more bedrooms than people living in them) and about 2,000 people on the housing register (out of l3,000 in total) because of overcrowding.
We have been running a really successful house release scheme which provides a flexible-use cash incentive and have recently decided to extend it. Tenants at Get Togethers have come up with some tremendous ideas for encouraging people to move all of which I am keen to try.
While in many cases only a modern bungalow near their existing home will encourage people to move, there is a massive amount that can be done with support, care and encouragement - without having to resort to fixed term tenancies.
A good article and whilst I appreciate that under-occupation is an issue, I feel strongly that having re-assessments of housing need every few years is a dangerous route to go down.
ReplyDeleteThe main issue is that it would lead to a smaller social mix in areas where there are lots of social housing, which could lead to the creation of ghettos. Why should a family be asked to move out of their home, because (for example), one of the adults has changed their life around (maybe by getting a degree, or a promotion, and moving into a better paid job) ?
Under-occupation itself is a very difficult and emotional subject - for example if someone loses their partner and children in a car crash - how long would it be before the housing provider decides to force them to move into a smaller property (even worse if the crash happened say a week before the tenancy was due for renewal)?
There are lots of people on the waiting list for social housing (and as the recession takes hold, the lists will increase) - however, people do have to take some responsibility for their own lifestyles - if you own a small house and want more children, you have to bear in mind whether you can afford a bigger place, or do without more children - so why should people in social housing be seen as any different ? However, an under-occupation policy could actually push people to have more children, so that they can remain in what is their family home.