Social Rented Sector Research Articles

Rental housing in Central and Eastern Europe as no man's land

The central question addressed in this paper is whether both thesocial and private rented sectors in Central and Eastern Europeancountries are based on robust institutions or constitute a no man'sland. The latter case is a position a landlord tries to avoid andpublic authorities try to abandon by promoting home-ownership.As we argue in this paper, during the transformation of economic and housing policy in Central and Eastern Europe,the perception of the social rental sector as a no man's landis not far from the truth. The same applies for private renting,which has the reputation of being an extension of the owner-occupiedsector. A truly professional private rented sector is still lackingin Central and Eastern Europe. National and local governments try to get rid of rented dwellings by promoting owner-occupation.If they want to prevent the rented sectors from remaining orbecoming a no man's land, they have to create regulations andinstitutions like those in West European countries to supportboth social and commercial rented housing.

Statistics on Housing and Construction in the Netherland : The social rented sector in the Netherlands is shrinking

Statistics on Housing and Construction in the Netherland : The social rented sector in the Netherlands is shrinking

Work incentives and rent: Evidence from glasgow housing associations

Concern has been expressed by a number of commentators that the result of UK rent increases, in both the private and social rented sectors, has been a worsening of tenants' incentive to work. Although a number of studies have simulated thepossible effects on labour supply of rent rises, there are no published empirical estimates in the UK of theactual effects. This paper examines the various aspects of the rent-work incentive relationship, and uses data on Glasgow housing association tenants to estimate the relationship between rent rises and labour supply. The UK housing benefit system is described, followed by a brief overview of the previous literature. The various links between rents and work are examined in detail, and simple regression results are reported on the relationship between standardised rent increases and employment decisions. The results show that for male workers, the decision to take work is positively related to rent increases, but for women it is negatively related. In deciding between unemployment and working part-time, rent rises have a positive effect, whereas the effect is negative in the decision to work part-time or full-time. The overall effect of rent increases on labour supply in two-worker households is found to be negative.

Housing Associations and Housing Policy in Britain Since 1989

Important changes in the pattern of new building, investment and ownership of social rented housing in Britain in the period since 1989 can be seen as moves towards a more European style of provision. Similarly, reductions in general subsidy and a switch to greater reliance on personal income related forms of assistance with housing costs are consistent with developmentselsewhere, as is concern to contain public expenditure by placing more emphasis on private finance. The themes of the paper are the growth and transformation of housing associations in Britain. The importance of stock transfers from local authorities has grown to the point where they have become the major source of growth, and it is argued that within the foreseeable future the majority of the social rented sector may be owned by housing associations or other registered social landlords. The paper looks at finance, development and governance issues, concluding that housing associations have been drawn into an ever closer relationship with the state.

Risks and principles: The management of housing with support in the social rented sector in Scotland

Social housing plays a key role in the provision of support to disabled people but to what extent can care in the community principles be upheld in the context of the financial constraints in the provision of supported housing? This paper draws on findings from an evaluation of Scottish Home’s care in the community policy, to establish the considerable consensus of opinion on the principles underlying the housing contribution to community care and the increasing concerns of providers on the complexity and instability of the funding mechanisms for supported housing. To illustrate the discrepancy between the word and the deed in housing management practice, evidence is examined from recent studies on the use of housing agreements and tenancy rights in supported accommodation in Scotland. The paper identifies the gap between the expressed aims and intentions of providers and managers towards the occupants of supported housing and housing management practice and contends that financial pressures are a key element in producing this gap. If community care policies are to be successful, appropriate funding mechanisms and housing management practice are crucial.

Social Housing Finance in Europe: Trends and Opportunities

The central topic of this contribution is the financing of the social rented sector in seven countries in western Europe: the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, France and Sweden. Since 1975, the macro housing quota has increased in all seven countries, but most of all in the Netherlands. Property subsidies have been reduced; housing allowances have become more important. The differences in size of the social rented sector remain large. Private finance has mostly replaced public loans, with the exception of Germany where interest-free government loans cover part of the finance needed. In most countries, guarantees for capital market loans exist, Great Britain being the exception. In the near future, changes in social housing finance may be expected as a result of European monetary integration. The euro will (for the time being) not be introduced in Denmark, Great Britain and Sweden. The costs of capital may decline when social housing finance becomes more internationalised.

Rights and Security in Housing: the Repossession Process in the Social Rented Sector

Rented housing in Britain is divided between a private sector in which houses are let for profit, and a social rented sector in which houses have traditionally been let as a service to the community. The social rented sector is itself divided between two main types of provider: local authorities (council housing), and housing associations, although account must be taken of other providers, particularly in Scotland, where Scottish Homes, a quango, is a substantial provider of social housing. Until recently, the new towns were substantial providers of rented housing, but the new town development corporations have now all been wound up and their stock transferred to other landlords. In this article, the expressions 'social rented sector' and 'social housing' refer to housing let by the public sector bodies just referred to and by housing associations. For most of this century the nature of the provider has determined the legal tenure on which rented housing has been held. Thus, the Rent Acts applied to private sector lets, but were not applied to public sector tenants. Between 1980 and 1989 council tenants and housing association tenants shared a common tenure regime, the secure tenancy. However, when in 1989, a new form of tenure the assured tenancy was introduced for the private sector,' it was also applied to new housing association lets, although local authorities and other public sector bodies continued to offer secure tenancies. As a consequence, since 1989, there have been two different legal tenures within the social rented sector: the secure tenancy and the assured tenancy. The two legal regimes afford substantially different rights to tenants. In the light of these changes to tenure regimes, this article discusses the importance of legal guarantees of security of tenure in the social rented sector, and compares the way in which the process of recovery of possession has been operating in the two forms of tenure. This is a two-fold comparison. As the rights of existing housing association tenants were preserved in 1989, housing associations continued to have many secure tenants, and so it is possible to compare the respective positions of secure and assured tenants both (a) as between local authorities and housing associations, and (b) within the housing association sector. The research on which this article is based shows that there are substantial differences in the outcomes of the repossession process for different groups of tenants. The questions these outcomes pose include whether differences in the legal rights of secure and assured tenants are capable of explaining the outcomes of the repossession process, and what other factors might be influencing outcomes.

Residential Mobility and Residualisation in Social Housing in England

This article uses data from the Survey of English Housing (SEH) 1993/4 in order to investigate patterns of residential mobility in relation to social housing in England. Such an analysis provides an insight into the contemporary dynamics of residualisation. Hitherto, much of the analysis of residualisation has, quite properly, concentrated on the operation of the Right to Buy legislation in the process of social exclusion. However, this article argues that the process of residualisation has not been due just to changes in the tenure of dwellings, it has also been due to the intensification of processes of residential movement by people which can be traced back to at least the mid-1970s. As the number of dwellings sold through the RTB declines, the movement of people is again becoming the primary mechanism through which residualisation operates. The article also examines patterns of movement within the social rented sector. It concludes that as the sector has become smaller, the rate of mobility within it has increased. This increased rate of mobility is due to a number of factors, but is primarily a function of the demographic profile of tenants in the social rented sector. The factors which predispose certain types of household to be mobile within the sector are examined.

The supply of private rented housing in Canada

Canadian housing policy objectives are generally pursued through a market framework. There is little provision of non-market housing. Thus, while Canada has a substantial private rented sector, it has only a small social rented housing sector. About a third of all dwellings belong to private landlords for market renting and only six percent are owned by public and private landlords for non-profit renting. The supply of dwellings newly constructed specifically for private market rental has fallen over the last 20 years. This fall has been compensated for in part by the supply of existing dwellings that have been transferred from other tenures. There has also been a fall in the proportion of private market rented dwellings owned by corporate landlords and an increase in the proportion owned by small-scale individual landlords, including individuals buying existing dwellings in other tenures to convert to private renting. These recent supply-side changes have been in response to three factors. First, changes to the federal tax system and direct supply incentives have reduced the attractiveness of investing in private renting for corporations but increased it for individuals. Second, the demand for private renting has fallen amongst middle- and high-income households because of demographic and tax changes. This has reduced the numbers of private renting households able to pay the rents needed to make new construction profitable. Third, other public policies have also had an impact on supply, including rent controls imposed by provincial governments and land use planning restrictions and building standards imposed by local authorities. An important feature of the Canadian private rental market is its geographical diversity, with supply-side trends varying in different provinces and urban areas in accordance with variations in demand and local policies.

Difficult to Let Housing Association Stock in England: Property, Management and Context

ABSTRACT Problems related to unpopular housing are not new in Britain's social rented sector. In the past, however, these have generally been associated with housing provided directly by the state through local authorities. For many, the term 'difficult to let' has become synonymous with large, ageing, poor quality estates managed under a centralised framework and subject to a long period of low investment and indifferent management. There has also been a long-standing assumption that social housing allocations systems tend to channel the most vulnerable tenants into the least desirable housing. In fact, the problem of difficult to let property is now as pervasive in the not-for-profit sector managed by housing associations as it is within council housing. In many cases the developments affected are small in scale and, in a significant proportion of cases, recently constructed. In explaining why property becomes difficult to let, the local and regional context is clearly important. The balance between social, economic and housing demand circumstances and property and estate characteristics varies between regions. There is relatively little evidence that difficult to let housing association properties are occupied by disproportionate numbers of the most severely disadvantaged tenants and this suggests that something has happened to modify the segregating effects of allocations systems observed in earlier studies. Nevertheless, this apparent change must be seen within the context of the general trend towards a residual role for social housing in its entirety. The social class and income range of new social sector tenants now is much diminished by comparison with earlier decades with few distinctions between the occupiers of difficult to let and other housing.

Management of social rented housing in Western Europe

The pre‐war growth and development of the social rented housing sector in Western Europe was related to substantial quantitative housing shortages, and was largely supported and controlled by central governments. However, since the 1970s there have been reductions in government subsidies for this sector and a shift away from government regulation towards market mechanisms. The greater freedom of the social rented sector to decide its own policy is often accompanied by greater risks. Social housing organisations feel more tension between guaranteeing the financial continuity of the organisation and its social objectives. This paper will examine to what extent and in what way this process of independence in seven Western European countries is being shaped and what this means for the position of the social housing organisations. The focus will be on a number of financial and social aspects of the housing management in the social rented sector.

Growth and stagnation in social housing: What is ‘social’ in the social rented sector?

Many West European countries are currently reducing their social rented sector. New construction of social rented housing is avoided, while the sale of social rented dwellings is advocated. This paper is an attempt to explain the stagnation in social rented housing, which in some countries has reached crisis point. In addition, the changes within the social rented sector are dealt with. In many places, we observe a move towards a more market‐oriented social housing sector. This leads us to ask what is ‘social’ in the changing social rented sector. Finally, a differentiated tenant mix in social rented housing is suggested as a means to prevent stigmatisation of this tenure.

Changes in the social rented sector in Germany

Social rented housing provided by private institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany has made an important contribution to overcoming the housing shortage in the aftermath of the Second World War, and to achieving a high level of housing provision in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Promotion has traditionally been geared to the construction of new, affordable dwellings for broad sections of the population. Given the positive economic and social development, a broadly‐based supply of publicly and non‐publicly assisted dwellings is now available and, as a result of increases in incomes, most people are in a position to provide themselves with adequate housing. The traditional form of assistance is therefore no longer appropriate. Types of assistance have therefore been developed since the end of the 1980s, making it possible — bearing in mind the prices on the market for non‐assisted rented dwellings — to concentrate funding more accurately on lower‐income social tenants in need. Problems connected with the traditional form of assistance arising from the changed general economic and housing policy conditions can, in principle, be resolved using these new methods of assistance.

The social rented sector, housing and the welfare state in the UK

Recent discussions of the social rented sector in the UK have placed considerable emphasis on the restructuring and declining size of the tenure, privatisation, a shift from object to subject subsidies, residualisation and the increased significance of the poverty trap for tenants. Against this background, and in the light of the view that major public sector investment is unlikely in the future, the policy debate has shifted further towards concern with transfer of stock out of the public sector. This paper reviews key changes in the role of social rented sector housing and the background to these debates. It argues that it is important to relate the development of council housing to the wider structure of the welfare state; its position within the public sector; the changing structure of the private sector in housing; and the changing economic, social and demographic context. These aspects are of key importance to debates about residualisation and the future of the sector.

Introductory tenancies: A nuisance too far?

Part V Chapter I of the Housing Act 1996 empowers local housing authorities and housing action trusts to offer introductory tenancies. This article considers whether introductory tenancies are necessary to solve the 'neighbour nuisance' problem, by examining some of the legal and non-legal remedies currently available to local housing authorities. The article suggests that introductory tenancies will be of little, if any, assistance to local housing authorities. Discussion also focuses on a different rationale underpinning these tenancies; that is, an assault on security of tenure in its own right. This 'hidden agenda' is rationalized by examining government policy towards local housing authorities. Finally, the article considers the possibility that introductory tenancies are the beginning of deregulation in the social rented sector, resulting in parity between the social and private rented sectors.

Safeguarding the Rational Allocation of Public Housing Resources in Hong Kong

This paper is an attempt to analyze the Hong Kong government's housing policy in safeguarding the rational allocation of public housing resources. An asset-test policy has been introduced recently to supplement the income-test on tenant households. This paper examines the objectives, value premises, principles and strategies adopted and the impact of the policy on housing the needy. It also contributes to the debate on residualization in the social rented sector and housing affordability of public housing tenants, and deals with the issues of resource allocation and equity.

Recent Changes in the Social Rented Sector in The Netherlands

The Netherlands has a large and differentiated stock of social rented dwellings, forming more than 40 per cent of the total housing stock. Housing associations are by far the largest providers of housing services in this sector. Traditionally, these associations were subsidised heavily but since 1995 Dutch government has no longer directly subsidised these associations. This paper deals with changes in Dutch housing associations in a period (1988-95) characterised by government austerity, deregulation, market conformity, privatisation and promotion of home-ownership. It is explained how the housing associations were able to survive and even maintain prospects for a promising future in a political climate that threatened the social rented sector. It is clear that housing associations can now operate more independently than in the past. This is seen as a positive development, but the government is now discovering the drawbacks of complete privatisation. A firmer embedding in a public framework is considered desirable now. Recently the cabinet introduced a strengthening of public supervision. The housing associations' umbrella organisations presented their own National Housing Programme and published a business code for housing associations. A crucial issue has not been discussed so far: who will subsidise the housing investments for low-income households in periods of economic stagnation?

The United Kingdom housing context

Abstract This article examines housing policy and the housing market in the U.K. in the broader social, economic, and political context. It focuses on how housing relates to the economy, the labor market, health, welfare, inequality, and the general social and economic environment. In recent years, government has reshaped housing policy by reducing and redirecting subsidies, introducing market prices and private finance, altering the role of local authorities as direct providers, and boosting the level of homeownership. But reduced subsidies and greater reliance on the private market may have made the system more unstable and vulnerable to economic shocks. There is growing evidence of both residualized populations in the social rental sector and widespread homelessness. U.K. housing policy is also poorly integrated with other social and economic objectives. Overall, the changes may have made the housing system marginally more efficient, but the policy probably increases pressures toward economic instability and inequality.

Social housing in Western Europe in the nineties

Housing systems in Western Europe display a fair degree of similarity in their development. After the Second World War, governments became deeply involved in housing. Faced with housing shortages caused by the war, government policies were primarily directed toward large-scale housing construction programs. This was the heyday of the social rented sector in Europe. In the mid-1970s, however, a shift occurred in the position of this sector within housing policy. At that time, housing shortages were declining. Meanwhile, insights in how to structure the welfare state were changing. Thus, at a growing pace, the social rented sector has been losing its dominant role to home ownership. Diverse causes for this development have been pointed out. Various authors have identified (a combination of) ideological and economic motives (see the contributions to this special issue). Furthermore, the course these changes have taken in different countries is fairly similar. There was a general decline in public investment; there was a shift away from government regulation toward the market mechanism; the remaining government influence was decentralized; and the (declining) financial support shifted from generic to specific subsidies, targeted to the groups with the weakest socio-economic position. Throughout Western Europe, this development was accompanied by (attempts at) privatization of the social rented Lundqvist (1992, p. 3) considers privatization as a conscious public policy, regardless of the level of welfare provision. He defines it as actions taken by actors legitimately representing the public sector to transfer the hitherto public responsibility for a certain activity away from the public and into the private sector. In practice, West European countries show differences in the division of competencies between the public and private sectors. At the same time, they show differences in the degree to which and the means whereby government policy is oriented toward a shift in competence from the public to the private Nevertheless, we can distinguish several comparable efforts at privatization.

The mismatch of housing costs and income in Dutch housing

Almost all countries in Western Europe have built up an extensive social rental sector since 1945. The main reason was to provide decent housing for people with a modal or low income. Yet this does not imply that social rental units are always or exclusively occupied by households of these income categories. The Netherlands is a case in point. Although more than 40 percent of the country's dwellings belong to the social rental sector, these units provide housing for a large share of the households with an income above modal.