A housing campaigner has asked for a clear answer to what the term “affordable housing” means.
Charles Harrison asked councillors how “affordable housing” related to average household incomes in Brighton and Hove.
He also asked what Brighton and Hove City Council was doing to increase the number of lower-cost homes when the council’s Housing and New Homes Committee met last week.
Mr Harrison, who has been involved with various community groups from Hove Gold to Sussex Homeless Support, spoke out as the council’s “draft housing strategy” went before the committee on Wednesday 13 March.
A report to councillors about the strategy said: “Achieving the right mix of market and affordable housing types is challenging. Pressure on land for development is high and many potential sites are hard to develop.
“We need to increase the supply of high-quality homes that meet the needs of our communities. We will work to increase the number of affordable homes using the full range of levers at our disposal.”
Mr Harrison asked what was meant by the “full range of levers”.
He was told that the national policy for “affordable homes” was that they were let for a rent at least 20 per cent below the local market rate.
Labour councillor Gill Williams, who chairs the council’s Housing and New Homes Committee, said: “I don’t personally consider them particularly affordable but that is the national benchmark.
“In somewhere like Brighton and Hove, that’s pretty high as we all know because the rents are quite high in the private sector.”
Councillor Williams said that housing associations and other registered housing providers were asked to restrict rents to “housing allowance level” which was equivalent to housing benefit.
She said: “We do encourage registered providers where possible to provide homes at social rent if they can.
“We look at the same for our own supply of council homes and we appreciate that affordable rents of 80 per cent are outside of many people’s affordability in our city so it’s not that affordable.
“I’m very pleased to say our new development in Coldean, Denham Place, is an excellent example of where we’ve been able to provide 127 homes at social rent, my favourite rent. That’s the one we should have more of. I’m pleased about that.”
Councillor Williams said that there was a need for more affordable housing through private sector developments too.
New residents on the council’s housing register will start moving into the new flats in Coldean during the next month.
As well as building new homes in Coldean and Portslade, the council has started the tendering process for 200 more than new council homes on a site in Moulsecoomb.
Relying upon private developers to provide an adequate amount of ‘affordable’ housing will not achieve any meaningful objective. Local authorities should meet this demand. Government should facilitate this.
The likes of Gill Williams should stop making out private landlords and developers to be immoral and exploitative. Instead, simply recognise that social housing provision isn’t their business.
Yes a point well made. Commercial landlords pay commercial mortgages and many pay corporation taxes on any profits made. They also have to pay for upkeep and other costs.
Making out that private landlords are not helping by not being able to rent out their properties at a potential loss is not helpful.
Furthermore it rather demonstrates a total lack of understanding of housing stock supply and demand.
How about creating a city where salaries are higher by encouraging trade and jobs ?
Maybe the majority of developers should stop doing immoral and exploitative things? The latest I’ve been hearing about is the releasing of toxins out of the old gasworks site. It’s a fair point you raise though, private ventures are out to make money, not address homing.
I think aspects like Primacy Residency Clauses, the high rate of tax for empty and second homes, and the Renters Reform Bill are all positive movements to making those undesirable aspects hostile for developers.
Community Land Trusts are an interesting concept to me; I think there is something that can be done there with creating affordable homes, effectively making a developer where social housing provision IS their business.
My main point is that social (or in other words; low rent), housing should be provided by the state. In the late 1990s the Labour party urged people to make plans for their retirement in the form of a pension plan or a second property investment as their view was that people should not rely on the state pension. Those who took the latter option are now suffering the consequences of following that advice. They are being lambasted for being the cause of the housing crisis and are the subject of punitive legislation brought about for political ends intended to deflect from the true cause; ie a huge lack of state sponsored social housing supply.
Social housing in the UK was a left wing political construct back in the early 20th century. It bought about large social and political benefits. There is still a need for this. Trying to impose this responsibility on private business will always be a struggle and is almost certainly doomed to failure, or at least any provision being inadequate. Imposing an unwanted responsibility upon someone rarely ends in success for anyone.
A well made point, Atticus. I hope successive governments do focus on a strong housing strategy. I quite agree, and I think a lot of our challenges in Brighton will be made better through greater stock.
Why not bulldoze some of the slums and put in decent quality flats which are not shoebox sized like they have all across Europe?
Lewes road area would be a great place to start. All those old railway houses on Lewes road, damp rotten bungeroosh cesspits. Most are HMO already anyway
Better designed buildings with modern techniques does have an appeal to it.
New social housing developments are no longer affordable housing the newish block that was built at the bottom of the avenue on the Lewes road the housing association are charging around £227 per week I believ for a 2 bedroom flat. The new builds will never be affordable and the council will house people there and they will be stuck with these high rents that increase every April. This will cause the occupants to possibly get into debt as it’s usually low income families that get housed by the council. I know people can do housing exchanges, I know of someone trying to do an exchange because they are struggling to live with the high rent and they have a lot of interest in people wanting the property until they tell them how much the so called affordable rent is and then they say no because the rent is too high. Something needs to be done about the social housing rents because they are much too high and need to be a lot lower than private rents.
A bit quick and dirty based on weeks as the observation above was:
So a national living wage 40 hour week will give you after Tax and NI £345 take home pay. Less £227 rent leaves £118 for everything else. But that ignores tax credits and child support if applicable, and it also supposes only one person there is working. Council tax will eat that up, but some discount is available if living alone or getting tax credits.
A quick look on Zoopla reveals two bedroom flats at full rate are about £350 per week so the £227 in comparison to the commercial rate is a good deal. It also shows that anyone on the national wage could not afford it if only one person was working.
If a couple (both over 23) lived in the social housing development both on national living wage I think it could work. Not much quality of life I feel with such little cash.
The “real living wage” would bring in £387 a week. Still not much left over really.
On the basis that property cannot be subsidised any further, really what we need an in increase wages, and this is done by increasing business and competition for workers. This is in turn influenced by what council do to encourage business, and paradoxically not encouraging more people into Brighton who have no prospects of earning a descent wage (AKA “cheap labour”)
I do not feel that there is a quick fix to all this, And the council are making noises about encouraging more business, but seem to be limiting this to tourism related endeavors, I think we have many clever people here and they could earn more if we did more to encourage businesses to come to Brighton. More income of course results in more spending, this trickles down to the local economy as a whole.
An area that surprised me that is always hurting for more people is event security. Something along the lines of a 40,000 shortfall estimated.
plenty of england without buildings just concrete the lot benjy will be happy
You can hardly see the Shoreham front now thanks to all the monster blocks going up. i don’t know why people keep banging on about a housing shortage. The only shortage is of housing people can afford to rent or buy. Though if they want to live up North, there are plenty of abandoned places people can still buy from local authorities for a couple of hundred quid as long as they are happy to commit to doing them up themselves. Not everyone needs to live on the south coast.
There’s also no jobs up North, which makes those buildings extremely unviable. Unless you had a masse migration programme and had a huge flux of people go North at the same time, it’s unlikely to change with any expediency.
Yes with the exceptions of Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, where property prices are also higher.
The difficulty is without radical policy changes, the housing crisis will worsen. Affordable rents aren’t affordable but they need to pay back the cost to build somehow.
It would take a brave political party to stop the right to buy, ban second home ownership, fully regulate and licence airbnbs. Then they will need to find the money to create a huge homebuilding programme. This is just a few examples. I’m surrounded by airbnbs that are empty in the winter then packed in the summer.
Homes have been treated as commercial enterprises and businesses for a long time rather than somewhere people live. Most homeowners are shielded from the consequences of these issues and campaign against any new builds.
I always like to bring up AirDNA. The data shows that 4,500 holiday rents in Brighton, and 500 years of empty home time between those.
Quite significant, isn’t it? I’m all for the council having a method to manage and cap the amount to balance the city needs. We do it with HMOs and business properties, so it makes sense for it to apply to holiday lets.
On the surface I have to agree, however AirBNB does bring tourism, and hotels are all full. And how do you deal with ordinary BnB – many of whom now advertise on AirBnB ?
We also have the phenomenon where people go and stay with a friend while renting out their main residence for a week in the summer. How do you account for that ?
I dont think either of those are major issues on licensing, bnbs will already have planning permission and airbnb is an advertising platform.
If someone stays away for a week and rents out a home this is a very short term situation. You could easily say those that rent out properties for two weeks or less when away will not require licensing.
My main issue is long term holiday lets via airbnb (other platforms are available) that sit empty during the winter months. You do want to attract tourists of course but should there really be whole houses rented out to hen parties each week for example?
I live in a residential area with empty properties all the while homeless numbers increase. Brighton relies too heavily on tourism and may do better to have a more diverse population.
Incredible figures really. Almost the council housing waiting list for the city. Of course its not as simple as that but makes you think.
I do think bold action is needed on a national level which will upset a lot of people but may be necessary to stop the culture of property being seen as investment.
A very balanced thought there Sarah.
There’s a lower standard required of AirBNB properties that I’d like to see addressed to match those of hotels to start. I’d also like them to be registered and visible with the council so they can be managed, similar to HMOs.
The ultimate challenge I think with the waiting list is it completely outstrips supply, and that’s a central government issue; need that ability to build a lot more flats and houses with the intention of social rents. I think that’s realistically can only be done by a CLT or BHCC.
Many “small” landlords actually re-mortgage one property to buy another. They tend to not make a profit on the property portfolio but are banking on the value increasing, when they can either sell all of them or sell some to then own outright the other ones for income in retirement. They are ordinary people not evil money-grabbing Victorian slum landlords. The government has now made this very unattractive now due to tax break changes, and energy efficiency ratings etc. Many small landlords are exiting the rental business, and selling up. The picture is not yet clear if these properties are going to home-buyers or to the very large rental corporations. I suspect a mixture, but again less rental property available will result in rental price increases.
Perhaps it is time to change the definition of affordable rent ? Say 24% of the median wage in an area?. This might help incentivise councils to try and influence the employment levels and salary levels in an area.
And house affordability is general. Wage to mortgage/rent ratios are very telling and a clear metric of the cost burden of homes on people.
‘affordable housing’ is a misnomer because developers always buy their way out of their 40% per block ‘affordable housing’ obligation. The council then takes that money to build ‘affordable housing’ elsewhere. Or that’s how the theory goes.
If only – they then spend the money of other building projects. No doubt built into the sale price of the development as the builder just passes it on. Another upward driver of property prices I guess..
Unfortunately, this does happen a bit regarding the provision. “Upon further investigation it is found to be financially unviable.”
And there’s not much the council planning committee can do about it.
Deny planning permission and make it a completely unviable project for starters.
Unfortunately, what usually happens is that it will then go to appeal and get overturned.
Rentplus delivers affordable rent to buy homes across the country (but not yet in Brighton and Hove). Tenants move in with NO deposit, pay an ‘affordable rent’ set by the council at 80% of local market rents, and when they buy at years 5, 10, 15 or 20, Rentplus gifts them 10% of their home’s value towards their savings. NPPF-compliant and adopted by nearly 70 councils across England. All funded by institutional investment and not taxpayers and as at December 95% of people transition to buying their home at the appointed time. RentSaveOwn
Shared ownership scheme, huh? Stepladdering is something really hated in the past, but, it’s a a reasonable thing to consider these days.
There’s also a land ownership issue. There is land (as Benjamin mentioned the gasworks I’ll use that as as an example) which, as a brownfield site, could be used for reasonably low-rise family housing and this might, in turn, create a proper family community, which is what most neighbours and many other local residents want. There could be a very significant number of units for locals and, also importantly, such dwellings could materialise with reasonable speed, especially if some element of off-site prefabrication were employed. The question of releasing toxins (and the consequent battle by locals which has been going on for around 4 years already with no real signs of resolution because the developer hasn’t budged significantly from the original inappropriate proposals) need never have arisen at all if the developer had taken the dangers on board and gone for a solution which involved capping the site and leaving the toxins buried, as they have been for very many years without any apparent detriment to neighbours or the wider community. They could have applied to cap the site, build a sensible lowish-rise development that the community supports, and we might just have the beginnings of some much-needed housing by now. We shall probably never know the financials that would have involved because they have never countenanced it for an instant, but commonsense suggests that there would have been some profit in it for them – just not the level of profit they’re after. Instead, they want to drill down to an alarming depth to support the luxury but horrible high-rise blocks they want to build, (in a small area which is not, for many good reasons, in the council’s ‘tall buildings zones’ )
As the developer owns the land concerned , it is not in their subjective financial interests to propose anything other than what they have already proposed, with the occasional re-submission of minimally altered and flawed plans, necessitating another round of consultations with the public, statutory consultees etc.
And before the usual suspects start shouting ‘Nimbys’ at the neighbours and the wider community who continue to object to the developer’s inappropriate proposals, the vast majority of objectors, probably all of them in reality, have said on many occasions that they would welcome a safe development of the site (i.e. no deep piling with highly questionable proposals for dealing with what lies beneath – and even the developer concedes that there are toxins down there, plus there is an area which contains a building of sorts and nobody knows what is under that- and the commencement of building appropriate units which local families might be able to buy or rent as soon as possible). Unfortunately, because the developer owns the land, they haven’t ever offered anything remotely like that, so the fight continues and nothing at all gets any nearer to being built.
Initially the developer said that no affordable housing could be offered because it wasn’t financially viable for them and they are still effectively saying that, albeit that their numbers are decidedly iffy and have been challenged by an expert, but they never respond to legitimate questions or criticisms from the public – or councillors on some occasions – and have never conducted any meaningful engagement with the community about the whole thing. This is extreme developer arrogance on steroids, seemingly confident in the belief that they can bulldoze this through regardless. Their latest wheeze is claiming to have a Registered Provider lined up who would buy a tranche of these units. They haven’t named this Registered Provider even now and, in any case, the units in their ludicrous proposal are ‘luxury’ and would almost certainly follow or exceed the same developer’s other projects, which see a sale price of anything from half a million upwards, so none of us believe that locals would stand any chance whatsoever of acquiring one of these properties even if they wanted one (and there are plenty of other reasons why they might well not want one anyway, such as low natural light levels, wind tunnels, silly little balconies, lack of parking and infrastructure, maintenance charges etc etc).
Yes – all that is true. And I support what you are saying. One issue is that the owners of the land are bound by financial and company law to get the best return on the land for the shareholders. It has sat there largely unused for decades and that would have given the council the excuse to purchase it with compulsion, but it was ignored like so many things “over at the east end of Brighton” Of course all the time it sits there the cost of building in increasing and this will impact the final price. If the council really wanted to scupper it – they could make it a “car free” development – but I suspect they will not as the see the payments/building quotas/council tax income on the horizon.
I see that Dave with his desire to make thousands of people homeless is posting again – Dave why do you never answer my question about where all the people you would make homeless go? I remember at one point you also suggested knocking down the entire Bates Estate with its many working residents…
I think I posted this last time I saw the concept come up, but here it is again for your consideration.
1. Build a housing development or seize unused properties to same number of houses (those empty flats at the Marina might be a good start).
2. Move people from the Bates Estate (or other low-density area) into those homes.
3. Demolish vacated properties in the BE.
4. Build low-rise blocks in place of demolished properties and multiply number of homes per footprint by about 4x, with ground floor reserved for commercial units (or doctor’s surgeries, etc)
5. Go to step 2 and repeat process, or stop when area is fully redeveloped.
There’d be some finangling about building new large public amenities to complement the plan, and shuffling around exactly who goes where, but there it is.
Solution,,, standardise the size of potholes, Nationwide endless amounts, pick your No.1 area, and move in, any complaints refer to the Highways Agencies, your local Council is not interested and if they were nothing would improve, for those with bigger families there are multiple units available in “next door” locations, Nationwide swaps also on hand,,,, pick your own and move, add your own house number and register at the local Council when you get there.
I’ve also seen some innovative design with shipping containers, which sounds horrible at first, but have a look at some images, actually look quite funky, and as a single unit, really easy to set up lots a quick succession.
There’s also flat pack modular homes that I believe a German company is pioneering; allowing for rapid creation of houses too.
Still, things like Hidden Homes, and Kubric, have been some early wins so far in increasing stock. At least until we get a central government that can financially support a grander building scheme to attempt to improve supply.