Uncertain future for housing associations

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/31/uncertain-future-for-housing-associations

Version 0 of 1.

John Harris (Opinion, 26 March) was spot-on. Forced sales will destroy housing associations and the only chance that many vulnerable people will ever have of renting an affordable decent home for their family. Many older associations are charities. Will government destroy their charitable status? Or will some tenants be able to buy and others not? Housing associations need stable rents. Forced sales will destabilise their £70bn bank loans. Will banks then repossess the remaining stock? Who funds the discounts? If it’s the associations, they risk default; if the government, then that is money lost to new housebuilding, schools, the NHS etc. And if housing associations become public bodies, £70bn is added to the public-sector deficit. The winners will be middle-aged children who will use their new pension freedoms to pay for elderly parents to buy their nice discounted housing association home; a few years later they make £75,000 or more profit. If, as happened with council house sales, most are sold off after a few years mainly into buy-to-let, rents treble and the housing benefit bill soars. Meanwhile, five million families in the private rented sector who are themselves often struggling to buy, will see other tenants, already better housed than they, with cheaper rents than they, winning the housing lottery yet again. Or will the government extend right-to-buy to private tenants as well – with discounts, of course? Now that would be useful. But somehow, I think not.Patricia HollisHouse of Lords, and chair, Broadland Housing Association

• The g15 group represents the largest 15 housing associations in London, providing homes for one in 10 Londoners and one quarter of all new homes built. We agree with your observation that “affordability” has become Orwellian in its definition. In just one block of flats you could have the situation where one resident is paying £95 per week for a two bedroomed flat; her neighbour pays £130 per week for an identical flat; her neighbour is paying £140 per week for one bedroom less and others are paying a full market rent of £350 per week. No one government or organisation is responsible for this mess. We all created it with one layer of policy after another, each attempting to address the problem of the day. But now we find ourselves in a position where the rent our residents pay depends not on their ability to pay but on the home which becomes available on the day they reach the top of the waiting list and the way that home was funded. We desperately need new affordable homes and g15 is doing its best to provide them. In the last two years  we delivered 18,000 new homes, we have a further 93,000 homes in development and have set out our plans for doubling that number.

We are committed to solving to housing crisis but we could do a lot more with a little help. So we ask three things of the next government. First, to commit to a long-term plan to solve the housing crisis in one generation. Second, to liberate enough land to enable us to provide the homes we need. And third, to restore the relationship between rents and welfare benefits, allowing housing associations to harmonise all of our rents around a genuinely affordable level. If these three things are delivered we will deliver apprenticeships, jobs, economic growth, thriving communities and genuinely affordable homes – enough to house a generation.David MontagueChief executive, L&Q housing trust, on behalf of g15