Memorandum by Ian Cole, Simon Kane and
David Robinson (UWP 121)
CHANGING DEMAND, CHANGING NEIGHBOURHOODS:
THE RESPONSE OF SOCIAL LANDLORDS
We have provided here a brief synopsis of the report,
and highlighted one of the sentences which occasioned most comment—usually
misrepresented in press coverage. We have concentrated on the
final chapter of the report, as this attracted most attention.
We also provide a note on the reaction to the report, mostly prompted
by the press release issued by the Housing Corporation at the
beginning of the year.
A BRIEF SYNOPSIS
— Chapter One of the report introduces
the changing pattern of demand for housing.
— Chapter Two presents an account of social
landlords' responses to these rapidly changing patterns of demand,
concluding that measures are still at a relatively formative stage,
with ad hoc policies gradually giving way to more strategic interventions.
In some cases these strategic interventions involved acceptance
that the neighbourhood was "over the brink" and set
in a process of decline that housing management, either alone
or in partnership with other sectors and agencies, could not reverse.
— Chapter Three argues that planning
for decline presents a challenge to a sector weaned on growth
and development that is unlikely to go away, and suggests that
the need to discuss strategies for coping with decline will become
every more pressing. In an attempt to facilitate this process,
Chapter Three includes a section on the wide range of practical
measures being introduced by landlords in the face of changing
patterns of housing demand.
— Chapter Four raises and discusses
some of the future policy dilemmas presented by changing demand
and the challenge of managing declining neighbourhoods. The key
elements of Chapter Four are summarised below.
Key questions that are likely to continue to
dominate policy debates about the future of social housing include
the options for management, investment and partnership working.
4.1 MANAGING
DECLINE OR
REGENERATING COMMUNITIES
Key questions include:
— can a sufficiently high level of
capital investment "turn around" entrenched decline?
— how can the decision be taken to
renew/regenerate an area or manage decline as a long-term process?
— what are the limits of housing intervention
in improving demand for specific neighbourhoods?
It is difficult to provide a success story where
a neighbourhood in decline has been "turned around"
completely either through the targeting of large sums of money
or the fundamental changes in practice, joined-up working, resident
involvement and community development. Recognising this point,
and given that the grip on purse strings is unlikely to be slackened,
the question arises whether certain neighbourhoods should be considered
as simply beyond redemption.
Where this is the case the challenge for social
landlords and other agencies is how to manage the process, with
all its implications for community support, residential mobility,
and the survival of local services and amenities.
At present, organisations are loath to acknowledge
such a bleak prognosis for any of their estates—irreversible
neighbourhood decline is "a problem that dare not speak its
name". It is, however, a problem that is unlikely to go away,
and the need to discuss strategies for coping with decline will
therefore become ever more pressing.
4.2 THE FUTURE
DIRECTION OF
HOUSING INVESTMENT
Key issues include:
— is it time to abandon a nationally-orientated
approach for housing investment?
— how should different sources of capital
funds be brought together?
— what criteria should govern decisions
on future housing investment?
— what are the implications for the
Housing Corporation, Government Offices, local authorities and
RSLs?
The increasing disparity between the challenge
of decline in "the North" and the pressure for development
in "the South" complicates the process of making decisions
about relative need that have traditionally shaped the pattern
of capital funding. It is therefore essential to increase the
flexibility of capital finance and acknowledge regional differentiation
in order to meet ever more diverse housing needs and requirements.
Where the pattern of demand is fragile, more support will be required
for selective demolition and planned capital disinvestment, with
linked re-investment through other funding streams.
4.3 HOUSING AND
NEIGHBOURHOOD MANAGEMENT
Questions here include:
— what pressures can be applied to
extend the practice of neighbourhood working?
— what scope is there to redirect mainstream
budgets to sustain neighbourhood budgets?
— would a series of demonstration schemes
in neighbourhood management open up new possibilities, if targeted
at areas of low or uncertain demand?
— can the relationship between capital
and revenue expenditure be reconfigured for supporting such neighbourhoods?
Housing services are often the first to diagnose
neighbourhood decline and to bear the brunt of arising problems.
It is therefore in the interests of RSLs, and the neighbourhoods
in which they work, that they take the lead and direct radical
thinking towards acting on an integrated neighbourhood-centred
approach to managing or tackling decline. Neighbourhood working
is both desirable from a point of principle and necessary as a
recognition of the character of housing demand issues in many
locations.
4.4 PRO-ACTIVE
PARTNERSHIP WORKING
Issues here include:
— will the local authority take centre
stage in moulding pro-active partnerships for areas of low demand?
— can regional development plans be
required to incorporate discussions about future demand?
— can neighbourhood profiles be provided
for those areas where incipient demand problems are emerging?
— can the views of front-line staff
be incorporated more systemically in neighbourhood strategies?
Many of the factors directly related to why
households chose to move out or not to move into a neighbourhood,
which are therefore the key determinants of changing demand, are
outside the control of RSLs and local housing authorities. It
is therefore essential to forge neighbourhood partnerships, not
just as a "salvage operation", but to shape factors
affecting demand once they start to emerge.
Changing demand for housing is more than a housing
issue. Partnership working may be widely recognised as essential,
but familiar difficulties will remain, however, even in situations
where financial resources to fund "joined-up" activities
are available. Social landlords, through their front-line housing
officers, are often first to sense emerging neighbourhood problems,
but last to be included in supposed "joined-up" thinking.
4.5 HOUSING IN
THE WIDER
ARENA
Housing demand does not exist in a cocoon, but
is intimately linked to wider economic and social trends, and
is affected by the policy environment too.
No amount of regeneration funding will solve
neighbourhood decline if the lack of real jobs across swathes
of the North of England and the Midlands remain. No amount of
enlightened housing management can solve problems created by the
closure of the factories, mills and ship-yards that estates were
built to feed. Landlords in such areas need to be operating a
"twin-track" response here—dealing with measures
devised to cope with the "here and now", while simultaneously
thinking ahead with other landlords and agencies.
The thinking which has traditionally governed
issues of housing access, finance, management and development
has been governed, often implicitly, by a model of "rationing"—
of regulating the queue of people waiting for a desired product
and service. This model has been outstripped by fundamental shifts
in local housing markets in parts of the North and the Midlands,
requiring a quite different set of "post-rationing"
principles to anchor the array of initiatives being tried out.
THE PRESS
RESPONSE
This linked the report, on a very slow post-millennial
news day, to three broader themes:
1. The need for demolition. The Daily Mail
commented on the report, and listed Toxteth and Benwell as two
of the areas needing to be demolished. Our report looked at neither
of these two areas. Headlines such as "blighted areas of
North not worth saving" (Daily Mail 4/1/00) offered, to put
it mildly, a selective interpretation of the report. The phrase
"beyond redemption" was picked up several times, in
both the press and radio and TV interviews. The point was made
in response that selective demolition may be needed in some neighbourhoods,
but only when other avenues for renewal and transformation had
been exhausted—and in these cases, the challenge for social
housing and other agencies was how to manage the process sensitively,
in full consultation with residents, and not "just walk away".
2. The North-South divide. This was an issue
of some prominence at the time. The report indicated that the
most severe problems of low demand in England were in the North
West and North East (a finding reinforced by the Policy Action
Team report on Unpopular Housing) and that more structural responses,
including reducing housing supply, were needed to a far greater
extent than those pockets of low housing demand in the "South",
where changes in management practice could often reap rewards.
3. The "Waste of Public Money"
A less prominent theme in press coverage was the line of "throwing
money down a black hole"/"good money after bad"
given the uneven effect of previous attempts at renewal in some
neighbourhoods. The unanswerable question here, of course, is
whether conditions would be even worse had prior intervention
not taken place. The implication of the report was, in fact, that
more resources, not less, would be needed to handle the sensitive
question of managing neighbourhood decline over the long term.
Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research
Sheffield Hallam University
April 2000
|
