WRITTEN EVIDENCE
Memorandum by Leeds HMO (Houses in Multiple
Occupation) Lobby (CDHB 01)
1. Leeds HMO Lobby is an association
of associations, founded in 2000. It comprises some twenty community
groups in Leeds, whose shared aim is to effect action on concentrations
of shared houses, or HMOs. Our campaign is informed by our shared
experience of developments in Leeds, and through our national
network of contacts, of developments in another dozen towns throughout
the country. The Lobby was established in the wake of the consultation
on Licensing of HMOs (1999), and since then we have responded
to consultations on Quality & Choice (2000), Selective
Licensing (2001) and Use Classes Order (2002). We have
participated in Shelter's Private Renting (2002) and Warwick
University's Management of HMOs (2003) research, and we
have held meetings with two Housing Ministers (Nick Raynsford
2001, Lord Falconer 2002). Locally, Leeds City Council has invited
the Lobby to represent the community on the Private Rented Sector
Strategic Working Group and its sub-committee, the Student Housing
Project Group. In this capacity, we have initiated measures such
as the Accredited Tenant Scheme and Task Groups to implement the
Council's Shared Housing Action Plan. Further information on the
Lobby may be found on its website at: http://healheadingley.org.uk/hmolobby
2. Leeds HMO Lobby's three key objectives
nationally are legislation enabling (a) a new definition of HMO,
in order (b) to identify HMOs (eg through licensing), and thereby
(c) to limit concentrations of HMOs (eg through planning controls).
Since 2000, we have urged successive Housing Ministers to press
for the inclusion in the Queen's Speech of legislation on such
measures. Hence, we were pleased when at last the government honoured
its manifesto pledges and promised a draft bill on 13 November
2002, and we were delighted on 31 March 2003 to find that the
Bill fulfilled two of our three objectives. We have a number of
points to make on the licensing proposals in the ODPM's Housing
Bill: Consultation on Draft Legislation.
3. Leeds HMO Lobby welcomes Annex A (pp25-8)
of the Consultation Paper, on the responses to previous consultations
on HMO and selective licensing. We would have welcomed more information
on the former, for instance a breakdown of the 579 responses,
such as is given for the 134 responses on selective licensing.
The latter indicates that 6% were from the community (reiterated
in s.41, p247). We are anxious to stress that with regard to housing,
there is a "third party" who generally remains invisible,
and this is the local community. There is occasional acknowledgement
of this third party in the document: s.24 (p233) refers to "the
impact of HMO usage in the local area" and community implications
recur throughout the Impact Assessment of Selective Licensing
(pp239-249). But in the Summary on p10, "Whom will these
proposals affect?" no mention at all is made of local communities;
and in Annex C (pp30-33) the List of Consultees includes no community
representation (though the Lobby did write to the ODPM). But both
tenants and landlords are entirely dependent on the "social
capital" generated by local communities for the viability
of their lettings, and indeed it is the very loss of this social
capital which creates the areas of low demand to which selective
licensing is addressed. Conversely, social capital can be damaged
by the wrong patterns of housing. We know from our own experience
the "double whammy" that concentrations of HMOs inflict
on their host communities: on the one hand, there inevitably follows
in their wake a steep increase in local problems (crime, squalor,
a "resort economy"); and on the other, there follows
a collapse of the local social capital which normally addresses
such problems. Government policy itself recognises the link between
housing and "balanced, thriving communities" (Quality
& Choice, 2000, s.1.10). Despite the lack of recognition
in the present document, the Lobby welcomes the measures in the
Draft Bill which will be helpful to the third party whom we represent.
4. Leeds HMO Lobby welcomes the new definition
of HMO proposed in Sections 164-170 of the Draft Bill, especially
Section 167 on the "multiple" element of HMO, which
specifies that "persons shall be treated as forming a single
household if they are all members of the same family." We
are pleased that note has been taken of the consultation on HMO
licensing when "almost half of respondents supported a "family"
based definition" (p26). We recognise that many grey areas
may arise from this definition, but these are addressed in the
subsections of Section 167. Certainly there is greater clarity
here than in the present definition. The Consultation Paper notes
that "the definition of HMO has been the subject of much
litigation" (s.4, p16), and the case is spelled out in s.6
(p230) on "the uncertainty over the current definition of
HMO." The concept of "single household" has effectively
remained undefined, hence "there is a lot of housing case
law on what constitutes a "household" for HMO purposes.
This uncertainty has led to enforcement difficulties" (s.17,
p232). In Leeds recently, a house occupied by eight students was
accepted as a single household on appeal by the landlord against
the Council (even though there was no one room in the house where
they could gather as a single whole). We believe there would indeed
be "fewer appeals on the basis of ambiguous, out-of-date
and inconsistent statutes" (s.40, p236). The new definition
will differentiate clearly between genuine single households and
houses which are in reality multiply occupied.
5. Leeds HMO Lobby welcomes Part 2 of the
Draft Bill which proposes mandatory licensing of prescribed HMOs.
These are specified in s.133 (p188) of the Explanatory Notes as
the larger HMOs, that is "HMOs of three storeys and above
in which at least five people live." And we welcome the proposed
provisions of the license (Section 65[3]) which include "the
behaviour of its occupants", "the condition of the house"
(which includes any gardens, Section 80) and "preventing
parts of the house being occupied." We recognise that the
main aim of the legislation is to provide safe, acceptable and
affordable accommodation for tenants (s.3, p16). But the Impact
Assessment also notes that an aim is to "lessen the impact
of HMO usage . . . on immediate neighbours (s.24, p233). The Explanatory
Notes mention that HMOs "are occupied typically by young
lower-income single people" (s.7, p174). This leads to a
distinctive form of occupation: (a) occupancy is highly intensive
(with consequences for noise, waste, etc.); (b) the occupants
are typically young adults (whose lifestyle tends to aggravate
noise/waste problems); (c) "government" within the house
lacks "head of household" (to mitigate problems); and
(d) commitment is generally short-term (undermining social networks,
and thence social capital). Larger HMOs of course exaggerate these
features. Mandatory licensing of these will help to ameliorate
their consequences for their immediate neighbours. (However, the
Lobby advocates that HMOs prescribed for licensing include those
that are three storeys and above or at least five people in order
to encompass all those which are likely to be dangerous and/or
disruptive.)
6. Leeds HMO Lobby also welcomes Section
62 of Part 2 of the Bill which provides for additional discretionary
licensing. The nature of the impact of HMOs is twofold, as implied
by s.24 (p233). Individual HMOs (especially if they are large)
have an immediate and specific effect on neighbouring homes. Numbers
of HMOs (especially in concentration) have a longer-term and generic
effect on the local area (the double whammy noted in paragraph
3 above). A case in point is "large concentrations of poor
quality, poorly managed student houses" (s.22, p233). Discretionary
licensing will enable local housing authorities to respond to
such circumstances, which have arisen to some degree in most university
towns throughout the country, and also in many coastal towns.
As noted in s.19 (p232) "LHAs often have great difficulty
in identifying and tracking down HMOs." In addition, their
registers of licenses "will provide LHAs with much more information
on the HMO market (s.53, p238). This will be invaluable, not only
for housing policy, but also for planning policy. It will enable
local authorities much more effectively to achieve the social
mix which is the government's aim in both housing and planning.
7. Leeds HMO Lobby welcomes Part 3 of the
Bill which proposes selective licensing of rented accommodation
in designated areas. These areas are specified as "of low
housing demand" (Section 82[2]). We have our reservations
about this characterisation, which takes a symptom as the defining
characteristic of an area. Low housing demand is in fact the final
effect of a chain of causes: it arises essentially from the poor
reputation of a neighbourhood, which in turn is the consequence
of the decline of the social capital (or community spirit) of
this area. (The reasons for this in turn are indeed complex, as
noted in s.5, p239; in fact, they are likely to be very varied.)
What is clear is that there is an intimate relationship between
housing and social capital (or community welfare), and this is
demonstrated in the Regulatory Impact Assessment of Selective
Licensing. The discussion of Option 2, for instance, refers to
lower crime, improved behaviour, improved environment and benefit
to local business as the outcomes of licensing (ss.17, 18, 21,
pp242-4); and subsequently it is noted that without action "other
local residents will continue to bear the costs of associated
crime and anti-social behaviour," as well as service providers
(s.27, pp244-5). In most cases, what develops is a vicious circle.
In an area of low housing demand, the low demand is caused by
community decline; elsewhere, community decline may be the direct
result of changes in the housing market. Hence, the Lobby welcomes
the indication that "licensing could be applied in other
limited areas" (Consultation Paper, s.1, p19, reiterated
in the Summary, p10, and in the Explanatory Notes, s.157, p191).
We are pleased that the Draft Bill follows the 82% of consultation
respondents who advocated selective licensing elsewhere (Annex
A, p27). Paradoxically, an area of high demand can also "have
such an effect on the law-abiding community around them"
(s.5, p239). The recent phenomenal increase in the private rented
sector in many university towns is a case in point. In Headingley
in Leeds, for instance, the principal student residential area,
in the last decade the balance of the population living in this
sector has expanded from 20% to 50%. The scale and speed of this
change is a prime example of "the significant negative impact
some private rented sector landlords have on some communities"
(s.45, p247). In the Consultation Paper of 2001, four indicators
were given of community destabilisation, and all of them are present
in this area: (a) high turnover (50% annually), (b) high crime
(the country's worst burglary rate), (c) dumping & litter
(this year, the Council introduced a special cleansing initiative
in the area, the worst in the city), (d) neighbour nuisance (Noise
Nuisance and Neighbourhood Helplines have been established). The
Lobby would be pleased to offer its experience, knowledge and
understanding of these issues in response to the invitation for
"information that may help with the further analysis of the
possible costs and benefits associated with the application of
licensing beyond low-demand areas" (s.8, p240). (We have
proposed to Leeds City Council some mechanisms for doing so, a
variation of the Council's Neighbourhood-Orientated Model of Area
Demand.) We believe that HMO licensing may be adequate to address
housing problems in some areas of Leeds. But we believe it is
essential that selective licensing is also available, and not
only in areas of low demand, to tackle problems where this proves
inadequate.
8. Leeds HMO Lobby welcomes the commitment
that "proposals will be taken forward through the Housing
Bill when legislative time allows" (p11). We urge the Housing
Minister to press as urgently as possible for the provision of
that time. The Consultation Paper refers to "the spiral of
decline" in areas of low housing demand (s.4, p19). But this
spiral is circling viciously too in other areas where private
rented sector landlords have a "significant negative impact"
on their host community, and this is especially the case where
concentrations of HMOs have developed. Community groups like the
Lobby and its allies around the country are struggling to resist
this impact with what resources they have at their disposal. We
struggle also with our own despair and with the haemorrhaging
of the support of neighbours who understandably give up. Our struggle
is against time. The Draft Housing Bill offers encouragement.
Even more encouraging would be speedy enactment.
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