This week’s interviewee works for the home ownership branch of a housing association
"I work for a large housing association with regional offices throughout the South-East: the organisation employs more than 1,000 people, and manages tens of thousands of properties. I have worked in the housing sector for the last 15 years, and in my current role for eight years.
Our clients are people who can’t access housing by renting or buying on the open market. Our core business is social housing, which involves working with government departments to fund and build subsidised rental properties for people on low incomes and benefits. We also provide retirement housing and sheltered accommodation for people who are old or vulnerable.
As well as this, we provide shared-ownership leases: part-owned, part-rented properties, where we sell percentage shares to first-time buyers looking to get a foot on the property ladder, and they pay rent on the remainder of the property. If their financial circumstances improve, they can buy larger shares in the property until eventually they own it outright.
At the moment, I’m also doing a lot of work on mortgage rescue. The government has provided enough funding to save 6,000 homeowners who are on the verge of repossession. Using some of this money, we go in and buy their property and then rent it back to them, so that they can remain in their own home.
Generally, all the housing association’s properties are part-funded by grants from the government, which we have to apply for through the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). The grant available varies on a project-by-project basis, and we have to bid against other housing associations to secure the public funding. The funding also depends on the type of housing, the client group and the location: for example, subsidised rental properties for vulnerable or elderly tenants attract more funding, as do proposals for supported housing schemes for people with mental health problems. The shared-ownership properties attract the lowest grant levels.
Our policy bible is the Capital Funding Guide, which is produced annually by the HCA. All our processes are driven by this document, which sets out the parameters for new homes, grant levels, and eligibility for renting and buying. The guidelines are pretty strict; the HCA has to ensure that any public money we receive is well spent.
As well as the HCA, I frequently work with the Tenants’ Services Authority (TSA): the two organisations previously formed the Housing Corporation. Both feed into government policy on housing standards, funding allocations and tenants’ rights – though there are also mechanisms that allow us to feed back to government about the problems and issues we have. As housing is high up on the political agenda, we occasionally have the power to influence policy through bodies such as the London Home Ownership Group. Still, I do get frustrated when dealing with these agencies. They often seem to change things for change’s sake every couple of years.
There is also some legislation that seems to create a lot of work for relatively small rewards. One particular initiative which caused us a lot of difficulty was the Right to Acquire, which was introduced in 1997, with the intention of levelling the playing field to give housing association tenants the same rights to purchase their homes as local authority tenants. The scheme generated a lot of interest, but only a small number of tenants are actually eligible to acquire their homes. We receive hundreds of enquiries, but only tenants of properties built after 1997, which were funded by government grants, are actually eligible. It can seem very unfair to our tenants.
On the other hand, one development which has made my job easier was the introduction of homebuy agents, who are selected by the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) and monitored and audited by the HCA. They were introduced five years ago, with one agent allocated per geographical area, and they hold a central register of all applications for shared ownership. This means that would-be buyers don’t have to register with lots of different housing associations, and saves us the administrative cost of handling referrals and applications from a wide range of sources. I was also very pleased by the government’s Budget announcement about scrapping stamp duty for first-time buyers, which took effect immediately. This is a big help for us, as stamp duty was a barrier for our first-time buyers, and it means that more people – especially in London – will be able to take part in our schemes.
The government created many good schemes and initiatives which filter through to the work I do, but at the end of the day, we will always need more funding. For example, there are lots of properties which need regenerating and bringing up to ‘decent homes’ standards; lots of older stock which could be put to good use; and lots of people in desperate need of rehousing. Recently, the grant rates for shared ownership have actually gone down, which means we are not able to build as many shared-ownership properties as we would like. Funding levels may be increasing for core social housing – because that is the big gap in the market, where the need is most acute – but shared-ownership schemes are equally important in helping people to realise their dream of owning their own home."