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Jan 08, 2024

Deaths, black mould, failing staff: social housing doesn’t have to be this way

When I joined the board of an English housing association I saw the pressures

When I joined the board of an English housing association I saw the pressures facing landlords under this government

Housing associations are hard to defend right now. This week, an investigation by the BBC exposed disturbing new details about the case of Sheila Seleoane, the woman whose body lay undiscovered for two years despite neighbours repeatedly complaining about the smell to their landlord. Peabody continued claiming her rent despite cutting off her gas because she did not open the door for a routine safety check.

And last week, a damning report exposed the failings of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH). Two-year-old Awaab Ishak died after prolonged exposure to black mould in his family's flat. A housing ombudsman's inquiry prompted by his death found that tenants were routinely judged by "prejudiced" staff who made "lazy assumptions".

Britain's largest housing association, Clarion, is a serial failure, as Aditya Chakrabortty wrote in February, while a recent investigation by ITV exposed a litany of failings by numerous social housing providers in recent years. Failure has become so appallingly frequent that in his report last week, the housing ombudsman Richard Blakeway asked if social landlords are "living their social purpose". In the face of such failure, it's a fair question.

In a previous career as a journalist, I used to write stories about the human cost of this crisis. Then I joined the board of a medium-sized housing association. I soon learned that it is far easier to see right and wrong in human stories than it is to get to grips with the complex and conflicting pressures faced by the people in the organisation on the other side.

When housing associations fail, it has terrible consequences. More than 4m households rely on them for safe, decent, affordable homes. But they operate in an environment shaped – and to a degree controlled – by government, which stretches from the way homes and rents are funded, down to the outlook of individual housing managers.

Attitudes like those of the Rochdale housing manager, who said refugees were lucky to have a roof over their heads, are not just random prejudices. They are the invidious legacy of "hostile environment" policies aimed at refugees and asylum seekers, along with a housing system that invariably prioritises home ownership. Together, they enable an atmosphere of social, cultural and economic disdain for anyone who lives in social housing to flourish like mould on a damp wall.

Then there's the rolling parade of housing ministers – more than a dozen in the 13 years since 2010. This is not just one of the most egregious examples of performative politics. It has consequences. On this ever-turning carousel, no minister has the time, let alone the incentive, to get to grips with the myriad individual moving parts of the system of social housing and how they interact. Housing policy, if it comes at all, comes in headlines: a new system of subsidy here, a rent freeze there.

The result is a noxious cocktail of uncertainty and overlapping obligations. Those who are drawn to work in social housing because they believe a decent home is a human right find themselves scrutinising balance sheets to ensure they can prove to the regulator they are managing their assets efficiently and providing value for money.

No one would quibble at the demand that homes meet decent health and safety standards. But even a requirement as non-negotiable as that has become complex. Upholding rigorous standards relies on the availability of qualified workers to test electrics, check boilers, repair fire doors. But a shortage of skilled tradespeople is making this harder to achieve – it is projected that the shortfall will reach 1 million within the next decade.

At the same time, our social housing stock is in short supply. New right-to-buy provisions mean housing associations face having to sell homes for less than the cost of replacing them. The cash that housing associations need to build new homes comes partly from government grant and mainly from borrowing. But the cost of debt is rising, while income from rents is failing to keep up with inflation. Finance directors grit their teeth at this year's 7% cap on rent increases – and cut back on building.

It doesn't have to be like this. What the sector desperately needs is a government willing to go beyond miming support for residents’ rights. Strong, effective regulation is part of that story. But most important is adequate, reliable funding. In England alone 4m families need more help with their housing costs than is available now. There are more than a million households on council waiting lists. MPs concluded three years ago that there needed to be at least 90,000 new social homes built each year. Tragically, we are nowhere near that figure.

At a sector event not so long ago, I heard a government polling adviser remark casually: "There are no votes in social housing." That's the really unacceptable truth: the state of social housing in Britain is a reflection of our values.

The headline and subheading of this article were amended on 5 April 2023 to indicate that the issues discussed related predominantly to England.

Anne Perkins is a writer and broadcaster, and former Guardian correspondent