Housing ambition and disciplining the poor Alex Marsh School for Policy Studies The University of Bristol

Bristol, BS8 1TZ, United Kingdom e: alex.marsh@bristol.ac.uk (28/04/13)

1.

Introduction

Our welfare system is a soft touch, right? If you relied upon the mass media and mainstream political discourse for your information then youd be forgiven for thinking that taxpayer-funded bounty was being handed out to anyone who cared to ask. And that, apparently, it would most likely be illegal immigrants, or possibly Bulgarians, doing the asking. Whats more, there is a huge queue of undesirables just waiting to step on to our shores and immediately take advantage of an offer of high quality social housing at a remarkably low rent. And this offer is designed specifically to do down the locals by sending them to the back of the housing queue. Not only that, but once these undesirables are ensconced in their taxpayer-subsidized home they can abuse the property, their neighbours and the neighbourhood as much as they like without fear of reprisals. Of course this is utter nonsense. The only way it can have such a hold upon sections of the popular imagination is that few people have much grasp of how these systems actually work. Yet, however wrong-headed this view may be, it is powerful. As a characterisation of housing policy it is a long way from reality, for all sorts of reasons. In particular, any focus on irresponsible and anti-social tenants who need to get a grip and be punished for bad behaviour is a little odd, because it is so far behind the times.

2.

Obliged to take responsibility

Since the 1990s a drive to rebalance the relationship between landlord and tenants has been central to the agenda. Initially inspired by Blairite communitarianism, the aim has been to place greater weight on the responsibilities that come along with the right to occupy a property. Far from a social housing tenancy coming with no strings attached, underlining the responsibilities of the tenant has been a central concern. Were already well into the era of anti-social behaviour orders and acceptable behaviour contracts, introductory tenancies and tenancy demotions. Its a decade and a half since Irwell Valley launched their Gold Service to encourage and reward tenants who behave responsibly. That type of approach attracted a lot more attention as choice-based lettings schemes rolled out across the country following the Housing Green Paper published back in 2000. Many landlords use a good tenancy record to give an applicant greater bidding power or a poor tenancy record to move an applicant closer to the back of the queue, depending on whether local preference is for the carrot or the stick. Whichever focus is adopted, improved behaviour and clearing the rent account were the routes to redemption and a greater chance of securing a new home. There are landlords who are awarding star ratings to their tenants according to their assessment of how responsible a tenant is. And there are landlords who are writing expectations of participation in community activities into their tenancy agreements. Quite what happens if such participation is not forthcoming is not entirely clear.

3.

The urgent need for more of the same

So there is already plenty happening. The responsibilization of the tenant is well under way. But the pressures for landlords policy and practice to move further in this direction are undoubtedly increasing as a result of current Westminster policy agendas. In particular, under welfare reform the Government will no longer allow the housing benefit that covers the rent to be paid direct to landlords. Instead, all tenants except

those with evidenced vulnerabilities - will be given the money and expected to pay their own rent. Again, this is part of a responsiblizing agenda. As a consequence of this change, landlords are anticipating substantial increases in rent arrears and a need to spend considerable sums chasing bad debts. Bad debt provisions are likely to increase significantly. The move away from direct payments, combined with the introduction of a benefit cap and changes to underoccupancy rules, will most likely place some social housing organisations in an extremely fragile position financially. It is perfectly possible indeed plausible - to envisage some landlords being tipped over the edge. Some of the problem created by ending direct payment will be a product of poor money management skills on the part of tenants. Some of it is going to be about poor people having to make difficult decisions about the allocation of meagre resources, and deciding that settling the rent account is not the most pressing demand they face this week. Some of it is going to be about banks taking the money from tenants current accounts to cover other debts, without the tenants necessarily having a choice in the matter. In addition, a wise landlord might anticipate that constraints on housing allowances are going to tighten over time, while conditionality under Universal Credit if it arrives is going to place an increased premium upon getting tenants into work. Leaving aside any broader benefits to tenants and the community, social landlords are therefore likely to perceive that they have a strong financial incentive to move as many tenants out of the clutches of an increasingly straitened benefit system and instil in as many tenants as possible the discipline of making sure paying the rent is the number one priority. The interesting question is how far such incentives will translate into policy and what form that policy might take. But so far this discussion has largely been about the management of a tenancy and the prompt payment of rent. Perhaps it is time for landlords to be thinking more ambitiously?

4.

A new approach

Into this mix we now have the moves by Yarlington Housing Group, reported in the Independent on Friday. Yarlington are expecting tenants to sign Household Ambition Plans (HAPs) when they sign up for a seven-year fixed-term tenancy. Such plans could cover giving up smoking, keeping fit, or enhancing skills in a way that assists the tenant in looking for work. These are not just idle ambitions to be articulated. Attempting to meet them will have consequences. The housing associations statement to prospective tenants is clear: We will look at the progress you have made with your HAP when we consider the renewal of your tenancy at the end of the seven-year fixed period. The housing association is quoted in the Independent as further stating that no one would be evicted if they did not fulfil their ambition plan. However, at first sight that seems like a little bit of semantic juggling. The proposal is to use meeting the objectives in the ambition plan as a factor in deciding whether or not to offer another fixed-term tenancy. I would have thought that not renewing a fixed-term tenancy as a consequence of non-fulfilment of the plan would not, strictly speaking, count as an eviction.

5.

A new disciplinary tool

The arrival of fixed-term tenancies under the Localism Act 2011 appears to have given this sort of agenda renewed momentum. Broadly speaking, under the previous tenancy regime the landlord either had a fixed period to determine whether a tenant was responsible under an introductory tenancy or there was the option of attempting to discipline behaviour through antisocial behaviour provisions, accompanied by formal legal proceeding to evict if that failed. The matters that could legitimately be invoked to terminate a tenancy did not encompass insufficient exertion at keep-fit class or failing to eat your five a day.

Fixed-term tenancies change the nature of the game in the landlords favour. They open up the possibility of setting time-limited plans through which the perfection of the tenant and their family can be pursued. The tenants lives become a project or a series of projects associated with a series of tenancies - to be overseen, audited and managed. Presumably there will be suitably specified thresholds and targets for the achievement of household ambitions. It will be interesting to see quite how achievement of some of the more nebulous goals, around health and well-being for example, are assessed. And it will be intriguing to see whether refusal to renew tenancies on the grounds of a failure of ambition will be open to any sort of legal challenge.

6.

You dont have to if you dont want to

Yarlington suggested that if people are uncomfortable with the ambition plans then: If they decide they do not want to take advantage of this opportunity, they will be advised to bid for homes offered by other housing providers who do not have a similar scheme. At one level this seems fair enough. The organisation has its own mission and values. It has the latitude to specify any requirements it sees fit upon those receiving its services, as long as they are lawful. But it rather begs the question of how much choice is, in practice, available locally. It may be that for certain households in certain locations there is only one social landlord offering suitable properties. There are broader arguments at the moment within the social housing world about the inefficiencies of a fragmented sector and the advantages of mergers and rationalisation of stock ownership within a locality. So subscribing to the perfectability agenda may not be a choice, if one wishes to be housed. This is, of course, just one version of a familiar risk within welfare systems that rely on value-driven organisations: what happens to the person in need who cant or

wont adhere to the values espoused by available service providers? Do such people put themselves beyond help as a result of their unwillingness to conform?

7.

Whose version of ambition?

One of the intriguing elements of this agenda, which is not clear from the Independent article, is how household ambitions are identified and who identifies them. A spokeswoman for the housing association is quoted in the paper as seeing the scheme as positive because it would help people realise their full potential and achieve what they might like to do. The word might in that statement may or may not be significant. It could be taken to imply that these are ambitions that the household already holds. The Household Ambition Plan is a new, potentially powerful, mechanism for assisting households to achieve objectives that had previously escaped them. The initiative would therefore be very much in line with the sort of thinking associated with the broader behaviour change agenda, inspired by lessons from behavioural economics. Such commitment mechanisms can be seen as helping households overcome preferences. Like any such behavioural mechanism it is open to the criticism that it psychologises the problem. It locates the source of a households problems in some deficiency in their own behaviour or perseverance. If this blemish in their character is removed then their situation will be improved. This sort of approach can distract from the possibility that the seat of the problem lies in structural or societal factors that act to place the household in a disadvantaged position. The alternative view is that this sort of scheme has a strong hint of paternalism about it. The ambitions articulated in a Household Ambition Plan are not those that the household members themselves identify. They are inserted by someone making judgements about where a household is deficient and to what it should aspire. self-control problems, discounting biases and time-inconsistent

Michael Gelling, chairman of the Tenants and Residents Organisation of England, takes this view of the Yarlington scheme. He is quoted by the Independent as saying: You cant tell me not to smoke if I smoke, or not to drink if I drink or how to live my life, he said. Im not a social underclass. Im a human being. This has been drawn up by people in well-paid jobs sipping wine on their verandas saying weve sorted the underclass out. How much control households perceive themselves to have over the identification of the ambitions included in their plan will no doubt be important in shaping how this initiative is received. Im sure other landlords will be watching with interest.

8.

Rewind to the Victorian era?

The responsibilization of tenants has been a thread running through policy for the best part of two decades. But, of course, it is redolent of much older currents in housing management thought. I am reminded of the statement made by Octavia Hill, the pioneer of social housing management in Britain, to the Royal Commission on the housing of the working classes in 1885: I do not say that I will not have drunkards [in my properties], I have quantities of drunkards; but everything depends upon whether I think the drunkard will be better for being sent away or not. It is a tremendous despotism, but it is exercised with a view of bringing out the powers of the people, and treating them as responsible for themselves within certain limits you cannot get the individual action in any other way that I know o f. I dont think anyone can sensibly be against landlords offering their tenants support in order to help them improve their skills or improve their quality of life. The question is on whose terms? Once there is a sense of compulsion about participation as with workfare the desirability of such initiatives becomes much more contested.

One reading of our situation is that we are moving into an era in which the sort of philanthropic sentiment we most closely associate with the Victorians is resurgent. An elitist era of unashamed paternalism. An era in which Old Etonians can claim to be particularly suited to public service by virtue of the particularities of their exclusive education. An era in which people are obliged to take responsibility. But to do so not in ways that are self-determined, but in ways that are handed down. An alternative reading of our situation is that we are in a period of transition. The increasing commercial pressures on social landlords are such that all talk of values, mission and going the extra mile for your tenants will to turn out to be transient, as landlords are forced by the cold hand of competition to compete with no-frills lean and mean for-profit providers. Delivering the financial performance necessary to satisfy the exacting requirements of the bond markets will leave no room for sentiment. Landlords will need to be focused on collecting the rent; anything more is a luxury. But that is an argument for another day.