ROOF Blog

A tenant who campaigned against rent increases by his housing association has been found hanged in his flat. Neil Hill sent a suicide letter to Treasury lawyers two days after losing his case against City West Housing Trust and after being served with the legal bill of £3,000. Mr Hill claimed the rent rise was a breach of contract under the stock transfer agreement, but the judge dismissed the case because of a lack of paperwork.

Housing associations who inherited council housing have been ‘highly successful’ in delivering improvements to tenants, new research by the Joseph Rowntree Association has found. More than one million tenants have switched from local authority to housing association tenancies during the 20 years stock transfers have taken place and the research found that housing associations typically upgraded estates to standards ‘appreciably higher’ than originally promised – almost half implemented upgrades to standards much higher than the English decent homes standards or Scottish or Welsh equivalent, while generating procurement and other efficiency savings which were then ploughed back into unplanned works such as environmental improvements.

The Tenant Services Authority is encouraging housing associations to rationalise stock through swaps, transfers, management agreements and partnerships. Estates where a large number of associations own a small number of properties can result in tenants getting poor service, while landlords lack involvement in neighbourhoods, it says. The TSA found that up to 60 associations are present in some local authority areas.

The government will amend the law so that people leaving the armed services do not fail to get priority for social housing because they lack a local connection, housing minister Yvette Cooper said today.

At Harrogate, John Hills warned that social housing could end up ’warehousing the poor’ unless issues of inequality and worklessness were tackled too.

The CIH said it would consult its 16,000 members on the government’s proposals for Communities England but said it was on the right track.

Yvette Cooper promises more affordable new homes in the Mirror. The paper speculates that the spending review will see an extra £3bn for housing and 20,000 extra social rented homes a year.

The Olympics organisers may have to evict 36 residents and 13 travellers to make way for the games, reports The Times.

103 local authorities have opted for stock retention over transfer, almo and PFI, housing minister Yvette Cooper revealed in a written answer yesterday, while 148 have gone for transfer (with another 32 in development), 40 for almo (11) and 14 for a mix of options (6).

London’s suburbs are in danger of becoming dormitories with no jobs as they gear up for more new homes, according to a report by the London Assembly.

Housing associations will be able to take greater risks in the financial markets under new treasury management rules, according to Inside Housing.

The Housing Corporation has published a new policy on resident involvement that exempts associations with less than 250 homes from the requirement to have at least one resident board member by April 2008 and allows more time for charitable associations and specialist associations to meet the deadline.

Why are rising bond yields bad news for the housing market in general and people coming to the end of a fixed-term mortgage in particular? Ashley Seager explains in today’s Guardian.

Reforms of the legal aid system are bringing it close to collapse, according to a coalition of charities in The Observer.

A rash of new internet companies are setting up schemes to buy homes from people with payment problems and rent them back to them, reports the Financial Times.

Nottingham City Council is demanding new powers to control buy to let after a surge of investment in parts of the city forced it to consider closing schools because there are not enough families with children, reports Saturday’s Guardian.

House price inflation accelerated to 11.3% in April, according to the DCLG index this morning.

But housing markets are vulnerable to a collapse on a ‘global scale’, according to research by ABN Amro reported in the Daily Mail. Claims that a continuing property shortage in the UK will lead to ever-rising prices ‘have as much credibility as Britney Spears’ latest comeback’.

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s has issued a warning about risky mortgage lending in the buy to let and sub-prime sectors, reports today’s Financial Times.

The Guardian reports research from Hometrack about the missing first rung of the housing market that was first highlighted in the last issue of ROOF.

Homeless acceptances in the first quarter of 2007 were 17% down on a year ago, according to DCLG homlessness statistics published this morning.

The Herald covers the £200,000 job that nobody seems to want despite a global search – succeeding Michael Lennon as chief executive of Glasgow Housing Association.

Meanwhile, the housing crisis got extensive coverage in the weekend press:

The Guardian continued its coverage of ‘locust’ buy to let investors with a feature on how they have laid communities to waste in a ‘feeding frenzy’.

In the Sunday Times, Minette Martin called for a building boom – including the green belt if necessary.

A leader in the Sunday Telegraph says the crisis is about to hit home, with political consequences for the government. And a business news story predicts that ‘housing, housing, housing’ will define the Brown government as much as ‘education, education, education’ did Blair.

The Observer cites figures from the Nationwide showing that mortgages now account for half the income of first-time buyers, up from a third only three years ago.

On Question Time [go here to watch and here for the story] last night, Labour deputy leadership candidate Alan Johnson accused Margaret Hodge of ‘using the language of the BNP’ when she argued for a a Brits-first housing policy. A poll for BBC’s Daily Politics says 69% of the public think she’s right but Inside Housing reports a hostile reception from the housing profession.

Housing associations are under pressure on development funding after almos and private companies bid for a larger share, reports Inside Housing.

The Audit Commission has launched consultation on the pilot programme for its short-notice inspections of housing associations.

The Housing Corporation has announced the winners of its 2007 Gold Awards.

UK house prices are 65% over-valued according to the international economics agency OECD, reports the Mail. The estimate is based on a comparison between average prices and average rental returns, which is 65% above the average since 1970.

Illegal immigration cost the taxpayer £1bn last year, including £700m in housing costs, reports the Mail.

Camden to is to sell empty properties to the highest bidder and sell estates to housing associations as a way out of the problems caused by tenant rejection of transfer and almo, according to the Camden New Journal.

Papers including the Guardian and Telegraph cover plans for ‘sin bins’ for anti-social families in yesterday’s launch of the government’s network of family intervention projects.

The Financial Times reports on contrasting indicators for the housing market: the latest RICS survey showing that the house price bubble is still growing and a report from Datamonitor that says it may be about to burst.

The Housing Corporation has announced extra incentives to tenants buying under the struggling social homebuy scheme. Tenants who part-buy will get a discount when they staircase up as well as when they buy their intitial share.

Leading UK sub-prime lender Kensington has issued its second profit warning in three weeks, according to the Evening Standard.

An independent affordability review in Northern Ireland has called for an extra 10,000 social rented homes to be built and 9,500 empty homes to be brought back into use over the next five years. The Semple report [downloads PDF] also called for fast-tracking of planning applications for new homes.

Not before time: the Nationwide says house prices in Northern Ireland are rising at their fastest since records began in 1973 while the Halifax [downloads PDF] says that in the last two years prices have overaken everywhere except London, the South East and the South West.

The Housing Corporation has put AmicusHorizon group under supervision and has made three statutory appointment to the board of the housing association that manages 27,000 homes in London and the South East. It said it acted ‘because of concerns about its governance and management, arising from on-going poor operational performance within the group’s subsidiary SLFHA’.

As the election campaign hots up in Scotland, the Herald has a major feature on the housing crisis in Glasgow in the wake of the stock transfer, house price boom and buy to let.

House prices rose by 1% in March, according to the Halifax [downloads PDF]. The annual rate rose to 11.1% but the bank said the increase was for ‘purely arithmetical reasons’ to do with the strength of the market in early 2006 and house price inflation should slow down in the coming months.

The Bank of England held interest rates at 5.25% this morning but according to the Financial Times most economists expect another 0.25% rise in May.

The statutory tenancy deposit scheme in the private rented sector starts tomorrow. Communities secretary Ruth Kelly at the launch: ‘The new rules will inject greater fairness into the rental market and mean that when a tenant sticks to the rules, the landlord/agent must too.’

More estates in Sheffield have voted in favour of stock transfer. More than 70% of tenants on the Hyde Park Walk & Terrace and Richmond Park, Birklands & Athelstan estates said yes to transferring their 596 homes to Sacntuary and Manchester Methodist housing associations.

These were the last in a series of votes set up by the city council after consultation with local tenant representatives revealed they would rather go for transfer than stay with the Sheffield Homes arm’s length management organisation.