Tinkering won't fix the broken social housing system

Author: Harry Phibbs, Daily Mail - Jun 29, 2009

Some estates are rotten and need to be redeveloped. Changing the mix to create more market housing and providing low cost shared ownership will make rebuilding financially feasible.

This will allow better homes for all - including those tenants who wish to go on renting.

New housing could be created by working with the market and by going with the grain of the aspirations of tenants, rather than top down Stalinist targets.

Stephen Greenhalgh and John Moss in a pamphlet for the Localis think tank propose the Dutch model.

They say: 'The Dutch did much of what we propose in the 1990s with great results. Deprived estates were re-built and areas with concentrations of poverty became mixed income, mixed tenure neighbourhoods.'

This won't be the answer everywhere. Some estates are fine architecturally and have many tenants who would love the chance to buy their existing homes but can't.

Simply restoring the right to buy discount would offer many of them the opportunity for the pride and independence of home ownership. A chance for the next generation to inherit an asset.

For new tenancies a change of outlook is needed.

For those in need the state gives money to pay for food and clothes - it doesn't provide state parcels of groceries and clothing.

A similar approach is needed in housing. Prospective council tenants should be given housing allowances which allow them to escape the ghetto and bad neighbours by finding their own accommodation, just as the rest of us do.

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