What would happen if your local hospital announced that because of a series of government reforms and financial cuts they would no longer be able to provide a health service for the very sick? There would be a major outcry from the public and professionals alike. Yet the same thing is happening in the social housing sector, and only a small number of people are protesting about it.

Last week, Hannah Fearn wrote that reports of the sector’s demise had been exaggerated. I was referenced in her article as a “radical commentator” and used as an example of the housing sector’s tendency to cry wolf at the prospect of reform. I would argue that far from crying wolf, some in the sector have contributed to the demise of social housing by not challenging the government strongly enough. There is a need to highlight the folly of the government’s reforms in both social and financial terms. The new business model of so-called affordable housing that will emerge will do nothing to solve the housing crisis and the emphasis on home ownership will only make it worse.

Just as the NHS was established to provide a health service for all, including the very sick, housing associations were set up to provide homes for those in the greatest need. They will no longer be able to do this in future. Housing and welfare cuts over the past five years and planned cuts in the next five years threaten the very existence of social housing.

The process is not new but it began to accelerate after the last election in 2010. It started, as it often does, with the demonisation of social housing and its tenants. This was taken up by the media in programmes such as Channel 4’s Benefits Street. The demonisation created the context for the government’s attacks upon social housing and its tenants to take place.

First they slashed public investment in social housing. Then they introduced the so-called affordable rent regime, which in many areas increased rents beyond the reach of ordinary people. Then they began the process of welfare reforms and introduced the bedroom tax. The latest reform is the overall benefit cap. This will make social rented homes unaffordable to many. Finally they propose to extend the right to buy to tenants of housing associations. This will not only reduce the number of social rented homes further, but also demand councils sell off their most expensive homes to fund replacements that will likely never be built.

These measures have created a perfect storm for social housing and the very people that housing associations were established to help. Their needs will increase as more austerity measures are introduced and the number of genuinely affordable social homes declines. This is not scaremongering; it is the reality that many will face. We in social housing have a responsibility to tell the government that its campaign against social housing will be financially and socially catastrophic.

Some in the sector have been too complicit in the last five years and have accepted the government’s proposals too easily. This has allowed the government to change the very nature of what we do.

The social housing sector has reached a tipping point. The possibility of producing new social housing under the current regime is almost nil. Anything that is built for rent in the next five years will be unaffordable to many. Social housing that does exist will be sold off or converted to higher rents and not replaced. Even where lower rents remain tenants will not be able to afford them because of the overall benefit cap and other cuts. More and more in the sector will welcome this process or at least accept it as the new reality.

The outcome of this is clear. If the government does not change course the housing crisis will increase and more and more people will be homeless. We in the housing sector have a duty to those we were set up to help to continue to shout this out. If housing associations can’t provide a home for poor and marginalised people, who will?

To make this case is not anti-aspirational. It is anti-poverty and pro-humanity. A social housing sector that can no longer provide a home for poor people and marginalised groups at a rent that they can afford is as bad as a health service that can no longer provide for those who are sick.The people who established the modern social housing sector did so by challenging the government and the status quo. If we are to protect what we have, the time has come to do so again.



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