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1997 | Book

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Social Housing Management

A Critical Appraisal of Housing Practice

Author: Martyn Pearl

Publisher: Macmillan Education UK

Book Series : Macmillan Building and Surveying Series

Included in: Professional Book Archive

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About this book

This text examines the conflicts, pressures and responsibilities involved in providing social housing through the perspective of housing practitioners. An analysis of the key issues dominating social housing provides a context within which the nature of housing management is considered with reference to concepts such as competition, partnership, consumer control, community care and equal opportunities. It will appeal to students and lecturers of social policy and health and welfare studies as well as housing studies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
1. Introduction
Abstract
This is a book about housing management. It is an occupation which closely touches the lives of both those delivering the service and those who receive it. As Colin Ward observes, housing is so fundamental to ensuring quality of life, that its distribution and control lies at the very core of a welfare society. Without a secure base, few other benefits of an advanced society can properly be enjoyed. This work is not intended to be a policy analysis of the success or failings of social housing, nor a technical evaluation of the costs of delivering the landlord function. Each has been undertaken elsewhere within the recent past. Instead, the perspective of the book is that of the practitioner. Whether employed as a front-line housing officer or a director of housing, the role of individual housing staff is often as critical to the manner in which services are delivered as the policy framework within which they operate.
Martyn Pearl
2. What Is Housing Management?
Abstract
Although this book is about housing management, as the above quotes indicate, there has in the past been little clear consensus as to what such a term actually means. A growing emphasis on value for money via competition and contract specifications has more recently provided a focus around which a common definition has become established. It has concentrated largely on output-related landlord functions, crystallised within the concept of the ‘Social Housing Product’ (see Chapter 11) introduced in the 1995 White Paper Our Future Homes (DoE, 1995b). The motivation has been to develop a series of measurable performance standards which might appropriately be applied to an increasingly diverse range of landlord organisations. This has become particularly important in the light of the political commitment to promote housing companies and the potential extension of Social Housing Grant (the replacement for HAG) to private developers. A common set of standards would in theory allow the establishment of a level playing field on which services might realistically be compared, irrespective of the organisation delivering them. However, this has generated a growing concern amongst existing housing associations that the future allocation of grant may be heavily influenced by, or directly linked to, performance comparisons achieved by the production of league tables of measured output.
Martyn Pearl
3. Housing Management in a Time of Change
Abstract
Whatever the fate of the organisations managing social housing, there can be little doubt that they have experienced unparalleled change in the decade spanning 1986-96. Government policy, as detailed in Chapters 1 and 2, has been designed not only to influence housing policy and practice, but to reshape the entire face of the rented housing sector. The effect has been the promotion of new structures and organisational types (see Chapter 8) and the modernisation of long-established ones, sweeping styles, cultures and attitudes into a new era. The bedrock of change has been the imposition of a series of key private sector concepts into the public sector environment. These have included competition, performance expectations, quality assurance, customer care, and the separation of the strategic role from that of provider. Certain elements of this largely enforced change have been widely welcomed, while others have been contentious, often generating significant resistance.
Martyn Pearl
4. Managing a Residualised Housing Stock
Abstract
Despite the sale of 1.5 million dwellings under the Right to Buy, local authorities and housing associations continue to manage in excess of 5 million dwellings. Many are of good quality, well designed and maintained to a high standard, proving extremely popular with residents. However, a sizeable number fall short of these standards, causing dissatisfaction amongst tenants and considerable management difficulties for housing staff. These difficulties are often manifested in problems such as high void rates, difficult-to-let dwellings and high levels of nuisance, crime and general unrest on housing estates. Each of these has become a recognisable feature of the residualisation of social housing. This chapter examines the implications of residualisation to the tenants and managers of the estates worst affected, identifying the resulting housing management issues, together with examples of initiatives designed to resolve problems and improve the quality of life.
Martyn Pearl
5. The Role of Tenants in Managing Housing
with Wendy Spray
Abstract
A growing body of legislation, policy and practice has been developed within recent years, designed to encourage the active involvement of tenants in the management of social housing. Its motivation has been derived partly from the objective of loosening local authorities’ grip on social housing, and linked partly to the growth in the power of citizens and consumers. It has also mirrored a policy progression within many social housing organisations, recognising the importance of tenant participation in meeting their objectives. This has been particularly true of the inner city where strategies to improve run-down and unpopular estates have depended on empowerment and partnerships with local communities (see Chapter 4). However, despite the establishment of a framework for tenant participation implementation has proved patchy, practical difficulties having emerged both for professionals and tenants themselves alike.
Martyn Pearl
6. Community Care and Housing Management
Abstract
In a social housing environment increasingly dominated by performance and control, community care has proved one of the most significant policy trends within recent years. Although not primarily a housing policy, it has had the effect of redefining the parameters of housing management almost by default. The process has involved the relocation of the treatment and support of frail and vulnerable individuals and households away from longstay institutions, into domestic settings within the community. This has generated considerable resource implications for the health and caring professions as decentralisation often proves more resource intensive than delivering services centrally. The impact on housing professionals has also been significant, having been expected to shoulder additional responsibilities which have required new skills and extra resources. The locus of community care has shifted beyond developing specialist, sheltered accommodation, to a position in which many mental health sufferers are increasingly rehoused into general needs housing. In many cases the transition to community care, i.e. rehousing people with acute care needs into independent accommodation, has created few problems. It usually represents the culmination of a successful process of rehabilitation and reintegration into the community.
Martyn Pearl
7. Privatising Housing Management
Abstract
Perhaps the greatest impact on social housing has resulted from the trend towards the privatisation, or rather commercialisation, of the management function. This has been one in a raft of policies (see Chapter 1) designed to shift the locus of control for social housing away from local authorities. The main, but not exclusive vehicle for implementing such change is CCT, the effects of which have been felt from April 1996, as authorities have systematically tendered their landlord functions. This chapter details the policy and statutory framework within which CCT operates, and the main issues inherent in its implementation. Also examined are different organisational approaches to CCT, including illustrative case studies of specific local authority experiences.
Martyn Pearl
8. The Changing Structures of Housing Organisations
Abstract
Across the social housing sector, many organisational structures have had to change to meet the new expectations of the public sector of the 1990s. Central government policy has been geared towards extending choice in rented housing through competition. This has involved introducing CCT for local authorities (see Chapter 7) and promoting a range of alternative landlords, thus breaking up a perceived local authority monopoly in the process. As a result, observers of the housing scene in the 1990s have become familiar with new types of social housing organisations which would not have existed a decade earlier. Housing companies, and Large Scale Voluntary Transfer housing associations (LSVTs) are poised to become the mainstream social landlords of the future, changing the traditional face which has centred on local authorities and housing associations. For existing landlord organisations, the immediate future promises considerable organisational and structural reappraisal as they realign themselves to meet the challenges of performance and competition.
Martyn Pearl
9. Managing in Partnership
Abstract
In examining social housing, certain key themes emerge which are central to an understanding of the dynamics of the process. Working in partnership is one such theme, having grown steadily in importance during the 1990s. The continued drive by central government to fragment public services has created the situation in which strategic planning, development, management and maintenance of social housing can rarely be accommodated within single organisations. There is therefore an increasing reliance on identifying compatible partners with whom to devise and deliver appropriate housing services. This is true not only of local authorities and housing associations, which continue to operate within tight public expenditure constraints, but also the private sector, particularly in the construction industry where companies have suffered the effects of a crippling recession. The challenge across both sectors has been to reassess the production of housing and its related services, and devise new, flexible approaches which reflect relative strengths and available resources. The catalysts for partnership have therefore been both carrot and stick, emanating from a combination of government regulation and financial necessity.
Martyn Pearl
10. Housing Professionalism
Abstract
Throughout this book there is evidence of significant change in social housing, often appearing more revolutionary than evolutionary. Much of it has been in response to government policies promoting market competition and financial stringency alongside a greater emphasis on partnership, performance cultures, and a more influential role for the consumer. It has been difficult for any social housing organisation to avoid being affected and altered by these initiatives, no matter how they have tried to retain the status quo. Nor has such change been limited to organisations alone — practitioners have also felt the effects. Individual practice has increasingly come under the microscope in the drive for increased cost-effectiveness and customer care. The result has been the emergence of a new set of skills, approaches and expectations which have challenged many traditional practices and attitudes.
Martyn Pearl
11. The Shape of Things to Come
Abstract
Approaching the new millennium, the future of social housing remains far from clear. Despite reassurances from the government, there is a prospect that the social housing sector, as it has come to be known, could have its birth and demise within the same century: ‘just as housing could be viewed as the sector to be “first in” to the welfare state … so it might be the “first out”’ (Cole and Furbey, 1994, p. 235). The absence of the constitutional right to housing which exists in some other European states, renders subsidised housing vulnerable to ideological swings. This has been evidenced by the creeping privatisation of social housing fuelled by the commitment to market forces and the adoption of private sector approaches to service delivery. The management of the stock remaining in public ownership has either been contracted out to private companies, or is due to be tendered within the near future.
Martyn Pearl
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Social Housing Management
Author
Martyn Pearl
Copyright Year
1997
Publisher
Macmillan Education UK
Electronic ISBN
978-1-349-13647-6
Print ISBN
978-0-333-62835-5
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13647-6