ACTIVIDADES QUE SE DESARROLLAN DENTRO DE LAS INSTALACIONES

In their 2000 Housing Green Paper Quality and Choice: A Decent Home for All the Labour Government set out their plans to build upon existing shared ownership and shared equity¹⁶ schemes in order to help those on the margins of affordability (DETR, 2000a). In common with Conservative policy, these LCHO initiatives were targeted at existing social tenants and those nominated on waiting lists. The focus was not on increasing housing supply, but rather on providing a bridge between social renting and ownership to ‘meet households aspirations’, free up scarce social tenancies and meet housing need with lower subsidy levels (ibid: 37). In 2003 the Low Cost Home Ownership Task Force was set up with the express aim of examining the ‘routes and methods by which those in housing need’ could be helped into home ownership (Housing Corporation, 2003). The report that followed recommended that a range of ‘simplified and cost-effective’ home ownership opportunities be developed with sensitivity to the ‘very different housing market conditions that exist in different localities’ (ibid). In particular, the task force recognised that varying objectives might be prioritised in different locations; ‘in high demand areas, helping key workers into home ownership might be a priority, in low demand neighbourhoods, sustaining or building a mixed-income community may be the driver’ (ibid). These dual aims would continue to shape low cost home ownership, and broader housing policies, during the New Labour era.

16. Homebuy was introduced in April 1999, before the Housing Green Paper was introduced. The scheme allowed existing local authority and housing associations tenants to buy a home on the private market with an interest free equity loan from a housing association for 25 per cent of the value of the property, to be repaid on sale (Jackson, 2001). Jackson (2001) found that HomeBuy sales between April 1999 and June 2000 resulted in 967 vacancies in the social rented sector. Interestingly, in common with the Right to Buy scheme, purchasers tended to be better-off than the make up of social sector tenants as a whole. Instead of staying within their existing communities, HomeBuy purchasers moved to bigger properties in more affluent areas as a result of the scheme (ibid).

During the early 2000s, a number of LCHO initiatives were introduced to improve the ‘recruitment and retention’ of ‘key’ workers (DCLG, 2006: 28), who were seen as crucial to the ‘longer term sustainability of communities in cities’¹⁷ and rural locations¹⁸ (DETR, 2000a: 36). In 2001 the Starter Homes Initiative was introduced to assist people working in the public sector, including teachers and nurses, to access home ownership in high demand areas in London and the south east of England (Morgan et al. 2005). 9,104 key workers were helped into low cost home ownership as a result of the Starter Homes Initiative (ibid).This was replaced by the Key Worker Living Scheme in 2004, a bundle of ‘intermediate’ tenure options including shared ownership on new-build housing association units, and equity loans on open market dwellings (Battye et al. 2006). The schemes were administered by Registered Social Landlords (known as ‘zone agents’), who were responsible for marketing and sales of low cost home ownership in particular geographic areas. Although small in scale and overwhelmingly concentrated in London, reviews of these two key worker initiatives found that they were on the whole well targeted, represented good value for public moneyand were popular amongst the majority of purchasers (Morgan et al. 2005; Battye et al. 2006). The form and structure of these schemes formed the basis for later LCHO initiatives.

An evaluation produced by Bramley and Morgan (2002) during this time, highlighted some of the challenges faced by the Government’s low cost home ownership programme. These included the very small stock of LCHO units; the impact of the complex and confusing nature of schemes on mortgage availability and consumer understanding; the geographical disparity in viability of LCHO; and the effect of rising house prices particularly in London on the affordability of the schemes for target groups.

17. The New Labour government placed a great deal of emphasis on England’s urban environments in their housing and planning policies (Colomb, 2007). In 1998 the Government set up the Urban Task Force under the chairmanship of the architect Richard Rogers to identify and recommend solutions for the causes of inner-city decline with an emphasis on ‘compact and connected’ cities through the redevelopment of brownfield land and increased investment in urban centres ‘using public finance to attract the market’ (Urban Task Force, 1999: 3). Low cost home ownership schemes were seen as part of this agenda in order to attract the middle classes back to the city, diversify the residualised social rented sector, and as a way to provide cost-effective and attractive affordable homes (DETR, 2000b).

18. Although receiving far less attention, and funding, rural housing issues were addressed as part of the White paper Our Countryside: the future. The increase in second home-owners and retirees in rural districts was recognised as having a detrimental affect on the supply and affordability of housing in some parts of the countryside. The rise in house prices and lack of social housing due to the Right to Buy meant that many ‘young families’ were unable to afford to stay in ‘the communities where they grew up’ (DETR, 2000c: 9). This was in turn seen to have a detrimental affect on local services and community life. Shared ownership housing was seen as an important way to ‘help young couples get their feet on the ladder’ in these high pressure rural areas (p49).

In the context of increased house prices during the mid 2000s, the focus of LCHO broadened to address problems of access and affordability amongst a wider cohort of first-time buyers, ‘especially for young people and those tenants who rent in the private or public sector’ (Labour Party, 2005: 78). Whilst in 1997 the average mortgage payments as a proportion of first-time buyers income were 17.9 per cent with the deposit requiring 11 per cent of annual income, by 2004 these figures had risen to 22 per cent and 21 per cent respectively (Monk and Whitehead 2010, 5).

There was an increasing concern that as existing homeowners benefited from rising house prices, more households were ‘kept out’ of the housing market, contributing to an ‘ever widening social and economic divide’ between ‘owners and others’

(Barker, 2004: 1, 3). As illustrated in Figure 3.1 below, the problems took on a generational, as well as class dimension, with an increasing gulf between newly formed households who were unable to purchase a home and older “baby boomers who had benefited from substantial gains in a rising market. Disquiet around the lack of housing production once again came to the fore of policy debate,¹⁹ and the Labour Government launched a number of public reviews to tackle different aspects of housing affordability and supply.²⁰ In particular, the Government was keen to address the failure of private house builders to meet the demands for owner-occupied housing (ODPM, 2003: 9), an issue that also received widespread coverage in the media.²¹ In an era where home ownership had become the housing tenure norm, a decline in access was seen to be politically unacceptable to a wide spectrum of the electorate. In response, during the 2005 general election the Labour party pledged to help a further ‘1 million households into home ownership’

by raising the stamp duty threshold, and through renewed investment in shared equity and shared ownership schemes (Labour Party, 2005: 78). In July 2007 the housing green paper Homes for the future: More affordable and more sustainable included a commitment to increase output of affordable housing by 70,000 by 2010-11,

including 25,000 part ownership units per year.

19. As Bramley (2006) notes, a policy concern with housing supply was ‘rediscovered’ by the Labour Government in the 2000s after almost three decades of neglect (p222).

20. These including the Low Cost Homeownership Task Force, the Barker Review of Housing Supply, and the Miles review of the UK mortgage market.

21. Tabloid and broadsheet newspapers regularly featured stories of rising house prices (Bar-Hillel, 2001) and the plight of first time buyers ‘on the brink of extinction’ (Mulvihill, 2003) priced out of

‘nine towns in 10’ (Barrow, 2005).

Date

Over 75 Under 25

65-74 25-34 35-44 45-64

KEY

Percentage of owner occupiers within age group 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

81 Source: DCLG (2012e)

Figure 3.1