Conceptos de Género y Salud

economic development that make their current roles, in their current modus operandi, increasingly difficult to fulfil.

l They face the prospect of falling rather than rising support for both investment and rent payment support programmes and these resource reductions are likely to persist; governments will increasingly have to think about promoting efficient provision systems rather than simply favouring particular tenures

l Credit rationing has emerged, and is likely to persist within the banking sector and, in the UK at least, there will be a shift from bank to bond and equity financing

l Most already deal with unmet needs from the boom period but it is clear that rising household numbers and sustained income

inequalities will persist over the next decade so that new needs are inevitable; there will be pressures to provide

l Patterns of growth will increasingly favour some places rather than others; uneven spatial growth will raise place related risks for development and the concentration of low income households within particular neighbourhoods will reinforce management challenges where providers are neighbourhood based; development and management risks may be rising

l Fiscal pressures on local governments are likely to see substantial restructuring on the governance of metropolitan services, including housing and the non-profit sector will have to be well organised within metropolitan markets

l There are likely to be renewed pressures to move public housing ‘off the balance sheet’ and to transfer to non-profit providers

l There will be growing policy needs not just for the poorest households but for the younger ‘squeezed middle’ and novel and mixed tenures will be important issues for providers to consider; this will require a rethink of rental sector policies and the efficacy of relying on fragmented ‘non-professional’ small scale landlords

l Population longevity means longer and more complex careers and there will be new mixes of housing, care and health support required as well as new multi-generational arrangements within families

l Although fuel costs may not rise as rapidly in the next decade as had been expected just a few years ago there will be new pressures for providers to engage with energy provision for and

environmental outcomes from constructing and owning dwellings

such as sustainability and neighbourhood renewal, require local integration and non-profits may have significant roles to play in integrating and delivering services for their tenants

The challenges are how to deliver some of these required outcomes and changes with reducing resources. There are also, however, new

opportunities. The first of these is for housing policy advocates to argue that policy provision is about more than ‘affordability’ (even if well specified arguments are made) but also for not-for-profit housing providers to argue that they are more than market providers. The role of housing policies, and non-profits within them, addresses not just the challenges of providing affordable homes to different income groups but also to make markets and provision systems more efficient. Housing policy, as demonstrated over the last five years, has to cope not just with low incomes and state failures but with market failures too. These new times have been hastened by massive market failures in the financial sector and they will unfold in contexts where failures in other markets, say for environmental and elderly care provision, are likely to matter too. Market failures formed and define these times.

Uncertainty about prospects and understandings of change, lack of trust in institutions and governments and austerity, for individuals and

nations, prevail in these times. They are not the end of capitalism but they are the end of a set of ideas about what works for housing provision in a market led economy. A key feature of assessing the new institutions and approaches needed is to recognise that markets are not always efficient and that they frequently embody elements of failure. There is, from the last decade, and indeed before, a case for considering the housing and housing finance markets as key devices but with significant failures.

In that context the opportunity for not-for-profits is not just to manage themselves better, to reorganise, and to leverage their own assets, to price more effectively and so on. These are all important organisational changes to make. But the major opportunity is to emphasise that as effective organisations they do have a long term view and concern for the wellbeing of particular places and people. As patient but effective

corporations that aim for surpluses, not to support shareholder dividends, but community of interest benefits they have incentives to deal with serious market failures in effective ways. In that community of interest should involve not just their traditional poorer clients but more affluent clients well able to pay for service options that markets simply do not provide. They have the opportunity to create a more mixed housing

system driving the wellbeing of non-for-profit housing organisations and the places in which they are located.

The remainder of this volume explores whether and how not-for-profits are likely to perceive and implement these changes. The next chapter examines changes in the public and private financing of non-profits, Chapter 3 then assesses emerging and required changes in governance and management and Chapter 4 the development of wider roles. The final chapter draws out summary conclusions from the collaboration and their implications for policies and providers.

CHAPTER 2