Housing crisis watch
So mergers continue to occupy the housing associations with most of the big London associations now looking to create giant development conglomerates.
Circle and Affinity Sutton will form a group with around 130,000 properties.
Genesis and Thames Valley are merging.
Rumour is that Peabody is merging with Notting Hill.
L&Q, Hyde and East Thames are merging which will be the biggest of the lot. Around 160,000 homes.
Looking at the reasons stated its easy to see where this is going for the provision of "affordable housing" in London.
The L&Q merger will make them the 4th largest developer in the country. It's already become accepted practice to regenerate old council estates by an HA forming a joint venture with a developer. They knock the estate down and build more and better flats.
So far so good. But typically where there were previously 500 flats rented at £150 per week there are now 700.
400 will be sold for £500k each ( with around 30 percent bought and sub let by mainly foreign investors)
100 will be private rented by the HA on insecure tenancies
100 will be for shared ownership
100 will be for affordable - sub market rents - set at 80 percent of market rent.
The HAs are turning from organisations forced into this model by cuts in subsidy to large corporate entities with an ethos that demands the need for commercial house building for profit. They will then provide a small number of affordable homes with any surplus.
The more corporate they become the more the demand for investing in protitable schemes will become the overriding motivation.
Depressingly many of the CEOs of the HAs seem delighted to do this and to create these giant and what will inevitably become remote corporate landlords.
As well as being able to leverage more funding the stated benefits are in more streamlined back office functions. No doubt they will also start to consider providing more and more services on line and through call centres thus breaking the links and contacts between front line staff and tenants even further and becoming more remote.
This in turn will make it easier to take corporate financial decisions.
Yvonne Arrowsmith -CEO of East Thames - is already making statements about the need to get on with governments agenda and blaming HAs for creating a dependency culture amongst tenants that wastes millions on unnecessary support and repairs.
At best it looks like the Big HAs may become socially responsible corporations. At worst they'll turn into developer landlords.
It's a long way from what they were formed to do which was provide housing for communities exploited by terrible landlords and provide housing for those priced out of the market.
Every single one of them will have mission statements charitable ethos. The need for the bloody statement just shows that they need to remind themselves why they exist.
So mergers continue to occupy the housing associations with most of the big London associations now looking to create giant development conglomerates.
Circle and Affinity Sutton will form a group with around 130,000 properties.
Genesis and Thames Valley are merging.
Rumour is that Peabody is merging with Notting Hill.
L&Q, Hyde and East Thames are merging which will be the biggest of the lot. Around 160,000 homes.
Looking at the reasons stated its easy to see where this is going for the provision of "affordable housing" in London.
The L&Q merger will make them the 4th largest developer in the country. It's already become accepted practice to regenerate old council estates by an HA forming a joint venture with a developer. They knock the estate down and build more and better flats.
So far so good. But typically where there were previously 500 flats rented at £150 per week there are now 700.
400 will be sold for £500k each ( with around 30 percent bought and sub let by mainly foreign investors)
100 will be private rented by the HA on insecure tenancies
100 will be for shared ownership
100 will be for affordable - sub market rents - set at 80 percent of market rent.
The HAs are turning from organisations forced into this model by cuts in subsidy to large corporate entities with an ethos that demands the need for commercial house building for profit. They will then provide a small number of affordable homes with any surplus.
The more corporate they become the more the demand for investing in protitable schemes will become the overriding motivation.
Depressingly many of the CEOs of the HAs seem delighted to do this and to create these giant and what will inevitably become remote corporate landlords.
As well as being able to leverage more funding the stated benefits are in more streamlined back office functions. No doubt they will also start to consider providing more and more services on line and through call centres thus breaking the links and contacts between front line staff and tenants even further and becoming more remote.
This in turn will make it easier to take corporate financial decisions.
Yvonne Arrowsmith -CEO of East Thames - is already making statements about the need to get on with governments agenda and blaming HAs for creating a dependency culture amongst tenants that wastes millions on unnecessary support and repairs.
At best it looks like the Big HAs may become socially responsible corporations. At worst they'll turn into developer landlords.
It's a long way from what they were formed to do which was provide housing for communities exploited by terrible landlords and provide housing for those priced out of the market.
Every single one of them will have mission statements charitable ethos. The need for the bloody statement just shows that they need to remind themselves why they exist.
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