On October 6th, 2015, Christine Whitehead gave a talk at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) titled, ‘Housing Associations, capital markets and housing supply’. She discussed housing associations and how they can play a key role in increasing housing supply, the barriers they face and recommendations on how to move forward.
These are some of the conclusions Christine drew from her analysis:
- The HA sector has been a massive success – not perfect and not productively as efficient as it should be BUT better than the alternatives – and in place;
- The sector not only provides the main resource for continuing the expansion of social and affordable rental housing but also is increasingly capable of playing a major role in market development;
- It is also contributing effectively to improving management in the private rented sector and of neighbourhoods and is core to supporting government home-ownership initiatives;
- HAs the experience and capacity to play a much larger role – although current government initiatives are making that less obviously desirable to HA management – and potentially to capital markets;
- A step change in housing output must be achieved – not only to satisfy identified needs but to meet political commitments. If anything we are seeing a reduction in the willingness to continue expand among large developers as they reach 2006/7 levels of output;
- Need greater development capacity, new players, product innovation and given the limited potential for additional subsidy, a better use of past government support into the future ;
- On these criteria HAs are the best resource immediately available.
The presentation slides can be found here on our archives page.