A plague on all our houses

In some inner areas of our major cities there is virtually no demand for housing. Good quality, modernised homes are being abandoned. House prices have fallen, in some cases to zero, and some blocks and streets are being demolished, including new housing. Demolition of empty properties has not generally stemmed the tide of abandonment. Whole areas are emptying of people, without any coherent plans for how to use the spaces left, or stem the outward tide.

The problem is far more serious than is publicly acknowledged.

Large volumes of new private housing are in the pipeline, indirectly subsidised by a planning system under continuous pressures from local politicians and developers to release ever more greenfield land for housing. Meanwhile social landlords have clamoured for more resources to build homes. There is a deep confusion over what is needed and what should be done.

Cities are losing population. Inner areas have lost more people than outer areas; unpopular neighbourhoods have lost more than cities as a whole.

Depopulation has been partly driven by severe job losses, mainly in manufacturing. Low skilled men have been hit particularly harshly, while female employment has expanded rapidly. The loss of manufacturing jobs is far above the national average in Manchester and Newcastle.

Rapid population losses continued in the extreme areas throughout the 1990s and in pockets galloped ahead almost before our eyes. Many housing workers talked of abandonment as an infectious disease, a cancer, an epidemic. The inner neighbourhoods of Manchester and Newcastle share many characteristics with unpopular and difficult-to-manage urban areas all over the country, including high demand cities like London. There is an intense hierarchy of popular and unpopular areas. The least popular suffer high levels of empty property, high turnover, some abandonment and demolition due to low demand.

The neighbourhoods where abandonment and low demand are concentrated are part of much larger areas of severe deprivation. Council housing dominates in these areas. Few tenants have become owners under the Right to Buy as conditions have discouraged investment and residents are often too poor.

Low-cost owner occupation outside the city is often a more attractive and cheaper option for those in work. Yet the housing being abandoned is not poor quality, or in poor condition. On the contrary, in popular areas it would be snapped up.

Since the mid-1980s, waiting lists for council housing have fallen dramatically in both cities and continue to fall. There is virtually no waiting time for housing in the poorest neighbourhoods, although one outcome is that in more popular areas there are long queues. Both cities have now opened their allocations and are advertising nationally. But demand for social housing more generally has fallen, even in some high demand areas.

The history and reputation of certain areas and estates coupled with highly restrictive, bureaucratic allocations policies act as deterrents to all but the most desperate. But there is a broad distinction between low demand in economically prosperous cities and regions such as the South East and low demand in cities and regions suffering long-term structural decline such as the North.

In the inner areas of Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool and other places, intense demand problems affect all property types, all tenures and all parts of the worst neighbourhoods. This means too few people willing to buy in areas where there is too little tenure mix and where social and environmental conditions have seriously deteriorated. Unless conditions are dramatically upgraded, this is unlikely to change. Some housing associations are now demolishing unlettable, unsellable, but virtually new and attractive property.

Low demand has generated falling school rolls, a vacuum in social control, anti-social behaviour, an intense fear of crime, and loss of confidence.

Acute symptoms of abandonment include: streets with a majority of houses empty; demolition sites scattered throughout the area; empty property across the neighbourhood; property values falling. A fightback for city cores is developing involving local leaders, innovative pro-city strategies, new urban initiatives. Obsolete old buildings are being converted into attractive apartments and new high density developments are in demand, attracting working people back into cities. Central Manchester and Newcastle are winning back new households. This could spread out into the inner areas currently being abandoned with some carefully targeted efforts. Intensive management, proactive policing, resident involvement are key.

Inner neighbourhoods offer many positive assets which encourage more stable residents to stay and may lead to a renaissance:

• good quality housing
  
• proximity to the city centre and good transport links
  
• locally based services
  
• regeneration programmes
  
• gradual break-up of large council estates and transfer to new social landlords
  
• new proposals for neighbourhood management
  
• people-based approaches to renewal
  
• some private investment and city centre renewal

Can these assets be used to bring about the urban renaissance that the government talks about with a growing sense of urgency? We need five main changes:

• Higher densities are vital to support more services and create the street life that makes urban neighbourhoods attractive. Since most households are much smaller, we can increase the density of city dwellings without overcrowding people. We should therefore plan for more units per acre.
  
• Pro-active policing helps restore confidence, contain violence and reduce fear. It requires at least 50 per cent of police time on the streets and in neighbourhoods. At the moment it barely reaches 2 per cent.
  
• Social housing should be marketed to a wide band of the population to raise its value and increase demand in some circumstances - anyone below average income. Existing residents should be encouraged to stay and rebuild conditions providing an anchor for city rebirth.
  
• In the end, urban neighbourhoods need an over-arching but highly localised structure for managing conditions and orchestrating the constant changes.
  
• Incentives for brownfield development and recycling buildings need to be stronger than the lure of greenfield sites. In fact we need to slow dramatically the release of new land outside cities, in order to retain the value of our rich urban infrastructure.

The Social Exclusion Unit's eighteen action teams have been asked to come up with clear, forceful, implementable ideas that can really 'Bring Britain Together'. At the moment too many of our inner cities are still falling apart. But a shift can happen. The Urban Task Force report is due this summer, the Urban White Paper due in the autumn, and the Social Exclusion Unit's own work may all turn eyes to the plight and the potential of the poorest city neighbourhoods.