Report calls for broader housing allocation policy

The latest Joseph Rowntree report, The Slow Death of Great Cities?, is likely to have a bigger impact than most because it was co-authored by Professor Anne Power, a member of at least three influential government teams.

The report uncovers an alarming pattern of abandonment in inner cities across the country, presenting housing managers with problems that are "little short of overwhelming."

It recommends scrapping the current allocation policy to create more economically mixed and therefore popular areas: "There is the space in less popular areas to do it, but social housing generally should be opened up in order to ensure its long-term survival."

Power and her London School of Economics colleague Katherine Mumford, focused on four deprived areas, two each in Newcastle and Manchester. But they also found evidence of pockets of low demand in areas of high homelessness, including Brighton, Bristol and several inner London boroughs.

It recommends: "A broad strategy of rehousing varied social groups is vital in helping cities to recover. The strict emphasis on rehousing tenants according to need has destroyed social viability."

The report argues that, like in some other European countries, half the population should be eligible for social housing on a much broader definition of need. Only a portion of allocations would be reserved for "emergency" housing to stop a growth in homelessness.

It points to the recent spurt of housing association building as a cause of abandonment because it "poached" tenants away from older housing. But it found those housing associations are now themselves also suffering from low demand, with many forced to demolish high quality new homes. The report notes that "unless regeneration takes off, much of the costly building of the last ten years will be wasted."

The report is understood to have had particular influence on the Social Exclusion Unit's policy action team on unpopular housing, of which Power is a member (Housing Today, issue 131). Power is a member of both the Urban Taskforce and housing minister Hilary Armstrong's sounding board.