Ten years ago, the Dutch town of Delft was best known over here for its blue and white pottery. Now, with the success of its approach to housing allocations, Delft's fame has spread. Given star billing in the housing Green Paper, the model first adapted in the Netherlands 10 years ago is under intense scrutiny here.
Just like any inventor, Kšster is proud of his baby. And just like any good evangelist, he now spends much of his time in Britain, spreading the word about customer choice.
"When I came over many years ago, I was impressed with what was being done here for tenants. It's nice to be able to give information back," he said. "We can understand that you are interested. It seems so logical to us to work this way."
Things weren't always so logical in Delft. A decade ago, the town had a problem. It had 12,000 people on its housing waiting list - and only around 2,400 homes falling vacant every year to offer them. Would-be tenants were being offered homes - and turning them down in droves. The first option considered by the local authority where Kšster worked was to revamp the application form. That idea, says Kšster, was just plain wrong. Instead, the project team decided to dump the form and the list, in favour of a new system of advertising properties in free newspapers and inviting people to fill in a coupon to get a new home.
The results were spectacular. Around 3,000 people on the old list filled in a coupon - the other 9,000 didn't, it seemed, actually want a new home.
"We had trained people to be on the list," said Kšster. "But what is the waiting list worth? For most people it's a kind of insurance."
The new system went down well. Local government was happy, having given up its role in the allocations process to the housing associations which actually owned the homes. And tenants were happy, because they knew what was available and what choices they had.
In the years that followed, other areas in the Netherlands followed Delft's example. Now 80 per cent of local authority areas have set up their own versions of the Delft scheme.
But can such systems really work over here? Much of the interest in new ways of advertising and letting council and housing association homes seems to be an attempt to counter falling demand. Chasing new tenants doesn't necessarily address the reasons why homes have proved unpopular in the first place. And in areas of high demand, the potential problems with choice-based models are perhaps even more severe. In 1998/9 27,200 permanent new social lettings were made in London - 640 fewer than the number of households accepted as homeless. What chance of real choice there? And what about the most vulnerable?
The government is aware of the problem. But, the housing minister has stressed, landlords won't be allowed to "count themselves out of reform". The Green Paper makes it clear that ministers are not keen on retaining the traditional points-based allocations route. Instead, the paper suggests, banding systems could be introduced for those in urgent need, those in non-urgent need and those with "no particular need."
The cynic might suggest those three bandings could quite easily be retitled - a chance of something sometime; not much chance of anything at anytime and not a hope in hell.
But Kšster claims the Dutch experience has shown it's too easy to be pessimistic about choice.
"People thought it can't work in big cities. They said "Look at our waiting list, there are people in really urgent need, what will happen to them?" What happened was it was better for them. The struggle to get a better position on the list disappeared."
It seems that the sceptics are starting to be convinced, even in high demand areas. Officials at the Department of the Environment have been "amazed" at the level of interest landlords have shown in piloting new lettings schemes, even in areas where demand exceeds supply (Housing Today, 22 June).
The London borough of Lambeth has already scrapped its points system, in a move it called "the biggest change in the way tenancies are allocated since council housing began". Executive member for housing Donatus Anyanwu told tenants the aim was to create a system which was "fair - and seen to be fair". Even though waiting times would still be long, people would at least be able to make choices that influenced how long they waited.
Another London borough, Camden, hopes to be one of the government pilots, taking a share of the £11m set aside under last month's spending review to pilot choice-based schemes.
Housing director Neil Litherland said even though Camden was facing intensing demand for its homes, there was an opportunity to move away from the traditional "paternalistic and disempowering" system.
"In its purest form, ˆ lˆ Delft, which the government seems keen on, I don't think it makes much sense for London," he said. "But we think some of the ideas around choice are right and interesting."
Litherland is particularly keen on a system where would-be tenants understood how much "purchasing power" they had in the borough, with properties "priced up" for tenants' benefit.
"At the moment they are in a black box," he said. "We want to be able to put people in the position of being able to control their own destiny more."
Those sentiments are echoed by one of Kšster's biggest converts. Consultant Barry Marlow is working with Kšster to promote choice-based models in Britain. He says the pilots offer a great opportunity to get rid of a lot of "tired process".
"We are talking about a whole culture shift," he said. "Best Value succeeds where the customer steers the service, and what better example than this?"
The potential is obviously huge. In the Netherlands, Kšster has been working with social landlords to help them use the information applicants provide to shape their businesses for the future. It's a process called stripping the customer.
An advertising model cannot "cure" low demand. As Kšster points out "a bad house is a bad house". But, he adds: "It's an instrument that shows you where the strong and weak areas are."
"We know about existing tenants, we know about potential tenants and we know what they think about our properties," he said. "You can build up your own Dow Jones index. Every day you can see how many people react."
He would like to see housing providers in this country being a little bit more radical too. It's not just about paying lip service to choice. One landlord he worked with came up with a draft to advertise its homes.
"I said congratulations for including hot and cold water, but sorry that's what people expect," Kšster said. "You need to help people to think in other ways."
The pilot of the Delft model by Harborough district council, evaluated by de Montfort university, has retained a waiting list. Kšster would like to see some of the forthcoming pilots going further.
He also wants landlords to think about the language they use. It's home seekers, not applicants, a supply model and certainly not an allocations system.
The government has stressed the Delft model is only one of the options for change it wants to see on the table. Kšster is ready for the challenge. "We called it a model not a system. A system is more bureaucratic. A model is more flexible and can react to change."
And what could we expect if Delft-type models are successfully adapted to our market? According to Marlow, the sky's the limit.
"Few organisations have any engagement with the waiting lists. But we could start providing information on what it's like to be a tenant. If one of the outcomes from choice-based systems is that arrears are lowered and relet times are lower then that's got to be beneficial. We can start to be what we should be - expert property managers."
Source
Housing Today
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