He needn't have spoken.
Suddenly, halfway up a street, there was a somewhat higher than normal wall separating two front gardens, and beyond lay the social housing.
Even at a first glance it was different. The brick was the same colour, the properties not noticeably smaller than those built for purchase and they hadn't suffered more wear and tear in the five or so years since construction.
Nonetheless, there was a "welfare" feel about them; they exuded the whiff of utility while the rest of the estate had style.
It was typified by the front doors – solidly built, decently painted in a variety of primary colours, but ostentatiously functional in an age when those who can will choose something much more decorative.
Simple, cosmetic issues – like the design of doors – influence the viewer. The impression they give has a significant role to play if we really want to change the image of housing associations.
So my first challenge from this particular estate would be to suggest that we ourselves must do all we can to get the look of our properties right.
Even with the doors replaced there would have been another glaringly obvious difference between the housing association properties and the rest of the street – garages, or rather the absence of them.
Now I know, on one level, that nobody needs a garage.
But it is equally clear that practically everybody aspires to have one.
Developers believe they will get a better price by pandering to the perceptions and prejudices of potential purchasers
Many of us who have them don't actually use them to keep our cars in – mine is mostly full of the remains of last year's apple crop and junk that hasn't yet made it to the local dump – but the garage has come to stand for something far more than vehicle ownership.
So my second challenge is to the Housing Corporation and its government partners: allow us to build what people want to live in rather than what they need to have. Even if the cost per property goes up a little, it must be better to have eight houses that will be easily let than 10 that stand empty half the time.
Finally I come back to my first impression, accentuated by the dividing wall, that social housing is a thing that needs to stand apart from the rest.
It doesn't.
Some of the most "sustainable" properties I can recall were an assortment of homes in a street where they were mixed in with privately owned ones.
The habits and lifestyles of those who live in the cheaper end of the owner-occupier sector are not substantially different from the majority of those who rent from housing associations.
They are the same people.
There can be no reason for not pepper-potting homes for rent on new-build estates – except that developers believe they will get a better price by pandering to perceptions and prejudices among potential purchasers.
It is the job of government to stand firm against such prejudices, in the same way that it stands against prejudice based on creed or race.
So my last challenge is to our parliamentarians: give us planning laws that put affordable rented housing in the midst of other tenures, not behind a wall.
Source
Housing Today
Postscript
David Walker is bishop of Dudley and a member of the National Housing Federation's national council.
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