It's not perverse of housing associations to build homes | David Orr

Steve Hilditch has been an articulate and informed writer on housing issues for a long time. What he says is usually thoughtful and worth listening to – which is why his most recent piece is so disappointing.

We are used to evidence-free accusations from many in the media about housing associations losing their mission and social purpose. It’s quite a surprise when similar evidence-free accusations come from Hilditch. His central suggestion is that some housing associations “have become developers first and foremost”. Indeed, they have, as they have always been. Housing associations’ mission is based on building new homes for people in need. To accuse them of losing their purpose because they are building homes is perverse. This is what they are for.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you find that the real concern is that some of the homes are not for those in need. That’s true. Housing associations have become adept at generating their own surpluses by building and selling on the open market, and then using those surpluses to subsidise social rented homes.

Last year, housing associations produced 3,500 new homes for social rent in this way. With a government that refused to allow public money to be used for social rent, housing associations could have walked away and built nothing. Instead, they used their creativity to generate subsidies themselves.

Overall, they delivered more than 40,000 new homes across all tenures in a challenging policy and economic environment. That’s double what would have been built had we only used government subsidy, and 3,500 new social rented homes that would not have been built at all. Smart organisations find new ways of doing things when the old ways don’t work.

Of course, I’d love to see more public money going into new, genuinely affordable rented homes. It would be both economically and socially rational. In the absence of that investment, I’d much rather our housing associations continue to contribute and find new ways of meeting the mission.

The ambition of our sector is clear. We have a stated goal of getting to 120,000 new homes a year every year, some for sale, some for rent, some market, some subsidised. At a time when we all agree we have a housing crisis, we need our housing associations to be building more than ever before.

David Orr is chief executive of the National Housing Federation

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