By Jahanvi Hasmukhal (BSc Economics) and Emiliya Lazarova
Adequate food and shelter are two basic necessities for a child’s development. Since Marcus Rushford started his campaign for free school meals, the issue of access to food has gained a lot of public attention across the UK. Thanks to this campaign, we now all understand that unless children have adequate food, they cannot benefit from education and have no chance to do better in life than their families. Access to adequate housing, however, has not generated as much attention. Its absence from the conversation during the local elections is particularly striking, given overseeing the provision and management of access to housing for those who cannot afford to own a home is arguably one of the most important roles for local authorities. The conversation is indeed much needed since, over the last decade, there has been a crisis in affordable housing, especially in social housing.
For Londoners, among others, the upcoming election1 on the 6th of May will decide the direction of social housing policy for the next 4 years. Let’s see what the two main candidates have to say. According to Sadiq Khan’s Manifesto, developing affordable housing is his top priority. Khan, the incumbent Mayor of London has struggled to provide the required funding for social and affordable housing. He announced in 2016 that 49,000 homes are required per year, but he only reached this goal halfway through his term. Moreover, with no construction in 2017/18 to raise the stock of council housing, the social housing position is deteriorating. Just 3,000 council homes were constructed in 2018/19; an insufficient number which does not address the scarcity of council homes, as shown by the demand for social housing in our data below. Sadiq Khan proposed to build 10,000 council in 2018, and he is continuing this aim in this election. Given his performance so far, the goal of continuing to create 10,000 council homes over the next four years seems unrealistic. Shaun Bailey, the conservative candidate, on the other hand, has not set any goals or concrete plans for social housing. This is despite being raised in council homes and being homeless in his 20s. Instead, he expects to “continue to create social housing”. Bailey has only stated that he would fund 100,000 shared ownership homes at a cost of £100,000 per house.
Social housing, we argue, is a subject which should not be overlooked, particularly when it pertains to social mobility and education. For the vast majority of children in England, their home address determines the quality of education that they can access. Educational outcomes are then linked to their chances of achieving positive social mobility. The demand for social housing has increased in recent years, especially during the Covid-19 crisis, but it varies across boroughs. So, when the future Mayor of London decides on their social housing policy, they must take into account the variations in the supply and demand for social housing before taking effective action. As part of an ongoing project to study the variation of the social housing allocation practices across the UK, we collected annual data on the stock of social housing by number of bedrooms and the length of the waiting lists.
In Figure 1 we present data on the stock of social housing and school performance for all boroughs of London. On the left-hand axis, we measure the number of social houses owned by a local authority arranged by the number of bedrooms. On the right-hand axis, we measure the proportion of schools rated outstanding in the local authority. On the horizontal axis, we present local authorities in ascending order of the proportion of outstanding schools. Clearly, there is a wide variation in the stock of social housing across localities. In all localities there is higher availability of housing with one and two bedrooms and considerably fewer social housing with three or more bedrooms more suited to families with children. Moreover, the graph clearly illustrates that the localities with the highest proportion of outstanding schools, such as Kensington & Chelsea, have fewer social houses. While the number of houses on the left-hand side of the graph is much higher, the number of outstanding schools is only around 10-20%. In fact, using data for all 27 boroughs2 for which we have a full set of information we find close to 0 correlation (-0.009) between the stock of 3+ bedroom social housing and the percentage of schools ranked as outstanding.
Fewer social housing units available in areas where schools’ quality is higher may be due to council tenants in these areas utilizing the Right to Buy scheme, enabling them to purchase their current home at discount prices depending on the number of years they have lived there under the Housing Allocation Act. If this is the case, then the fact that there is less social housing available in the areas where schools are better, would not be a concern. It would merely demonstrate that demand is aligned with opportunities for better education. In Figure 2 we present the available data on the number of social houses that have been sold via the Right to Buy scheme in the year 2017 in each London borough, again plotted against the proportion of outstanding schools in the area. It is hard to detect any pattern between the utilization of the scheme and quality of schools. In fact calculating the pairwise correlation between these two series we obtain a low and negative correlation coefficient of -0.05. This implies that in areas of higher proportion of outstanding schools there are fewer sales under the Right-to-buy scheme. Can we then conclude that the demand for social housing is not related to the quality of schooling in the local authority?
Another piece of data that can help shed more light on the link between social housing and social opportunities is the number of people registered on a waiting list for social housing per local authority. This is what we present in Figure 3. This dataset shows the number of people who are on a waiting list for 3-4+ bedrooms for social housing in each borough against the percentage of schools with an outstanding Ofsted rating in the borough. The picture is indeed mixed, we see that the areas with the longest list for family-type accommodation are neither concentrated in areas of highly performing schools nor are they in areas of low performing schools. Indeed, the pairwise correlation between these two variables is positive but not very strong of 0.20. If instead we look at the size of the waiting list as a proportion of the stock of social housing owned by a local authority in the category of family houses, the correlation coefficient increases slightly to a positive 0.24.
Though limited, our data suggests that the demand for social housing is aligned with the opportunities for social mobility – such as the quality of education – that local authorities provide. The stock of family-size social housing, however, is not. Schemes such as the right to buy provide opportunities for families to gain ownership and have more control over their living conditions; their utilization, however, is quite limited. This may be due to various reasons but one important question that needs to be asked is how affordable really social housing opportunities really are for families eligible for council housing in localities with outstanding schools. One point is clear, if we are serious about providing everyone with equal opportunities and ‘levelling up’, then we should be thinking of the location of housing and the opportunities it opens to those children who can really benefit from that.
Footnotes
[1] The Mayor of London and 25 assembly members are elected directly by voters in London where there is a budget given to the Mayor to provide a better place for everyone. The Mayor of London has such high significance due to the system in London that differs to other regions in the United Kingdom. London is divided into 32 boroughs, each of which is represented by an elected council leader who develops and reviews council policy. The Mayor of London, on the other hand, is in charge of a broad variety of topics that affect Londoners on a daily basis. The budget given to the Mayor is focused on improving air quality, tourism, economic development, transportation, waste, police, and housing and the London Assembly is consulted before the plans are implemented.
[2] The 27 London boroughs for which we have data are: Barking & Dagenham, Barnet, Brent, Camden, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith & Fulham, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Islington, Kensington & Chelsey, Kingston upon Thames, Lambeth, Lewisham, Redbridge, Southwark, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth, and Westminster.
Banner Photo by Katie Gerrard on Unsplash