Housing association
Housing associations in the United Kingdom are independent not-for-profit bodies that provide low cost "social housing" for people in housing need. Any trading surplus is used to maintain existing homes and to help finance new ones. They are now the United Kingdom's major providers of new homes for rent, while many also run shared ownership schemes to help people who cannot afford to buy their own homes outright.
Housing associations provide a wide range of housing, some managing large estates of housing for families, while the smallest may perhaps manage a single scheme of housing for older people. Much of the supported accommodation in the UK is also provided by Housing Associations, with specialist projects for people with mental health or learning disabilities, with substance misuse problems (drugs or alcohol), the formerly homeless, young people, ex-offenders and women fleeing domestic violence.
Funding and regulation
Housing associations are funded and regulated by a variety of organisations, depending on where they are based.
- In England, housing associations are funded and regulated by the Housing Corporation, a non-departmental public body or quango that reports to the Department for Communities and Local Government.
- In Northern Ireland, the same role is carried out by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.
- In Scotland, this function is fulfilled by Communities Scotland, an executive agency of the Scottish Executive Development Department.
- In Wales, the regulation and funding of housing associations is carried out by the Welsh Assembly.
Registered Social Landlord (RSL) is the technical name for social landlords that are registered with the Housing Corporation - most are housing associations, but there are also trusts, co-operatives and companies.
Since 2003, in an effort to seek greater value for money, much of the funding by the Housing Corporation for new house building has been channelled to fewer than 80 "developing housing associations" that have achieved "partner status" through Partner Programme Agreements.
Legally housing associations are often Industrial and Provident societies, and may or may not be registered charities.
There are four industry bodies representing housing associations working in the UK, each covering a respective home nation. They are:
- England - National Housing Federation (NHF)
- Scotland - Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA)
- Wales - Community Housing Cymru (CHC)
- Northern Ireland - Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations (NIFHA)
The NHF (formerly the National Federation of Housing Associations) claimed that at the start of 2003 they had around 1400 non-profit housing organisations in their membership, owning or managing approximately 1.8 million homes across England.
Recently the regulation and funding role of Housing Associations and in particular the role of the Housing Corporation as a Regulator when it also acts as funder and thereby a project partner has been thrown under scrutiny as a result of the inevitable conflict that brings.
The pressure on Housing Associations to perform commercially has also meant that many are moving away from their original purpose of providing social housing to becoming fully fledged commercial developers in their own right with the advantage that they enjoy special privileges arising from their status as "social landlords" - This combined with the lack of any effective accountability has given rise to conflicts over the ways that RSLs have managed their portfolios of public assets with evidence that there has been an overemphasis towards profitable redevelopment rather than and to the detriment of social housing provision[neutrality disputed]