What is CASE and how did this collaboration come about?
CASE is a group of housing associations in the South East that have been working together for a number of years now. I think when we looked at the whole picture around welfare reforms as a group a few months ago, it really felt as though it was important for us to understand the principles of those reforms.
Is it that CASE supports welfare reforms in principle, but is concerned at the way in which the reforms are being implemented?
Exactly! I think we make the point, on under-occupation, that we absolutely support moves to encourage people to move from under-occupied properties and make those available for larger families. Our concern is that there appear to us to be a lot of unmanageable consequences in the way the reforms are being proposed at the moment.
If implemented in their current form, rather than giving people a helping hand into work, do you think the housing benefit reforms will see people facing greater levels of poverty?
I think that is right. One of the points we make is that even if we could wave a magic wand, and everybody who was in an under-occupied property could move to one of the right size, the reality is we don't have the right profile of stock to house all of those people. We don't have the right number of bedrooms in each home to house all of those people. We would need to build only one-bedroom homes in the next couple of years to make up that stock deficit.
In other words, even if people are willing to move, there aren't the smaller houses for them to move to. And that means there will be a significant proportion of people, around seven to eight per cent of our residents, whose income would suffer as a result of the reforms, despite the fact that they are willing to move from under-occupied properties.
With an estimated 670,000 housing benefit claimants likely to be affected at the point of introduction, you are calling for safeguards to ensure people are not plunged into debt: what safeguards are you calling for?
On the under-occupation side of things, what we would be looking for is that two-bedroom homes are never classified as under-occupied; even if there is just a couple living in a two-bedroom home, that is not classified as under-occupied.
Secondly, if people are willing to look for other properties and they are actively engaged in it, that their housing benefit isn't penalised because they are actually engaged in looking for other properties.
So we are calling for a soft-start, as well as the recognition that two-bedroom properties shouldn't be classified as under-occupied.
This work was done prior to the debate in the House of Lords – it is quite interesting that some of the amendments being proposed in the House of Lords prior to Christmas tackle exactly the issues we identify. In particular, we are supportive of Lord Best's amendment on size-related restrictions, and would like to see it adopted in the final Act.
Following the government defeat in the House of Lords over the inclusion of child benefit in the proposed £26,000 benefit cap, are you quite hopeful that some of your recommendations might be implemented?
We are really encouraged that the House of Lords is taking that line. What is really uncertain is how the government is going to respond in the House of Commons, to what is coming out of the debate in the House of Lords.
Changes in the bill include the proposal to ensure housing benefit payments are made directly to tenants, not landlords. Do you agree with the thinking behind this, that mimicking a salary and giving people control of their budgets is an important step on the road to work?
I can absolutely buy the philosophy of it. The way services and support is provided to tenants, we want to make them feel more independent. We can see the philosophy on one side, but does the financial downside of that, in terms of overall financial provision, outweigh the philosophical benefit of it?
I think we are making a case that there are potentially some massive impacts on the ability of housing associations to build new housing in the future. We are questioning quite strongly whether what is an interesting philosophical point about giving people control of their own budgets is really worth risking that downside in terms of housing supply.
Once the cap is put in place, is it the case that four-bedroom properties will be unaffordable, and housing associations will no longer build them?
Under the old system a lot more capital subsidy was put forward by the government into social rented housing that allowed housing associations to charge lower rents for the homes. Under affordable rent, the rents are being increased. We cannot make four-bedroom housing work using 80 per cent of market rents and remain within the £500 benefit cap, and I think this is true of most housing associations.
It has been quite interesting to hear the debates in the House of Lords around the child benefit cap, because I think it is really reinforcing exactly the same points – that for larger families, it is very difficult to square the amount they need to live on with the affordable rent model that is being introduced.
You call for a benefits system where entitlement is matched to people's circumstances – how do you propose this would work?
I think there are situations where the £500 benefit cap just doesn't work for people, and there are some situations where the cap needs to be relaxed. I think that is pretty consistent with where the House of Lords is taking things.
We don't have a particular issue around trying to limit benefits to a sensible number, I think it is about how that is applied, and recognising that there are situations where it is not the right thing to do – or where it needs to be applied in a slightly different way.
Read the report - CASE - The impact of welfare reform on housing