A new report from the Housing Corporation finds that most housing associations are financially strong organisations, with responsibilities that go beyond building and managing homes to providing community and neighbourhood services.
Up Your Street: Housing Associations and the Neighbourhoods and Communities Agenda reviews the role of housing organisations in delivering services to communities. It shows how they contribute to the Government's vision for towns and cities to create sustainable communities that are successful, thriving, well run and well served.
The report's findings are reiterated in a forthcoming report by the Housing Associations Charitable Trust (HACT). Housing Associations as "Community Anchors" - An Opportunity Waiting to Happen: Building Communities and Neighbourhoods, will set out the potential relationship between housing associations and the voluntary and community sectors when it is published in June.
Both reports give weight to the National Housing Federation's In Business for Neighbourhoods strategy.
For a copy of Up your Street, visit the Housing Corporation website, www.housingcorp.gov.uk.
Copies of Housing Associations as "Community Anchors" are available on the HACT website, www.hact.org.uk.
A new survey by the housing association Places for People found that people are more concerned about having access to affordable housing than they are about crime, the health service, or schools.
About 98% of those interviewed listed being able to afford a property as a major factor when deciding where to live. This compared with 74% who highlighted low crime rates as important, 65% who looked for somewhere with access to good health services, and 59% who listed good local schools as an issue.
Some 90% said they thought it was difficult for people to buy their first home, nearly three-quarters of whom blamed the problem on high house prices. A third of those interviewed also said they had faced problems getting on to the housing ladder, or had known someone who had.
However, the survey shows how the public's concern about being able to afford property is not matched by the perceptions politicians have of what are major issues for their constituents. Only a third of Members of Parliament said they thought affordable housing was a major issue for people when deciding where to live, while just 27% thought low crime was important, 20% thought the local health service was key and 28% thought schools were an issue.
Despite this, housing was the main issue people contacted their MP about, beating issues relating to immigration, crime, health, education and transport.
Source: www.24dash.com
Single Person Households and Social Policy: Looking Forwards
Analysis of trends in single person households.
Institute of Public Policy Research
www.ippr.org.uk
Choosing Well: Analysing the Cost and Benefits of Choice in Local Public Services
An analysis of the cost-effectiveness of some choice based lettings schemes.
Audit Commission
www.audit-commission.gov.uk
Housing Wealth: First Timers to Old Timers
A challenge to the Governments priority in creating homeownership.
Institute for Public Policy Research
www.ippr.org.uk
Rethinking the Planning Regulation of Land and Property Markets
A report by researchers at the University of Reading
www.odpm.gov.uk
Absence Minded: Absence and Labour Turnover 2006
Survey reveals Housing as the third worst sector for sickness absence.
Confederation of British Industry
www.cbi.org.uk
Older People's Housing Strategies: Key Policy Drivers
Housing policy is too much in favour of younger people at the expense of the elderly.
Housing & Older People Development Group
hopdev.housingcare.org
