Housing Associations have key role in helping tenants into home ownership

Addressing housing professionals at the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) Annual Conference and Exhibition in Harrogate, Communities Secretary, Ruth Kelly acknowledged the need to provide 'ladders into ownership' to ensure social housing tenants could own a share of their property.

Questioned after her speech about the problems of becoming a home owner in a time of rising house prices, Ruth Kelly confirmed that solutions such a shared ownership were important, but that an increased supply of homes was crucial to helping more tenants become home owners. She confirmed that government was aiming to build 200,000 homes per year by 2016 but also admitted that this might not be enough given the latest projections of household growth.

With the increasing prioritising of home ownership and equity options by all political parties, housing associations have a key role to play in meeting the ownership aspirations of people on lower incomes. More flexibility in tenure is one way according to a new CIH report Whose House it Anyway?

Delegates heard in a conference session on promoting low cost home ownership that housing associations need to look beyond mainly focusing on the provision of affordable rented housing and offer products which also provide affordable low cost home ownership (LCHO) options for people. Speakers from two housing associations and a building society considered a range of LCHO options at the same time as the CIH launched a new report which has found that the LCHO industry is still fairly underdeveloped in terms of the information and support provided for prospective purchasers and the ongoing approaches to management.

CIH President Paul Diggory said "The report Whose House it Anyway? emphasises that LCHO is becoming an increasingly important part of the work of housing associations. However, further work is required to look at how the risks to people, taking on such ownership options, can be minimised. Most are on low incomes and therefore vulnerable to interest rate and other economic changes. Our report says that to help alleviate these risks a more flexible tenure is required that allows people to change their type of tenure to accommodate changes to their income and personal circumstances."

"Further the report finds that more can be done to develop and promote good practice in LCHO initiatives to ensure that we as a sector can offer the best products to people".