Cormac Hollingsworth shows how social housing could be the best way to save money on housing benefit: Three times as effective as a cap.
Housing investment is an important part of our economy, yet the coalition has lacked the imagination to apply the principles of industrial policy and active government to the problem of a high housing benefit bill.
For example, why aren’t we looking at Singapore’s housing policy? There, land is at such a premium that the government builds low-cost housing that is managed by housing co-ops.
Perhaps Singapore sees its housing investment as part of its industrial policy: housing costs are a major determinant of wage levels so a low cost housing strategy would make a major contribution to improved productivity.
Here in the UK, housing investment has collapsed since the credit crunch, enough to evaluate the case for active government investment in housing. To do that, we need to evaluate the effect of housing investment on growth and tax receipts.
Assuming that each unit costs £100,000 of investment to build, and that the cost of land is gifted from the local authority, we simply need to know how investment in housing increases economic growth.
The Office of Budget Responsibility states that the output multiplier of investment is one-for-one: for every £1 of housing investment it boosts the economy’s output by £1. This boost in economic output then feeds through into an increase in tax receipts: we’ve calculated that in our present stagnating economy, a £1 increase in output increases receipts by 65 pence.
So, for each unit the government invests in, economic output would increase by £100,000. This increased output would improve tax receipts as the improved growth spread throughout the economy, and for a government investment of £100,000, the per-unit increase in tax receipts for an investment will be £65,000.
Therefore, while the government spends £100,000 it receives an extra £65,000 in tax receipts, so netting these two out, the cost to the government of building these units would be £35,000.
This might give us pause: across the 67,000 families on whom the benefit cap falls, this would represent a bill of £2.3 billion. But that would be to neglect that the social rent savings in the future. Putting people into low cost socially rented represents an enormous fall in housing benefit.
The housing benefit cap is £400 per week but social rents are much lower, perhaps as much as £300 per week lower. So putting families into government built low cost housing would save an additional £15,600 per year. This would cover the per-unit cost of building of £35,000 after two and a quarter years.
After that, the government continues to save £15,600 per year per family on housing benefit payments. Scaling this up over ten years and across the 67,000 families, the build strategy would save the exchequer a further £8.1 billion.
This is an enormous saving, three times more that the £2.75 billion the government plans to save. It is also additional to that saving: The money saved from the housing benefit cap is not lost by putting people into social housing.
These huge savings are before we take into account the broader economic productivity benefit of solving high-cost-housing problem, but it’s clear why Singapore builds low cost co-operative housing to tackle its high cost of land problem. It should now be obvious that it’s applicable here.
Until we realise how an active government’s industrial policy compels us to provide low-cost housing, our economy will continue to stagnate, while Singapore’s continues to grow.
See also:
• Could the welfare bill signal the death of social housing? – Thomas Sutton, December 22nd 2011
• Shapps’s subprime stimulus is a bailout for housebuilders – Kevin Gulliver, November 22nd 2011
• Social housing needs a ‘New Deal’ – Kevin Gulliver, September 28th 2011
• Government spin on so-called “rich” social housing tenants exposed – Kevin Gulliver, June 6th 2011
• Two Labour traditions can come together in social housing – Kevin Gulliver, June 1st 2011
42 Responses to “Building social housing would cut the housing benefit bill three times faster than a cap”
clarebelz
I really is a ‘no brainer’ as far as the housing crisis is concerned, and if the post war government could afford to do it, our government could too, especially when you look at it in terms of saving.
Has anyone calculated just how many jobs a building programme like this would create, especially if the programme became a ‘rolling’ programme of house building? Also, people, even poorer people who move into secure permanent housing tend to spend money on items for their new homes, has anyone calculated how this would impact on growth in any way? If these homes were designed with a cost effective eco design, has anyone calculated how this might impact on the green industries?
Also, once the new tenants were financially secure and employed, if the ‘right to buy’ was made a permanent feature of a rolling home building programme, whereby for each home that was sold, an extra home was built, how would this impact on the financial sector and the housing market in general? Of course we have to consider those who are better off and can’t afford to buy like many on average wages, so a fairer way of allocating such homes whereby 50% of all houses built were offered to better off people to rent, who could then buy after a certain period (to allow some funds to be taken as rent to help housing association income). This would be a much fairer option for everyone concerned. Has anyone worked out how long it would take to build enough homes for the low paid and those on average wage?
I would say all in all, although such a programme would not provide the UK with the growth or the jobs are needed, it would certainly boost our economy in many different ways.
If all of this research is out there, the question is, why can’t our successive governments start to innovate in this way, particularly when it is going to not only cut the housing benefit bill, but provide jobs and a certain amount of steady growth?
The answer can only be that either they are too misinformed to understand this, or they purposefully wish to punish people on lower incomes and the poor to satisfy those who may vote for them in the future; I think the latter applies.
George Hallam
Building council houses would be great.
But there is plenty we can do right now.
This is what People Before Profit have been doing in Lewisham.
http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/whereilive/localheadlines/9529862.Council_withdraws_houses_from_sale_after_squatters_stage_sit_in/r/?ref=rss
Anonymous
Assuming that each unit costs £100,000 of investment to build, and that the cost of land is gifted from the local authority, we simply need to know how investment in housing increases economic growth.
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So you’re leaving at least 1/3rd off the cost? Doesn’t hold up much hope for a correct conclusion.
Anonymous
Of course you could say, no housing for migrants. After all if we get the right migrants, they won’t need social housing.
admirehomesales
Building social #housing would cut the housing benefit bill three times faster than a cap: http://t.co/5hHMtJ9V