Manx Development Corporation

[Chris Thomas]

11 minutes ago, Bandits said:

Some bullet points would have been nice! 

That was the speech.

Here are the foreword bullet points about first year actions:

"

Early interventions to begin to tackle our housing crisis include: 

• Affordable Housing - Adjusting thresholds for the existing Shared Equity first time buyer scheme in line with current conditions alongside kicking off a more fundamental review of affordable housing support to bring forward potential reforms by the end of the year (see appendix 1);
• Housing First - Funding for emergency shelter to secure the currently available provision and develop a commissioning lite approach to define, design and then commission a single pathway with multiple provisions to tackle homelessness and deliver Housing First supported living (see appendix 2); and
• Budgeting Loans - Enhance this element of Social Security.

Other first year action includes:

• Consultation about rental property minimum standards and deposit protection;
• An empty properties initiative;
• Further developing policy to support owner / occupiers including the use of land registry fees and innovative financial products;
• Housing and tenancy law modernisation; and
• The continuation of social housing reform including mid-rent, fixed term tenancies and rent setting.

"

An Objective Assessment of Housing Need does not feature in those bullet points.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Chris Thomas

[Bandits]

2 minutes ago, Chris Thomas said:

That was the speech.

So no real focus on more social housing building then? 

[Chris Thomas]

2 minutes ago, Bandits said:

So no real focus on more social housing building then? 

Social housing operations are DoI and local authorities. Some crucial policy questions are in last bullet point.

Your proposal was made in debate. See Hansard item 7 t220517.pdf (tynwald.org.im). I answered in my summing up as follows:

"

Moving on to the idea raised by Mrs Christian and Ms Faragher, that we certainly need more new social houses, I just want to respond in two ways.

The first one is: is that not a conclusion rather than an analysis? My first point is that it might be that we need lots more new social houses by the end of the year after we have done the analysis, which is what we plan to do. But I do not think we should start off with a conclusion. I would think it is a fair expectation to have a policy and a target on that at the end of the analysis, rather than at the beginning of the analysis.

The second point I would make is it could be that lots of social houses will become free for other reasons; for instance, if we enable people to want to move out of social housing into their own owner-occupied housing, or if the age profile of people in social housing is such that lots will become available. Or if the population changes it could be that lots of social housing becomes available in the next few years.

I would say my working hypothesis is that, basically, in the Isle of Man at the moment, we have 6,500 publicly owned properties. A way to think of this is we are taking the solution to this crisis into a modern dimension. We have got 6,500 properties and some of them could be used sometimes for mid-rent, some of them can be used for rent-to-buy, some of them could be used for social housing. But they do not always need to be used always for exactly the same purpose.

Would it not be better if we could come to the conclusion that we have got 6,500 houses, we might need 7,000 or 6,000 and then those houses can be used as suits society at that time? For instance, we could solve this by making massive improvements for sheltered housing, because it is not nice at the moment for some people living like they do outside sheltered housing when they would rather have more care. Would it not be great if we could actually make speedy progress in terms of care and extra care and better sheltered housing, and actually free up lots of that social housing for future generations and for younger people, basically? But also, at the same time, creating better life chances and life opportunities for older people by putting them in places they want to be more than where they are now? It is going to be difficult, but we need to address it.

"

[Andy Onchan]

2 hours ago, Chris Thomas said:

Social housing operations are DoI and local authorities. Some crucial policy questions are in last bullet point.

Your proposal was made in debate. See Hansard item 7 t220517.pdf (tynwald.org.im). I answered in my summing up as follows:

"

Moving on to the idea raised by Mrs Christian and Ms Faragher, that we certainly need more new social houses, I just want to respond in two ways.

The first one is: is that not a conclusion rather than an analysis? My first point is that it might be that we need lots more new social houses by the end of the year after we have done the analysis, which is what we plan to do. But I do not think we should start off with a conclusion. I would think it is a fair expectation to have a policy and a target on that at the end of the analysis, rather than at the beginning of the analysis.

The second point I would make is it could be that lots of social houses will become free for other reasons; for instance, if we enable people to want to move out of social housing into their own owner-occupied housing, or if the age profile of people in social housing is such that lots will become available. Or if the population changes it could be that lots of social housing becomes available in the next few years.

I would say my working hypothesis is that, basically, in the Isle of Man at the moment, we have 6,500 publicly owned properties. A way to think of this is we are taking the solution to this crisis into a modern dimension. We have got 6,500 properties and some of them could be used sometimes for mid-rent, some of them can be used for rent-to-buy, some of them could be used for social housing. But they do not always need to be used always for exactly the same purpose.

Would it not be better if we could come to the conclusion that we have got 6,500 houses, we might need 7,000 or 6,000 and then those houses can be used as suits society at that time? For instance, we could solve this by making massive improvements for sheltered housing, because it is not nice at the moment for some people living like they do outside sheltered housing when they would rather have more care. Would it not be great if we could actually make speedy progress in terms of care and extra care and better sheltered housing, and actually free up lots of that social housing for future generations and for younger people, basically? But also, at the same time, creating better life chances and life opportunities for older people by putting them in places they want to be more than where they are now? It is going to be difficult, but we need to address it.

"

As I see it an important factor in the social housing sector is the mix of stock. With an ever increasing aging population much more in the way of small one or two-bed units should be available. Right now I wouldn't mind betting that there are a quite a few single people needlessly occupying 3 bed family housing. The units for the older generation don't necessarily have to be in sheltered accommodation as many will be very capable of living an independent lifestyle.

I haven't read through all of the policy document but can you confirm that this situation will be addressed, Chris?

[SleepyJoe]

8 hours ago, Chris Thomas said:

Would it not be better if we could come to the conclusion that we have got 6,500 houses, we might need 7,000 or 6,000 and then those houses can be used as suits society at that time? For instance, we could solve this by making massive improvements for sheltered housing, because it is not nice at the moment for some people living like they do outside sheltered housing when they would rather have more care. Would it not be great if we could actually make speedy progress in terms of care and extra care and better sheltered housing, and actually free up lots of that social housing for future generations and for younger people, basically? But also, at the same time, creating better life chances and life opportunities for older people by putting them in places they want to be more than where they are now? It is going to be difficult, but we need to address it.

Do any govt departments or local authorities have budgets for building social housing this year?

[2112]

2 hours ago, SleepyJoe said:

Do any govt departments or local authorities have budgets for building social housing this year?

As opposed to the question Do any govt departments or local authorities  have budgets for wasting taxpayers and ratepayers cash, the answer is definitely yes.