Human City Institute :: Investigating Exclusion :: Promoting Solutions

A New Deal for Tenants?:
Improving Well-being in Social Housing by Tackling Tenure Inequality and Promoting Asset Ownership

‘A New Deal for Tenants’ argues that housing tenure has become a metaphor for the inequality in wealth between home owners and social housing tenants. The extent of asset inequality between home owners and tenants is significant and growing. Social housing is viewed as a tenure of last resort with home ownership seen as the desirable or ‘natural’ tenure. The report proposes that social housing requires a ‘New Deal’ to enhance the reputation of the sector, increase the status of social housing tenants, and to reduce growing inequalities between tenants and home owners.

Hills, Cave and After:
Renewing Social Housing

This report discusses the future of social housing in England. It is a contribution to the
debate begun by the Government-commissioned Hills and Cave Reviews in 2007.
The report argues that the concerns behind the creation of a social housing sector
historically have not gone away, while the private sector has not filled the gap left
by reductions in social house building in recent decades. Within this context the
report rails against arguments that we no longer need social housing or that social
exclusion and concentrations of poverty can be tackled by reducing the security
and rights of tenants.

The Unexpected Community:
The Needs and Aspirations of Birmingham’s Somali Community

Somalis in Birmingham constitute a newly emergent community which has grown
dramatically in size since 2000. Yet there is very little accurate information about
this growing section of Birmingham’s citizenry, although some estimates put the size
of the population as high as 40,000. This research report seeks to provide a more
extensive evidence base about Birmingham’s Somali community, its housing,
health and economic needs, and what sort of future the community aspires to.