Year: 2015
Type: other
Abstract: quality issues Improvements Third party-managing agents Service charges and estate management Rent and rent arrears Communication Conclusion 7 Managing the share: selling on and buying up Summary This report provides findings from 'crisis moments', a Leverhulme Trust funded research project.The research comprised: a series of 71 in-depth interviews that explored shared owners' experiences in London, the South-East and East of England; 20 in-depth interviews with providers and stakeholders; and a total of six weeks' observation in two housing associations, examining the day-to-day practices of managing shared ownership homes.The study objectives were to understand more about this hybrid housing tenure through considering stakeholder, resident and housing association experiences and perceptions of the tenure.We did so through examining various events, 'crisis moments', that were said to occur and occurred during a shared owner's residence.This policy report is timely because the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) (DCLG, 2015b: para 4.3) has promised that it will undertake a review of shared ownership focusing on possible longer-term options for change to report to minsters in summer 2015.This policy report provides empirical detail of the everyday lives of shared owners, their struggles and their perceptions about the project, which should support that review.Using this lens of 'crisis moments', the research considered what difference, if any, the unique construction of shared ownership tenure made to residents' experiences of home. Key findings The drive to homeownership evident during the twentieth century has slowed down and has been in reverse, a trend that has continued since the global financial crisis.The Coalition government developed a number of initiatives designed to enable households to access homeownership, such as help to buy and greater incentives to exercise the right to buy. Despite the relatively weak evidence base for the benefits of lower-income homeownership in the UK, shared ownership remains a politically pragmatic policy approach to combat rising entry thresholds to homeownership and weaknesses in other tenures. Shared ownership has been particularly favoured over the last 25 years in public grant funding to the social sector because of its perceived benefits and greater output for capital investment than other general needs social housing. A significant coalition of political parties, pressure groups and other non-government organisations, including housing associations and tenants' rights groups, have now publicly endorsed the need for expansion of shared ownership. As a result of this support, some weaknesses of shared ownership that require reform have been identified.Those weaknesses have yet to be tackled.The government review will need to address these weaknesses head on and produce action, which almost certainly should result in a legislative programme for change.
Authors: David Cowan, Carr Helen, Wallace Alison
Institutions: University of Bristol, University of Kent, University of York
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Leverhulme Trust
OpenAlex ID: W1753467830