A Poverty Focused Review of Housing
Organisations’ Strategic and Business Plans:
Early Findings
Sam Morris, Cambridge Centre for Housing and
Planning Research (CCHPR)
April 2014
A Poverty Focused Review of Housing Organisations’
Strategic and Business Plans
• Ongoing research
• Aim: To assess how far the strategic and business plans of
landlords and their practice take into account the needs of
households and individuals experiencing poverty
• Part of wider Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) Housing and
Poverty research programme: “How can housing reduce the
impact of poverty in the UK?”
• Led by team at CCHPR – Anna Clarke, Sam Morris,
Sanna Markkanen, Peter Williams, Chihiro Udagawa
• Input from Savills
• July 2013 – December 2014, publication expected early 2015
Project Structure
• Stage 1: Groundwork
– Literature Review
– Housing Market Analysis
– Scoping Interview and initial Framework Development
• Stage 2: Documentary Analysis
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Database Design
Document Gathering
Document Analysis
Data Analysis: Documents and Secondary Data (CORE, SDR)
• Stage 3: Interviews and Reporting
– Interviews – Linking Policy and Practice
– Final Report
Stage 1: Literature Review
• Conscious efforts to alleviate poverty
– Some studies of effectiveness and suggested approaches (e.g. New Policy
Institute, 2001 and 2006)
• Recent change in relationship between housing and poverty
– “Good quality, low-cost housing has, at least partly, broken the link between
poor housing conditions and poverty in the UK” (Tunstall et al., 2013).
– Welfare reform, increasing use of private rented sector
• Resulting paucity of literature on indirect impacts on poverty
– Provision of housing at sub-market rents significantly reduces the effect of
income poverty in the UK (Stephens & van Steen, 2011).
– For landlords with a social purpose, potential for tensions between social
goals and commercial goals (Lupton & Lomax, 2013).
Stage 1: Housing Market Analysis: Framework
• For both sampling and analysis purposes
• Six clusters identified using a range of sources and variables:
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2011 Census data
Valuation Office Agency rent data
DCLG Homelessness and Housing Stock data
Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix (HSSA) Stock Condition data
Home Office crime rate data
• Enabled a broadly representative sample of local authorities in
England to be made for Stage 2
Stage 1: Housing Market Analysis: Results
‘Homeowners in the
Countryside’
Rural Areas, Older People,
Owner-occupation, but low
rents and house prices
Mostly outside London and
the South East
‘Industrial Towns’
Low rents, high poverty in
the private rented sector
Many benefit recipients, low
levels of qualifications
Mostly in North of England
‘The Squeezed Middle’
Close to average on most
measures
Medium to low rents and
low incomes
Largest increase in benefit
claimants in last 10 years
‘Pressured City
Housing Markets’
High rents, young people,
rental tenures, HMOs,
homelessness
Outer London and other
major cities
‘The Affluent South
East’
Older people, Owneroccupiers, with high rents
and house prices
Mostly in the South East
Relatively little poverty
‘Inner London’
Very high rents,
homelessness
Many young people, HMOs
High levels of qualifications
Inner London
Stage 1: Sampling: Case Study Local Authorities
• Using the Housing Market Cluster Analysis as a starting point
• Taking into account also:
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Regional spread
Spread of urban and rural areas
Spread of political viewpoints (amongst Local Authorities)
Size of local authorities
Local Authority housing status (owned, ALMO, stock transfer)
• 15 local authorities selected (plus three linked ALMOs)
• All registered providers operating within each area identified
(Housing Associations, Co-operatives, Almshouse Charities)
Stage 1: Developing a Framework: basic approach
• To create a systematic method of analysing the documents,
allowing both a qualitative and quantitative analysis of policies
• Reducing coding as much as possible to identifiable practical
‘activities’ carried out by organisations, recorded with sufficient
detail to differentiate between different approaches taken
• Identified links to poverty, positive or negative
Stage 1: Developing a Framework: classifying activities
• Types of Motivation
– Activities carried out in the course of providing housing
– Activities carried out specifically to alleviate poverty
• Types of Impact
– Immediate impact on financial situation of households in poverty
– Broader impact on the earning ability of households in poverty
– Impact on level of income required to maintain a reasonable standard of living
• Key themes
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Rent Setting
Core Housing Management
Advice and Support Activities
Development and Portfolio
Management
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Allocations and Lettings
Strategic Goals
Value for Money
Wider Community Work
Stage 1 / 2: Developing a Framework: practical approach
• First draft based on nine initial interviews, as well as pilot
document gathering
– Scoping general availability of documents
– Types of document available
– Identify the relevant and useful documents, and the different names they
may go by
• Developed flexibly as analysis of documents continued
• Recoding after revisions of the framework
Stage 2: Sourcing documents: general approach
• Scan of websites – majority of documents
• All organisations contacted by email
– Two reminders sent where no response gained
• Selected organisations phoned
– No email address
– Large number of documents outstanding
• Variable level of success
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Some documents for 71 of 77 Registered Providers (more than 5 for 51)
Reasonably complete set of documents for all 15 Local Authorities
Much weaker response from private sector housing organisations
Planned private sector related work in Stage 3 increased as a result
Stage 2: Sourcing documents: private landlords
• No database of private rented properties available
• Few private landlords are directly contactable
• Letting Agents
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210 Letting Agents contacted
One sent their own documents, several confirmed they had no documents
None willing to ask Landlords for documents
100 websites analysed; some documents gathered from these
• Landlord Associations
– All relevant associations contacted
– Clear that Private Landlords would not have any documents for analysis
– Will be used in Stage 3
• Local Authority Landlord Forums
– Good for focus group type discussions
– Will be used in Stage 3
Stage 2: Analysis of Documents – Technical Challenges
• Collating and analysing 664+ documents (plus websites)
totalling 1.3GB in size
– Very large volume of documents, with no consistent structure
– In a variety of formats (Word, PDF, websites, others)
– Documents may be endorsed by more than one organisation, or may apply
to just one subsidiary of a corporate group
– Documents may contain activities which happened in the past, which are
ongoing or which are planned for the future
– Documents may contain policies which apply to the organisation or to others
– Activities may be identified in multiple documents
– Some organisations provide a high level of detail, others little or none
– Need to analyse document availability as well as document content
– Need for multi-dimensional analysis: by organisation, by case study
area, by cluster, by organisation type
Stage 2: Analysis of Documents – Technical Approach
• Bespoke Microsoft Access database
– Enables multi-dimensional analysis
– Linked to large store of documents
– Not restricted to certain type of action for certain types of document
Clusters
Regions
Areas of operation
Document Types
Documents
Activities
Organisations
Organisation Types
Activity Types
(Framework)
– Output to SPSS file for statistical analysis
Stage 3: Analysis of Documents – Additional data
• Combine the data from the documentary analysis with other
sources to produce an SPSS file for quantitative analysis
– SDR (stock data)
– CORE (lettings data)
– Data from the cluster analysis
• Initial analysis of CORE data shows substantial variation
between affordable housing providers
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Turnover varies from over 10% per annum to less than 1%
90%+ LA nominations down to 20%
90%+ affordable rent on new lets down to 0%
New tenants 80% benefit dependent to just 40% - and no obvious
correlation with geography
Stage 3: Initial directions: documentary analysis (1)
Approach to arrears
and tenancy support
Fuel efficiency
measures
?
Data on
incomes of
tenants
Geographical
Clusters
Organisation
Type
Organisation
Size
Development
and Tenancy
statistics
CORE/SDR DATA
CHARACTERISTICS
Policy on development /
tenancy type priorities
EXAMPLE ACTIVITIES
Provision of advice
services
Stage 3: Initial directions: documentary analysis (2)
• Balance between commercial goals and social objectives
• Links between social objectives to combat poverty, and practical
initiatives
• Advice and support services – extent of provision
• Prioritising need
– Helping a few people a lot, or many people a little
– Focusing on helping the poorest, vs. focusing on a wider range of people
– Helping existing tenants vs. helping the wider community
Stage 3: Key Questions for Analysis: interviews
• To raise questions which are not covered by policy documents
– Affordability of measures to combat poverty; benefits to the landlord?
– What is best delivered by landlords; what is better delivered by others?
• Assess the extent to which policies are, or can be, followed
through in practice
– And to what extent those organisations without policies do these things
anyway
• Focus Groups with private landlords
– Discussing impact of poverty on their business
– Impact of their business on poverty; how this may change
– Role of written policy and strategy
Next steps and Conclusions
• Completion of quantitative analysis
– To show links between types of organisation and stated policies
(e.g. How do policies vary between housing market types)
– To show links from one policy statement to another
(e.g. Does a strategic aim to tackle poverty influence other areas of policy)
– Should also reveal links between stated policy and action shown in CORE
• Interviews
– To assess extent to which policies influence practice
• Final Report
– Expected publication January 2015
Project contact details
Sam Morris or Anna Clarke
CCHPR, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge
T: 01223 768064
E: sm2048@cam.ac.uk