Changes in stock and residualisation
New housing regulations instituted after the crisis restricted access to social housing while also putting financial pressure on housing associations and their tenants. The continued demise and residualisation of social housing is evident in the declining share of stock. Whereas housing associations owned about 40% of the housing stock in 1990, this had declined to 30.7% in 2012 and 29.3% in 2018. Between 2007 and 2017, there was a net loss of 23,500 housing association dwellings, while the total housing stock grew by over 600,000 dwellings, as well as households (Figure 1). Housing association dwellings with a monthly rent below the liberalisation threshold1 even show a 5% decline between 2007 and 2017, with a noticeable drop when the Housing Act came into effect in 2015. Only those dwellings with a rent below this threshold are rent regulated, and therefore social, based on a point scoring system measuring dwelling quality—while dwellings with higher rents are officially rent liberalised. The result of these developments is an increasing gap between the total size of the social-rental stock and the total number of households.
Source: Tandfonline