Mixed tenure. It's a concept that trips easily off the tongue and, rightly, lies at the heart of housing policy.
Everyone agrees that it's a good idea – research confirms that areas of mixed tenure can improve schools and local services and lead to healthy social cohesion. But in practice, creating developments where renters and owners of all income bands live happily together is difficult to pull off (page 30).

A balanced mix of residents is needed for developments to work out, but too often the right intentions are scuppered by conflicting demands.

Housebuilders obliged to build affordable homes in order to get planning permission often proceed to tuck them at the back of sites. They claim it's often the only way that schemes will stack up financially, because the level of affordable housing demanded of them in the first place is too high. Councils, which retain the right to nominate who lives in the new homes, often fill high-density blocks aimed at singles with single parents and their children, such is their desperate scramble to get them out of bed-and-breakfast accommodation at all costs. Housing associations often get left to deal with the consequences.

With such competing policies, there are no easy answers. But hoping the problem will go away isn't an option. Perhaps councils and housing associations could explore more opportunities to let across regions, which would increase the scope to place people more on choice-based lettings.

A balanced mix of residents is needed for developments to work out, but often the right intentions are scuppered by conflicting demands

As the Joseph Rowntree Trust has shown in York, and as Orwellian as it may sound, social engineering can work.

Shovels and brickbats
If there were prizes for digging holes, Birmingham council would be among the winners. The latest reverse to hit its housing operation is yet another rotten inspection for maintenance (page 7).

Political infighting and a low-performance culture have dogged the local authority for years. The question is, can it ever get better?

Birmingham is not the first local authority to get a drubbing, and it is often the cue for a revival. Birmingham's problems are large, but then so are its resources.

Source

Housing Today