Mixed results

More than 100 of its 1000 houses are empty – twice the average figure for the city. Council residents, almost half of whom rely on housing benefit, are queuing up to leave. Burglary, teenage pregnancy and mortality rates all run at almost double the city average.

In a bid to halt the estate's decline in the early 1990s, the council decided to sell 200 of its houses to mix owner-occupiers in with social tenants. At the time, this was a relatively untested idea, but it has since become a fundamental tenet of the government's housing policy, such are its perceived benefits. Indeed, mixed tenure looks likely to shape plans to build up to 200,000 homes in and around the four areas earmarked for growth by the Communities Plan. Local planning authorities, under direction from central government, are demanding that developers provide more affordable housing. Developers, though still fearful of anything that might narrow profit margins, seem to have lost some of their reluctance. The government and most social housing professionals see mixed tenure as the best tool for tackling social polarisation, although some see it as little more than a distraction from the main war on poverty.

But mixed tenure failed to deliver on the Cowgate estate and elsewhere, so is it really the universal cure that its supporters claim?

Success … mostly
The New Earswick estate, just outside York, was the site of a five-year experiment into mixed tenure by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Trust, one of the strategy's most enthusiastic advocates. The results of the experiment have just been released.

Once a successful single-tenure estate, New Earswick began acquiring a bad reputation in the mid-1990s as unsafe and poverty-riven. In response, the trust sought to "rebalance" the estate by selling up to a third of the 1100 houses. Properties were brought up to a good condition before being put on the market and modest financial incentives were used to attract buyers and establish a core of middle-class, higher-income residents. Rebalancing Communities, a report on the experiment published in April, says there has been "a marked improvement in perceptions of the village; property values are increasing and more families are showing a keenness to invest in the area."

Housing consultant Judi Watkinson, who co-wrote the report, says the mixed-tenure approach has helped improve local services. "Schools have benefited – they've been transformed – and shops are better. The estate now has the atmosphere of a real community. Before, it could be characterised as an area where most people were struggling to keep things together; now it has residents with a range of different outlooks who can contribute to the area.

"New Earswick benefited from having more people in work, with more money to spend," the report said. There has also been a slight drop in the number of children – a high ratio of young children to adults is seen as a reliable indicator of social deprivation.

A Joseph Rowntree Foundation survey of 88 large housing associations and 100 councils, also published in April, found that more than 70% had taken steps to rebalance their rental estates. Sandwell, which is part of one of the nine housing market renewal pathfinders, has been mixing tenure on existing estates to help cut the proportion of social housing within its boundaries. Property prices in the previously unpopular redeveloped areas are reported to have doubled.

Back in Newcastle, not far from the Cowgate estate, the introduction of mixed tenure has had positive results on the Newbiggin Hall estate. "It faced similar problems, but now there is actually demand to live there – schools and services have picked up enormously," says Paul Whiston, project manager for Newcastle council's Going for Growth regeneration programme. "We're still trying to work out why the approach worked here, but not so well on the Cowgate estate."

The gain's the thing
In London, mixed tenure has come to be associated with planning gain rather than regeneration. Housebuilders agree to include some affordable housing within their developments in return for planning permission; housing associations commonly manage the affordable housing once it's built, and the council that granted planning permission usually retains the right to nominate residents from its housing waiting list. Relatively small schemes such as Notting Hill Housing Trust's The Cygnets, completed in 1999 in Hounslow, west London, paved the way for vast, high-profile projects such as developer St George's Imperial Wharf in Fulham, west London, where homes are roughly evenly split between affordable rent and private sale.

All new schemes need a central community of settled people. A bad mix is a group of unsettled people on an unsettled scheme

Laura Hare, London Housing Federation

The Cygnets, which comprises 11 homes for sale, 11 for shared ownership and 11 for social rent, started an important trend of "pepperpotting" housing tenures – meaning that rented homes were sprinkled throughout the development rather than concentrated in one area. Meanwhile, Imperial Wharf has taken planning gain to new heights. On its completion in 2007, the development will include more than 800 affordable homes alongside roughly the same number of private homes for sale.

Ingrid Reynolds, group director of property and new business at Notting Hill Housing Trust, says: "There's been a change in attitude from most housebuilders, a greater acceptance that mixed tenure is the right thing do. Pepperpotting across a development was by no means a common approach, but it is becoming easier to ask for. The debate in favour of mixed tenure is definitely becoming easier to win."

According to Alan Cherry, chairman of Countryside Properties, improvements in design have enhanced the social impact of mixed-tenure schemes. "At one time you could recognise social housing by its standard type design – you wouldn't be able to do that now. Planning authorities ask for social housing to be incorporated within a development, and we take the view that it's better not to go against the grain. The developer should have the development's best interests at heart."

Not a cure-all, but not snake oil
For others, however, the optimism surrounding mixed tenure needs to be put into perspective. Mixing tenure may work in areas where the housing market hasn't collapsed or on new developments in high-demand areas, but it is a highly risky strategy when dealing with estates in need of major regeneration. A Northern housing source says: "How do you attract the right people to live on an estate with an appalling reputation for crime? In any case, social mix in a blighted area isn't any guarantee. What happens if the financial institutions or employers don't come on board? The only people interested in buying into low-demand areas are the one who don't have to go to banks – the speculative investors looking to cash in on housing benefit."

Newcastle is not the only city to have had mixed results using mixed tenure. The approach was tried on a part of Leed's Gipton estate during the 1990s. A street was set aside for private sale, and part of the estate was re-christened Greenview Mount. But the scheme attracted little interest and earlier this month the Gipton estate was even the scene of rioting between local youths.

"Changing perceptions is difficult," says Huw Jones, principal strategy and information officer at Leeds council. "Just because an area changes its name doesn't mean that people won't see through it. The things that really lie behind unpopularity are crime and reputation. Mixed tenure is only part of a wider approach to regeneration and tackling deprivation."

Tom Startup, housing policy expert at think tank the Social Market Foundation, agrees that the stigmatisation of social housing has gone too far to be turned around simply by mixing tenure. "Monolithic council estates weren't always thought of as being terrible.

At one time they were thriving areas, tenants had pride in them. Why have things changed? Social housing has been residualised – you only get into it if you don't have a job and can't afford to live anywhere else."

Startup believes the government's pursuit of mixed tenure housing may be the reason why housebuilding has fallen to its post-war lowest level. "Mixed tenure is being used as a way of boosting social housing levels. But, because private developers don't like it, it's led to the dysfunctional situation where house prices have risen but housebuilding has fallen."

Even long-standing supporters of mixed-tenure housing admit that the very term tends to conceal what's really at stake by focusing too much on housing. "Mixed tenure is really a proxy for mixed income," says housing consultant David Page.

"Social housing has become the tenure for low-income households, and it is the concentration of these that leads to a whole raft of problems. Nobody complains about the mix of tenure on a private estate.

"In the South, tenure can be substituted roughly for income. But in the North they need to forget about tenure and concentrate on incomes. Lettings plans should be established with the objective of mixing a range of people with jobs and those without."

London housing associations also want councils to agree lettings plans for new, mixed-tenure developments. They complain that the benefits of mixed tenure can be lost, if councils use their nomination rights to simply clear their housing waiting lists, starting with the most needy. By resettling those with greatest need – single mothers, long-term homeless people – in new, mixed-tenure developments they risk creating destabilising estates from day one, they argue. Lettings plans drawn up by the housing association landlord and the council could ensure that those nominated to a mixed-tenure development have, for example, a connection with the area or don't all have young children. "Landlords need some control over how local authorities nominate tenants, not if they nominate them," says Laura Hare, policy officer at the London Housing Federation. "All new schemes need a central community of settled people. A bad mix is a group of unsettled people on an unsettled scheme. This wouldn't mean less homes for homeless applicants, just he right to be sensible about nominations."

For the moment, however, the gulf between approaches to mixed tenure in high- and low-demand areas appears to be widening: sensitive lettings plans may ensure the success of new developments in London, but in some Northern cities people are simply not willing to live in certain areas.