Does anyone believe in affordable housing?

I love talking to cabbies as they always tell you what they think; often it’s difficult to stop them. Last week, the topic of conversation was the Queen’s Speech and, in particular, housing. So when my driver found out I ran a housing association, there was no holding him back.

“Buying your own home is a good thing; it gives you stability, your costs go down as you get older and you have something to pass on to your kids,” he said. “However, I rent. I have been on the council waiting list for years and now I am going to wait even longer if you lot sell your homes. The rent I pay is more than the mortgage and while the landlord has seen the property go up in value, I don’t get any help buying, while he gets tax relief. It would be cheaper for me to own this home than rent it, but I can’t do that as I don’t have enough for a deposit and yet I’m good enough to pay someone else’s mortgage.”

You get the picture. And the cherry on top? The property he was renting was ex-council, sold on to a buy-to-let investor. I gave up trying to explain the logistics of the housing market and we got onto the question of what affordable housing is and who it is for.

My pitch to him was this. Housing associations are independent bodies; as we can borrow against our own assets we are not restricted like councils are to raise debt. We work in partnership with local authorities and developers to build homes for those who need affordable housing, and we undertake commercial activity to provide the subsidy so we don’t rely solely on the government. We house a range of people including those who rent and buy. We have strong ethics, and values, and we are proud to make profits as they all go back into delivering more homes.

He liked the story so far… but the question remained: “I am a hardworking man who just wants stability. I don’t want to play the system; I just want to bring up a family without having to do three jobs. I desperately want one of your homes so I can save for a deposit and get something one day. Why am I not eligible?” The answer, as ever: we need to build more homes.

The only way we can adequately house those on lower incomes is to build homes they can afford to rent. The result will be stability for their children, disposable income to put back into the economy, better health - particularly for the elderly - and a mixed community ensuring businesses have the workers they need. For this, we need brownfield and greenfield sites and government help to ensure enough land is used in this way.

Kent Reliance came out with some astonishing figures last week showing landlords made £67.2bn in capital gains, and £44.3bn from rent last year. Housing wealth is being created through buy-to-let investors but none of it goes back to build supply.

With housing associations soon being required to sell homes through Right to Buy and local authorities being required to pay for it by selling their most expensive properties, you have to wonder why we have created a system that makes delivering new affordable homes so complicated?

To answer my cabbie, we need to build homes, and housing associations with local authorities could be perfectly placed to do this for a wide range of people locked out of the market. Great strides have been made with the housing guarantee finance programme and signs of bringing forward more public land are encouraging.

But let’s see the new rhetoric of devolution and land release directed more to those who need it. Let housing associations focus on new supply without complicating things further for them. And let my cab driver know that there will be a home for him, one that he will not have to wait another 10 years
for and one that will be built through a system that he can understand and that sounds fair.

Geeta Nanda is group chief executive at Thames Valley Housing Association