Housing experts are behind plans to merge the two rented sectors as it would reduce the ‘stigma’ of social housing, give them the ability to move tenants to private landlords as well as driving up rental standards in some hard-to-let areas in the United Kingdom.
Housing leaders, lenders and thinkers have been actively involved in consultation with the Government who are looking at merging the two rented sectors. However, there are still some who believe that the Government should not merge the two sectors saying Housing Associations provide a completely different service to that of a private landlord and a merger of the two could see some tenants forced to move away from their local area. However, many experts in the field believe those in most need of help will suffer if some sort of merger does not go ahead. This is especially true, as the coalition has no intention of making a U-turn on the £500-a-week household benefit cap due to come into force in eight months-time. However, if the merger does go ahead it has been stressed that only registered landlords with properties that are covered by landlord insurance would be used to rehouse housing association tenants.
Leading homeless charity, Empty Homes, believes that if housing associations are merged with their private counterparts, it would see the worst private landlords forced to pull their socks up, which would be good news for tenants. At the moment the bottom end of the private rented sector is a captive market that has seen unscrupulous landlords exploiting their tenant. However, Empty Homes believes that if the two sectors were merged in some way to the extent where a tenant had a choice between the two, it would create competition which isn’t there at the moment.
A completely opposite view was put forward by housing expert Stephen Hewlett, who said: “I fear a merger of the two sectors will undoubtedly lead to people being forced out of the capital. Major retailers in the capital are already expressing concern over the availability of low-cost housing in central London for their workers. The merger of the two sectors seems like a big experiment really when a lot of things are already up in the air.”