New Era estate residents consider proposals for means-tested rent
The New Era estate in Hoxton. Photograph: Hackney Citizen
Residents of the New Era housing estate in Hoxton could be means-tested in an attempt to keep rents affordable for the lowest-income residents.
The new Robin Hood style of rent management proposed could mean that the richest residents of the estate would be helping to prop up the poorest.
This strategy has been suggested by new owners, Dolphin Square Foundation, to help to ensure the long-term future of the community on the New Era estate .
New Era was at the centre of a widespread campaign last year, after US property investors Westbrook Partners attempted to triple rents, threatening hundreds of residents with eviction.
The campaign against Westbrook was successful, and the property was sold to Dolphin, a housing charity, last December.
Lindsey Garrett, who has lived on the estate for 22-years and co-led the campaign against Westbrook believes that Dolphin’s proposals seem reasonable.
She said: “There’s an element of it that does sound fair, it’s very difficult to argue against.”
However she added, “We haven’t agreed on anything, and we’re certainly not going to agree on something that the majority don’t support.
“What we don’t want to happen is for it to cause divides and conflicts on the estate. If it’s not suitable for the majority then we won’t go for it.”
Investment needed
Rent for homes on the estate has generally been low, and Dolphin has said that this is not going to change under their management.
“Their rents are typically on 50% of market rent, because they’ve historically had a landlord who went for a laissez-faire approach. They didn’t invest in the estate, didn’t do anything for the tenants, but equally didn’t put their rents up,” said Jon Gooding, CEO of Dolphin.
“The estate needs quite a lot of new investment and we as a charity have obviously got a lot of capital tied up in it.
“The residents see this as trying to come up with a model that actually could be an example for other similar situations and estates in London, and in a way we’re just emulating what the benefits system does”.
Gooding said that while nobody will be forced into agreeing to the proposal, the incentive to join the system would be that the default rent would be set at a higher rate.
Nevertheless, he said that while they are happy to have media interest on the rent proposal “inevitably I think some of the media coverage has attempted to suggest that this is a much more developed concept than it really is.”
Alex Hilton, Director of affordable housing campaign group Generation Rent, said that while the system that Dolphin are proposing may work for them, it cannot be an exemplar for other estates in London.
He said: “If it works for the New Era estate that’s fine, but it sounds like there’s going to be an incentive whenever there’s a vacancy to get a higher paying tenant in, both for the landlord and the tenants.
If that helps the people that are there now then that’s great, but it is an indication of the wider housing market problems – basically that less well off people are gentrified out of existence, socially cleansed from their home communities.”
Dolphin are still in discussion with New Era residents about the rent policy, and the rent proposal for the estate is expected to be drawn up by next April.
My understanding is that Dolphin Square is exploring rent levels on New Era with residents, local ward councillors, Meg Hillier MP and the Council.
This process is still at an early stage and the Council look forward to influencing these proposals and seeing how they will affect current residents.
We will continue to support residents and liaise with the new owners of the estate to ensure fair and affordable rents, as well as stable and secure futures for all New Era tenants.
Hackney is clear that we want to see a rent policy that accommodates existing residents and that no one is forced out by high rents.
It sounds like a very fair deal but I could hardly call it a Robin Hood style of management as the hackney Citizen have stated.
If it is a charity then the interests of the charity come first. It would only be fair that those on the highest income brackets pay a fair market rent so that others can benefit. The rich do not need charity.
Perhaps this could also be replicated in social housing whereby today there are several social tenants who are earning in excess of £100,000 per annum and are living in taxpayer subsidised social housing.
It is a crazy system that allows some of the privileged few to hog social housing at low rents whilst those that need it most are paying triple the rent for renting identical properties from the private sector.
We need a fairer system.
The Peabody Charitable Trust claims that the homes it bought when the Crown Estate’s Victoria Park was privatised were in much the same state of neglect as Dolphin Square Foundation claim they have found at New Era. But the rent rises imposed here don’t reflect any massive investment programme. They reflect the charity’s publicly stated commitment to moving to 80% of market rent whenever and wherever it can.
The reason the average rent on Victoria Park is less than that is that, as a result of a High Court ruling, many tenants have legal immunity from Peabody’s policies and continue on rent controlled terms. But there is an example of what they are trying to do on our estate. They are offering a three bedroom house, not for the key worker families they undertook to house, but to “professional sharers”. The charity says “… in order to rent this property you must have a pre-tax household income greater than £72, 000.00 per annum.”
This is an inverted form of means testing, where you have to earn enough to be eligible for charity. And the burden of subsidising charitable provision for the most needy in our communities is off loaded by the charity onto those tenants deemed to be reasonably enough paid to shoulder it.
I wouldn’t dream of lecturing the stalwart fighters of New Era but I hope this information is of help to them and to the debate generally.
I heard that Peabody got the estate for £100m less than the best bid of £350m because the Crown Estate wanted to accommodate the cheap rent for key workers.
So I guess a £100m subsidy is thwarted.
Nonetheless this made me laugh “And the burden of subsidising charitable provision for the most needy in our communities is off loaded by the charity onto those tenants deemed to be reasonably enough paid to shoulder it.”
Ummm – why do you think some people have to pay many thousands of income tax more than other people to be allowed to live in the UK without the threat of imprisonment if they were not deemed well paid enough to shoulder it.