If you moved into a new home tomorrow, how long would you expect to live there? If you are a private renter, the answer is probably not that long. One third of people who rent privately have been in their current home for less than a year compared with 2.5% of owner occupiers and 8.4% of households who rent from a council or housing association.
But if the government has its way, people in social rented housing will soon be on the move much more. In an attempt to encourage greater mobility, it is encouraging social landlords to offer fixed term tenancies (possibly for as little as two years) to new tenants.
FTTs were originally proposed for 'affordable' renting, where tenants pay up to 80% of market rents rather than social rents, which are generally lower. Since the start of April, they have been available as an option for landlords letting any type of social housing, providing the family or individual was not a tenant on April 1, in which case they are still entitled to a lifetime tenancy.
The early signs are that social landlords are being cautious before rushing into using FTTs. But as pressure on their stock of housing becomes greater, and waiting lists grow longer, more landlords will almost certainly use FTTs, and decide later whether to renew the tenancy on expiry.
At the same time, housing benefit caps brought in as part of the government's welfare changes may mean that families are forced to move because they cannot to afford to make up the difference between their rent and the dwindling sum they receive in benefit or local housing allowance. A classic example is the family whose children move away and are caught by the 'bedroom tax', which penalises them for having a bedroom that nobody sleeps in.
It would be foolish to suggest that social housing should not be allocated on the basis of need, as it has always been. In the same way, it is also fair that people's needs are reassessed from time to time. But turning it into some form of transitory 'stopping off point' while people ponder what they are going to do with the rest of their lives, is hardly likely to help social housing lose the stigma that is frequently associated with living in it.
The argument behind Right to Buy and its discounts is that, by paying rent over a period of time, households have effectively bought a stake in the home and this must be respected. In the same way, while council and housing association properties ultimately belong to the landlord (and to some extent the taxpayer), tenants cannot simply be turfed out onto the street because their circumstances change or their profile is not precisely the same as it was a few years earlier.
