Two Islingtons: Understanding the Problem - Islington Council

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5. Tackling Housing Inequalities 5.1. There are significant inequalities between residents in regards to access to and the provision of affordable housing and decent housing within the borough. More women than men live in non-decent / social housing. Older disabled people and those suffering from long-term physical & mental health problems are more likely to have a lack of housing or inadequate / poor quality housing and 40% of children live in overcrowded unfit housing. Housing inequalities are significantly impacted upon by the availability of affordable housing in the borough and severe over-crowding issues. 5.2. Islington has a high level of social housing, and a high level of inequality and these two facts are almost certainly correlated. The John Hills report ‘Ends and means: the future roles of social housing in England’ (2007) states that tenants are more likely to have low incomes and not be in employment compared to those in other tenures. Nationally 70% of social tenants have incomes within the poorest two fifths of overall income distribution and the proportion of social tenant households in paid employment fell from 47% to 32% between 1981 and 2006. Tenants also have high rates of disabilities and are more likely than others to be lone parents, single people and be over 60. Additionally, more than a quarter of BME household are social tenants. 5.3. Reducing overcrowding: Overcrowding officers have been dealing with the housing queries raised by the door knocking initiatives in the borough such as ‘Help on your doorstep’, ‘the Canonbury Project’ and ‘EC1 New Deal’. Six tenants have taken up the ‘Time Out’ scheme and moved into private sector homes suitable for their needs. An additional 15 families have been helped with space saving furniture to mitigate the affects of living in an overcrowded home while they wait for a housing transfer. The annual target to assist 160 severely overcrowded households has been met with 278 households assisted in 2009-10. Of those applicants within the third quarter of 2009-10 the majority came from the under 16 age group and from White British or Black African households. 5.4. Homelessness: A number of projects are in place to tackle homelessness within the borough. Work has been undertaken to address the findings of the Black Homelessness study of December 2007. Workshops were held with the voluntary sector to see how the findings could be taken forward and as a result a number of internal processes and procedures were revised such as establishing an email alert system to advise on changes in policies and legislation with regard to housing and homelessness issues. Additionally the Homelessness Forum progresses issues within the borough. During April-Jan 2009/10 569 residents were prevented from becoming homeless and 53 unsuccessfully prevented. Since 2006-07 the numbers of residents accepted as homeless and in priority need per 10000 households has significantly decreased within the borough (from 2.0 to 0.7) and is now on a par with London, although higher than the England figure. 5.5. The Home Shelter Sanctuary Scheme offers the victims of domestic violence the option of remaining in their home as an alternative to making an application for emergency housing assistance. The scheme is a partnership between the Council, the Police and Kier; who enable the victims of Domestic Violence the opportunity to remain in their home 10
ut with extra security measures such as locks and fireproof letterboxes to make them feel secure. The scheme is open to tenants, leaseholders or home owners. 5.6. In the last financial year 54 households have been assisted who would otherwise have been homeless and placed into temporary accommodation, many of these households contain children who would have had their schooling disrupted by a move to new accommodation. The scheme has been running since 2005 during which time it won a national innovation award and has helped hundreds of families. 5.7. Maximising the delivery of affordable housing is a key priority. The authority is using its planning powers to tackle the acute shortage of housing that can be accessed by local residents. Through the Core Strategy, the council's spatial plan for the next 15 years, the Council has set a target of 50% of all new housing developments to be affordable. During 2008/9, 492 affordable homes were provided in Islington (Annual Monitoring Report 2009), this is more than the amount of affordable housing built by the vast majority of London boroughs. The majority of these 492 homes are social housing, and they have been allocated to Islington's residents who are in greatest need. A smaller proportion of the above figure is 'intermediate' housing. These are normally 'part rent, part buy' properties, usually allocated to key workers and local residents who meet eligibility criteria. 5.8. The Council requires a range of types of provision and financial contributions from developers through planning S106 agreements as a part of the planning process. This is the main route for affordable housing delivery in the borough. Contributions for enhancing and increasing the capacity of facilities and infrastructure have been secured to offset the impacts of developments, but also with significant benefit for existing residents. In the last two financial years 160 local transport, open space, community, playspace and leisure schemes have been funded including improvements to open spaces and other facilities. Many of these are located in and around the Council's housing estates and are accessible to the borough's most deprived residents 5.9. Green spaces are now seen as a determining factor in regeneration projects, projects that do not address the environment often produce places where people do not want to live and those that can will leave once able to do so, however this creates inequalities between residents who have access to good quality green spaces. In Islington greenspace on housing estate land has been brought up to the same grounds maintenance standard of parks. Green flags awarded for the quality of parks have been focused on the 10% most deprived super output areas in the borough, therefore reducing the disparities in the quality of greenspaces across the borough. 5.10. Additionally a key objective in the Local Development Framework Core Strategy is to ensure that new developments and the spaces around it provide a high quality environment that is accessible to all residents, employees and visitors. To that end the authority operates inclusive design and accessible housing policies, against which all planning applications are assessed. To enable developers to deliver on those policies supplementary Planning Documents on ‘Accessible Housing’ and ‘Inclusive Landscape Design’ have been produced. These documents were drawn up in liaison with the local disability organisation and establish a standard that is unique to Islington. 11
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Two Islingtons: Understanding the Problem - Islington Council

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