Search results

The ageing and disabled population is fast growing, which emphasises the need to effectively modify current homes and environments to support healthy ageing and increasingly diverse health needs. This paper aims to bring together findings and analyses from three adaptations-focussed projects, drawing on perspectives from key stakeholders alongside the lived experiences of service users acquiring adaptations.

Following an Adaptations Framework developed from interviews and focus groups with older people and key stakeholders, the paper discusses barriers experienced by older people and front-line workers in receiving and delivering adaptations through all stages of the process.

This paper reveals how experiences around adaptations might diverge with unseen, hidden investment and need amongst individuals, and how conceptual and cost-focussed evidence gaps impact wider understandings of adaptations delivery. In so doing, this paper highlights how the adaptations process is perceived as a “fight” that does not work smoothly for either those delivering or receiving adaptations services.

The paper suggests a systematic failure such that the adaptations process needs to be rehauled, reset and prioritised within social and public policy if the housing, health and social care sectors are to support healthy ageing and prepare for the future ageing population.

The paper brings together insights from key stakeholders alongside service users' experiences of adaptations to highlight key policy drivers and barriers to accessing and delivering adaptations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine emergent risk and resilience strategies being adopted by non-profit housing associations faced with uncertainties as a result of public funding austerity and the implications of welfare reform.

The study draws on an evidence review of the impacts of welfare reform on social housing conducted for the Scottish Government and on analysis of annual reports, circulars and other grey literature, including risk registers produced by a range of housing providers in Scotland.

In some associations, exposure to new risks is generating fresh thinking about effectiveness and performance measurement, and is also stimulating the development of new strategies and activities aimed at creating a more resilient business model.

Managers of non-profit housing providers need to focus on both risk and resilience if they are to successfully combine conventional business accountability with their obligations to tenants and the local communities their organisations serve.

Housing associations are a key gatekeeper protecting and supporting vulnerable tenants and disadvantaged communities from the impacts of austerity and welfare reform. It is essential that as organisations they effectively manage risk and develop resilient principles that allow them to continue as ongoing concerns into the long term.

The paper asks challenging questions about the link between the purpose or mission of an organisation and its conceptualisation of risk, arguing that resilience is a vital consideration alongside risk for non-profit organisations with a social mission.

The purpose of this paper is to assess new and often innovative models that aim to fund and deliver affordable housing in Scotland within a context of fiscal crisis. These models and their setting have implications for other countries with limited funds to support their housing systems.

This paper is a policy analysis, drawing on ideas from public policy and applied economics. It derives a set of criteria with which to provide an interim assessment of both key proposals and the policy programme as a whole.

The new models and the government's approach are pragmatic and have elements of genuine innovation. Other elements are only aspirations at this point and considerable uncertainties remain. The new environment will be difficult for housing associations but also in terms of wider knock‐on effects between the market‐rented sector and intermediate housing. Major concerns remain about rent levels and there is a lack of clarity about government's long‐term objectives for social housing.

The paper provides a first critical overview and initial assessment of radical new policies for affordable housing in Scotland. The paper's subject matter is of direct relevance to all national housing systems confronting shortages of public resources, a demonstrable need for more affordable housing, and also those contemplating radical reform to tried and tested funding and delivery models.

The purpose of this paper is to contextualise and assess “controlled” evidence about emerging plural provision of social housing within an English region.

Two matching pairs of case study social housing provider type (stock transfer associations and arm's‐length management organisations), all established between four and seven years previously and all located within the same region, are compared and contrasted through rich qualitative interviews with stakeholders, backed by secondary and other documentary evidence.

The new models have led to considerable change for both staff and tenants across many dimensions, mainly positive, in service delivery terms. It is also apparent that regulation and inspection have a dominant impact on social providers. It can be inferred from the evidence that a key challenge for the future is the lack of a clear, long‐term vision for social housing at the national policy level.

The paper is a rare empirical examination of wide‐ranging change to social housing in the UK. It is also unusual in its attempt to construct a quasi‐experimental series of case studies.

Property performance indices have invariably focused upon prime markets with a variety of approaches used to measure investment returns. However, there is relatively little knowledge regarding the investment performance of property in regeneration areas. Indeed, there is a perception that such locations carry increased risk and that the returns achieved may not be sufficient to offset the added risk. The main objective of this paper, therefore, is to construct regeneration property performance indicators consistent with the CBRE rent index and average yield monitor.

Local market experts were asked to estimate rents and yields for hypothetical standardised offerings for a range of regeneration locations throughout the UK, covering the period 1995 to 2002.

The results show that rental growth was similar in regeneration locations compared to the prime market. However, the analysis highlights a major yield shift for property in regeneration areas in the short to medium term. The downward pressure in yields would suggest that once a regeneration area becomes established and rental growth emerges, investor interest is stimulated resulting in increased competition and a shortening of yields.

The significance of this research is the quantification of property investment performance from regeneration areas that previously has not been available to investment institutions and decision makers. From a policy perspective this analysis is of relevance in confirming the maturing of locations that have received high levels of public sector support and indicating the effectiveness of regeneration policy mechanisms in creating sustainable urban environments capable of meeting private sector investment goals.

This paper aims to examine the main characteristics of the housing taxation and subsidy systems in six European Union countries. The structure of this support over the past two decades, before and after the global financial crisis has been investigated and its total effective dimensions have been approximated.

Official national data and existing literature on housing policy expenses have been analysed and the authors add their own estimations of missing data, where possible. Latest changes in housing policy guidelines and expenses were interpreted.

It was found that state support for housing is heavily underestimated by official data in most countries, mainly due to missing estimates for the value of imputed rents tax relief, reduced VAT rates and low real estate and capital gains taxation. Our estimates suggest that total public support for the housing sector reaches more than 3 per cent of the gross domestic product in three of the six countries, and about 2 per cent in the others. State support to the housing sector has developed quite differently in the investigated countries over the past decades. In particular, there was no universal downward trend.

This is the first attempt to provide a more comprehensive analysis of national housing policy expenses applying a very broad definition of state support for housing. In particular, we consider indirect tax advantages to the housing sector that are generally not taken into account. Furthermore, we apply a discounted present value approach of current housing policy expenses to facilitate international comparison.

This paper uses time series econometric techniques to model regional property rents in order to build a picture of the distinctiveness and commonality of the Scottish property sector. Data used comes from a series stretching from 1970‐1998 and allows Scotland’s market performance (in terms of rents) in each of the three main property sectors to be benchmarked against a selective comparison of other UK regions. In doing so, we pay particular attention to the statistical properties of the time series used, applying tests of data stationarity and cointegration to develop a reduced form model of rents comprising both demand and supply‐side variables. The paper develops a predictive approach to property rents based on the autoregressive moving average (ARMA) methodology. Initial within‐sample predictive power is reasonably high. The implications of our results for a better understanding of the Scottish property market, as well as the more general modelling, are sketched out.

This paper aims to, using a unique loan-level data set, show the extent to which negative equity in Ireland is concentrated in younger age groups. The sharp decline in house prices since 2007 has led to the emergence of widespread negative equity in Ireland. However, little is known about the type of borrower experiencing negative equity.

This paper uses a unique data set that, for a large sample of mortgages, provides details on both the characteristics of the borrowers and their mortgages. Using this data set, the paper estimates the incidence of negative equity by analysing loans taken out to purchase a primary residence in the period 2005-2012.

The analysis finds the situation in Ireland to be much more severe than that being experienced in other housing market downturns at present, with 64 per cent of borrowers in the period 2005-2012 experiencing negative equity. Analysis by age gives rise to concern, with the majority of those in negative equity aged under 40 years. The paper also points to the large wealth loss experienced by Irish households, in the order of 43 billion, as a result of the fall in property values.

The paper is one of the first using loan-level time-series data in Ireland. It highlights the growth in negative equity during the crisis and the extent to which it is concentrated in the younger age groups. It also provides an estimate of the loss in wealth suffered by all households due to the fall in Irish house prices.

This paper aims to use Markov switching vector auto regression (MSVAR) methods to examine UK house price cycles in UK regions at NUTS1 level. There is extensive literature on UK regional house price dynamics, yet empirical work focusing on the duration and magnitude of regional housing cycles has received little attention. The research findings indicate that the regional structure of UK exhibits that UK house price changes are best described as two large groups of regions with marked differences in the amplitude and duration of the cyclical regimes between the two groups.

MSVAR principal component analysis NUTS1 data are used.

The housing cycles can be divided into two super regions based on magnitude, duration and the way they behave during recession, boom and sluggish periods. A north-south divide, a uniform housing policy and a monetary policy increase the diversion among the regions.

Markov switching needs high-frequency data and long time spans.

Questions a uniform housing policy in a heterogeneous housing market. Questions the impact of monetary policy on a heterogeneous housing market. The way the recovery of the housing market varies among regions depends on regional economic performance, housing market structure and the labour market. House price convergence, beta-convergence.

No such work has been done looking at duration and magnitude of regional housing cycles. A new econometric method was used.