EU funding for housing associations.

[HelenaDove]

www.buildingconstructiondesign.co.uk/news/housing-associations-receive-eu-funding-to-deliver-net-zero-homes/



So what happens in situations like this now. Anyone here work for an HA who would know? Obviously i know the funding wont continue but what many tenants will want to know about is the effect elsewhere. Im suspecting it will also affect the repairs budget and tenants already have to fight to get repairs done.

[Arielthemermaid285]

ARE YOU SERIOUS?!!!

I think I need a .

[HelenaDove]

Am i serious? Totally.


www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2668778-To-royally-kick-off-Housing-Assoc-one-Long-sorry

[Cjamm]

The good news just keep on coming 😫 I can't even cry, how has this nightmare happened

[HelenaDove]

www.propertyweek.com/opinion/what-would-brexit-mean-for-uk-housing-associations?/5082467.article

[HelenaDove]

From the above link.

If we exit the EU, the pound is likely to fall in value and interest rates will rise. In turn, this will make borrowing more expensive for housing associations, as well as for our customers who purchase shared-ownership or market-sale properties. Devaluation of the pound would also hike inflation, as Citibank warns, which will have a negative impact on our tenants, who pay a much greater percentage of their income on food and other basics.

Yet there is an element to Brexit that exposes disunity between the interests of the tenant and the association, because as housing associations, we operate with the knowledge that any fall in the market will lead to more opportunities for affordable and market-rent housing activities. This is an appealing prospect, but we need to look at the long-term picture.

[AyeAmarok]

See this is the sort of thing the Remain campaign should have been making people aware of. They needed to tailor their campaign message for different groups of people to understand.

Lots of people who live in HA and council housing voted Leave, because they thought "what does the EU do for me? Nothing.", and they have no idea how much investment they get in their local areas from the EU.

So they voted Leave. And now they're all a bit screwed. It's very sad.

[HelenaDove]

Also from the link.


The European Investment Bank, in the mood for support, just increased funding to the UK affordable housing sector by £1.5bn. This is an important source of cheap funding, particularly for regeneration projects, but the prospect of Brexit puts it at risk.

In total, 40 housing associations secure long-term cheap debt and are rated by Moody’s, which already stated that Brexit will throw us into a prolonged period of uncertainty and negatively affect investment.

When it comes to maintaining these sources of funding for the affordable housing sector, ratings are often based on the strength and standing of the UK government, so this will impede our ability to build new homes.

But what about the people? In London, 44% of rough sleepers are from Europe and 13% of clients using day centres are from the European Economic Area. Demand in these areas could fall if we proceed with Brexit.

[HelenaDove]

Exactly Amarok.


DH and i are social housing tenants and voted Remain.

But in my area Leave was 52000 and Remain was 33000

I suspect a lot of tenants voted Leave without even thinking of this.

The Remain campaign may have benefitted a lot by pointing these things out to tenants.

[HelenaDove]

Ive been reading and posting on the many threads about the referendum result on here and have realized that the effect on HAs wont have occurred to many.

[OurBlanche]

See this is the sort of thing the Remain campaign should have been making people aware of.

Absolutely. How any threads were there with posters (including myself) saying that neither side were explaining anything, no real facts, just scary shite. As if they assumed we are all naifs and wouldn't understand a real fact or figure.

Both sides did this, for months. And now, when it is all over, people who knew damn well what the changes would entail are crawling out and starting to tell us...

Well, too fucking late. And I hope some of you get your just desserts.

[HelenaDove]

Absolutely Amarok and Blanche. The Remain campaign really missed a trick with this.

[lazysummer]

Remain definitely missed a trick with all the positive benefits of EU. They didn't need to do all the scaremongering- a few pictures of EU projects and investments in those areas that voted Leave would have been far more positive.

[LIZS]

EU funding also supports many areas of life including education, employment and disability rights which could well hit those with the least opportunities.

[BlunderWomansCat]

Very worrying, I'm in a HA and voted remain, also DH works for hostel run by a HA.
IDS was saying on referendum night that large numbers of people on council estates were voting out. I really hate that man with a passion

[AyeAmarok]

Thing is, Remain brought out all the economists and the global bodies and businesses' CEOs who all said "don't do this, it will be disastrous, stock market will fall, your currency will be devalued, imports will be more expensive, it will cause inflation and a recession, banks will stop lending money" and threw some huge numbers about.

But (and I'm not trying to be disrespectful here), but the typical person living in a council/HA house doesn't understand economics, at least not in those terms.

To them, the FTSE is just numbers on a screen. Currency exchange rates, ditto. They don't understand the real impact on them of the BoE has to cough up 250bn to shore up our whole financial system. They don't appreciate that that money has to come from somewhere; taxes or borrowing at higher rates, and that has an impact on the state.

The Remain campaign didn't translate the warnings into plain English for those who haven't had the education to understand it, and aren't able to research it themselves. They needed to translate that into what would the impact be on social housing, benefits, those in low-wage and insecure jobs if the big MNCs who employ them move elsewhere, losing EU investment in the regions and how all that has benefitted them. Etc.

Well, I suppose Osborne did try, but in a quite threatening way. Which totally backfired.

[Cjamm]

Amarok 100% agree , Remain lost because the Leaders in charge failed to properly explain to the right demographic what they would be losing. The amount of people that have just realised how they could be impacted is saddening.

[FloatIsRechargedNow]

Maybe because the biggest overnight falls in share prices were all in the house building sector they might now like to sell off some of their 'land banks' cheaply to HAs to build more homes, rather than restricting supply to keep development land and house prices abnormally high. They probably won't though.

[caroldecker]

From your links, it appears a grant was made for zero carbon HA homes, not homes in general and I am not aware of significant EU grants to HA - so next to no impact.
Interest rates may rise - they will only rise if the economy is doing well to damp demand, which is why they have been low since the recession. If rates rise, then it means the economy is doing well. If Brexit makes it worse, then rates will be lower for longer, in your words supporting HA.

[whois]

I 100% agree the remain campaign would have been much better if it had been positive and focused on the things the EU has done for Britain. Some national things (like employment rights) but focused in the regions on projects that got EU finding.

[Birdsgottafly]

I knew about this, many years ago, I'd looked into "what we gain from being in the EU", for a Sociology module, whilst doing my BA.

I'd tried to explain it to people, but they honestly didn't want to know.

I'm in Liverpool, we were hit the hardest under Thatcher's Britain and this time round, so why anyone was voting Leave, was a mystery.

Our City was regenerated, in every way, through EU funding.

People just didn't want to listen.

[Birdsgottafly]

In my opinion, what's going to happen, is that we'll end up living in the shit tips, that the Council had allowed to evolve.

[caroldecker]

Liverpool has had around £1.7bn of EU regeneration funding (Liverpool Echo) since 1994, so over 22 years. Liverpool has about 1% of the Uk population.

The UK has given £176bn (net) to the EU in the same period, which means we could have doubled this for Liverpool and everyone in the country for the same cost as being in the EU.

This does not look like value for money.

[ForTheLoveOfSocks]

You don't work for your local association, so you have no idea of their financial setup.

The association I work for will not be financially crippled by this, and I doubt very much that the majority up and down the country will.

The bigger issue for social housing in this country is the Tory government, not exiting the EU. The current government have been reducing the amount of grants given to HA's for years, but hey, you blame it on the Brexit camp instead.

Scaremongering will benefit no one

[mumstaxi2]

I work for a Housing Association - as the previous poster said the EU funding was for some specific projects: generally we are not funded by the EU so social housing tenants should not be effected any more than anyone else.