Rent Policy in the UK Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Rent Policy in the UK - Essay Example Each individual Rent Policy today has its guidelines from the legal Restructuring framework. It will be the basis of this essay. The Tenant Service authority(TSA) was created in 2008 as an independent body to work with social housing providers to give structure, legal verification and guidance in the day to day running of their properties including almos. (Housing and Regeneration Act 2008). The TSA replaced the regulatory functions of the Housing Corporation. The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) took over the investment functions and delivery activities of Communities and Local Governments. These two authorities cover all types of tenants in the United Kingdom. The Town and Country housing Rent Policy was chosen arbitrarily(T&CHG 2010) The TSA requires that 3 criteria be met . (TSA, 2010) "All Rent Policies must explicitly state their objectives in order to comply with the Housing Corporation's Rent Restructuring framework of 2002 . The Rent Policy shows that the rents are accessi ble to all. the rent increases are in alignment with current legislation. The association is a viable entity, earning enough revenues to maintain the property standards". Town and Country have several types of housing: social housing, shared ownership, market rent and intermediate rented stock. The Housing Corporation Rent Restructuring framework of 2002 and modified in 2009 is applied to social housing in its policy though other types of housing are also dealt with in this policy. "A person must have the choice of what type of place he can afford to have. Price should not be a determinant facture in deciding where he lives but it should determine what size of property he chooses" (Wilson, 2010) Government decision making at the local level has become less appreciated in the last few years. Associations have lost the power manage their own estates because the accountability and local decision making have become the responsibility of the government Target Rent Schemes have put people in a situation where it is no longer economically beneficial to go out and get a job. Needs have changed. Population sources are different. Social demands are no longer what they were 10 years ago Establishing the rent target calculations of 2002 did not take into consideration any of the social or financial factures of the last 10 years. Financial viability is difficult to achieve when household rents rather than property rents are used to subsidize the upkeep of estates. Rent are no longer linked to free market value. If it determined by the physical value, size and manual employment of the tenant (Wilson 2002, 3) and there is high unemployment in the area, the estates can no longer be viable. In 2009, bedroom weighting factor was added trying to add more value to property values. Manual labour was change to general employment. There were still too many variations. The 10 year plan has been met in the majority of areas other than London. The Governmental controls over Social Hous ing does not give enough control to the local councils as it was before 2002. This has been slowly changing since 2009. Public and government subsidised landlords must be able to have a combined free market of rent pricing. There is a chronic need of affordable housing. Millions of properties in the private sector are priced too high to rent and to buy. There are a million empty homes