'Affordable Rents' Will Increase Costs To Public Purse

Housing association Family Mosaic has published groundbreaking research into the impact of reletting existing homes on new "affordable rents". Family Mosaic welcomes the principle behind the government's plans, but commissioned the research because it was worried that rent levels of 80% of market rents would be too high for the people it wants to house in London. So the association asked independent researcher Mark Lupton to look at what would have been the impact had 50 new tenancies granted within its stock in November and December 2010 been relet at 80% or at 60% of market rent. The research, published in "Mirror, signal, manoeuvre: our drive to provide more social housing" found that, had these 50 homes been let at 80% of market rents, the housing benefit bill for these 50 tenants would have increased by 151%; at 60% of market rents the bill would have increased by 68%. Download a copy of the report from the Family Mosaic website.