justin welby housing speech as delivered 2013.09.20

7/29/2019 Justin Welby Housing Speech as Delivered 2013.09.20

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National HousingFederationAnnual Conference20thSeptember2013- Flourishing

Communities

Its very kind of the NHF to extend the invitation to be here. . . [miscellaneous

humorous remarks].

I want to start by saying how grateful I am to the housing association movement

over the years for what Ive learnt from them, and my theme is about our

common responsibility and the shift in responsibility that is taking place in the

way we structure our society. Housing Associations have been at the forefront

of facing the responsibility of deprivation, of homelessness, of urban

regeneration and rural regeneration since the 1930s. For many years we have

been in times where people say they must do something. . . My first

experience of housing associations was shortly after I was ordained, I was a

curate in Nuneaton and I came across Friendship Care & Housing in the parish,

and ended up on their board. I went back and visited them yesterday evening

and was reminded of the extraordinary way for three quarters of a century and

more the housing association movement has been the cornerstone of hope for

flourishing communities. And yet cornerstones cannot be the whole building.

Philip Blond on this stage two years ago talked about the need for partnerships

and I want to pursue that theme.

The work you do through your Housing Associations provides security and

stability for your tenants, and that work makes possible the growth of strong

and supportive communities. No one else can do it, and the strength, flexibility

and development of Housing Associations is the envy of most parts of the

voluntary sector.

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Basically you develop and change quicker than anyone else. You have been

doing your work for decades, you go on doing your work and you seem to be

able to adapt to new environments at a speed that the rest of us can only envy.

But we are in the middle of massive changes that in almost every area affect our

lives and the way in which we work in our societies. The changes are so huge

that I want to suggest that no single sector can face them. To quote Benjamin

Franklin: If we do not hang together we will most assuredly hang separately.

We all know that our economic situation is completely different to that of 10

years ago. But it is worth remembering how different. Although, thankfully, the

economy seems to be recovering, we are still well below 2007 levels. Incomes

for average households are back at 2003 levels and a forecast last week

suggested they may not stabilise until in real terms until living standards for

average households are at the levels of the late 1990s. Hopefully that is wrong,

but even if it is 2003 its is still tough. Thats on the incomes side. On the

expenditure side, increases in fuel costs squeeze incomes ever more.

Your ability to build smaller units, or to replace larger ones is squeezed by

changes in the availability of funding, especially state funding. The benefits

system is going through a massive change, especially as it will affect housing.

We all know that the introduction of Universal Credit paid direct is a massive

change in the risk profile of Housing Associations. The principle of the changes

has been carefully thought through over much time, and Im not making a party

political point, but the realities of delivery are hugely challenging. And again

thats not a criticism. All of you know better than I do the difficulties of

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delivering services in complex and large organisations which are yet for all their

size many times smaller than government. When a series of other things are

combined, notably reductions in benefit to take account of what is seen as

excess house space, the so-called bedroom tax, higher costs for energy, and for

many the fact that with CPAs short term lenders can take money direct from an

account within hours of it coming in, suddenly the problem and possibility of

growing and large scale arrears becomes very serious, and a sense, more

seriously, of instability for people in already tough places becomes more and

more real.

It is a change of climate for Housing Associations which requires rapid adaption

or extinction is the alternative. Underlying these individual shifts are longer

term realities which create a potentially even more unfavourable context. There

is a disconnect between the flourishing economy of London. . . Outside the

south-east and that extraordinarily flourishing economy in much of London, not

all of it, years of dedicated and thoughtful work on regeneration are not

producing the effects we want. We were in Liverpool, I was working at the

Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool. . . at the time that Liverpool 1 opened.

Liverpool 1 was seen as the donut theory of economic regeneration you inject

jam in the middle and it permeates through to the edges. And yet five years after

over a billion pounds was put in to one of the best shopping centres in Europe

and Liverpool was one of the finest and most enjoyable places weve lived

five years after that you can still walk the 12 or 15 minutes up in to Toxteth and

see very very little impact. Regeneration is not as simple as shoving excellent,

well-designed, brilliantly-run, good facilities into the centre of an urban area

and hoping something happens elsewhere.

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Parts of the country seem stuck in endless poverty and deprivation, now running

for generations, despite the quality and value of the people who work and live

there.

Most of all it seems to me that the biggest problems we face are less to do with

policy, because there is probably not a magic solution, and more to do with

delivery. The proportion of families using food banks who have at least one

person earning, but where for example benefit has not been paid, or other

problems have struck, is a demonstration of that. As someone said to us a few

years ago when I was in a parish and we were relying heavily on benefit, there

just seem to be months where the month is a bit longer than the money.

Food banks are sadly necessary as much for those in work as out of it, and by

the way, as you know better than I do, are not invariably the result of

fecklessness, laziness or just sheer idleness, and demonising those who use

them is not an approach that we should take. The Joseph Rowntree reportpublished yesterday on the working poor addresses this question. The

Archbishop of Yorks work on living wage and the impact it has springs from

the church's awareness of the issue of working poverty.

So if you combine higher costs, lower incomes in real terms (inflation is higher

for the poor), debt, issues of policy delivery, greater risks to cash flow for

Housing Associations and communities that falsely appear to be locked into

decline, the challenge to human flourishing and to resilient communities is

obvious.

There is a need to find new ways of enabling resilience, and of creating

regeneration that accepts the realities of a dramatic shift in who is responsible

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for what. That would be us then. If the power of the state is limited, whether it

is by choice or necessity, although it remains by far the most important force in

regeneration both at a micro and a macro level, and if any case experience has

demonstrated limitations of the state, especially when highly centralised, then a

new approach must be found. Responsibility falls on a lot of organisations, and

our collective response in the third sector, but especially I want to suggest

churches and Housing Associations, will be infinitely greater put together than

our individual efforts added up, enormous as they are in your case.

The building blocks are already there, and in many places happening and have

been for many years. The motive power for regeneration must not be

desperation or fear but love, which is the source of activity of the church. Over

the centuries, and especially in the last 100 years, the churches have been

central in many movements, including yours, and continue to be. It is not to

make money, I can sure you of that, as can my bank manager. Nor is it for

power. The Church is not a powerful organisation in the sense of being able to

deliver change by itself. It is based on a view if human beings, regardless of

faith, as being of infinite dignity and value whatever their economic or social

potential. And that view, when its part of our society and if we hold on to it, is

one that marks a civilised society. My predecessor Archbishop William Temple

set that dignity as the basis of societys very existence.1 It is because each one

of us has that essential dignity that we have solidarity with one another; our

shared human experience is the basis of our relationships and our communities.

The Churchs action is driven by the Christian experience of being

overwhelmed by the love of God, given without condition through Jesus Christ,

1 William Temple, Christianity and Social Order, IV.2 Man: His Dignity, Tragedy and Destiny

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and known in daily life. Christians are people whose lives are shaped by Jesus

Christ, shaped by who we believe he was and is, and shaped by what he did.

And Jesus made a point of going wherever there were people in need he

healed people from his own community and outside it, he healed the grateful

and the ungrateful, and he healed the downright hostile. He did whatever he

could wherever there was need and he didnt set conditions. Thats the example

that were trying to follow.

Churches at their best in areas of deprivation are faith-blind, not setting aside

our own faith, but blind to the faith positions of those they seek not to do things

to but to share life with and enable and empower. Housing Associations,

springing from a common philosophical heritage, are already doing that and

have been, like us, for many years. And that means that all of us are working to

care for those in need as best we can without setting conditions, without

favouritism and without discrimination.

Of course there are historical links between the Housing Association Movement

and the churches, and other faith groups as well. Those who have been in the

industry a while will remember the origins of some of the larger associations in

the country, such as Paddington Churches (now Genesis) and English Churches

HA (now part of Riverside). Church origins are still visible in the names of

some associations and I know that there are superb local connections across the

country which are delivering significant change. The characteristic of that co-

operation was being local so that needs were met by those who lived among

them and delivered by those most skilled at doing so.

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And different people bring different skills. The Housing Associations are one of

those rare movements that seem to be able to multi-task very effectively,

working on a vast range of social issues, but no one has a monopoly of wisdom.

Like you, we are in every community (we being the churches of all

denominations). The majority of food banks are church run. Churches lead on

debt counselling, have buildings in every community, both schools and centres

for worship and community life. They provide cohesion and demonstrate love

and commitment. I know that there is some anxiety in the social housing sector

about whether it is safe for housing associations to work with religious groups,

but I hope what I have said encourages you to see that not only is it legal but it

is very safe in fact it is a great way forward.

I know from my own experience of working with a housing association and

all I learned from them, much more than I gave that you are organisations

driven by your values and I hope I have been able to give you a sense of where

Christian values connect with and are part of our common heritage.

And before you think to yourselves, well, he would say that, wouldnt he, let

me say that I also want to challenge the Church to think about what

opportunities there might be to connect with housing associations and be a part

of a great movement that can renew our commitment to changing the apparent

decline of many areas. Some of you may remember the Policy Exchange report

that came out in 2008 that reported on a number of northern and coastal cities

and towns. Its conclusion was that there was no hope of change at all, they

were, in the words of Private Fraser, doomed. It included Liverpool. This was

the summer of 2008about 8 weeks before Lehman Brothers and the British

banking system had a few inconveniences. The suggestion was that since we

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were all doomed the answer was to put them into decline mode (actually there

was a similar policy in the 80s), and all those with any get up and go should get

up and go to places like Oxford and Cambridge. . . and the report said work in

financial services, the industry of the future. It was the industry of the future 8

weeks. Underlying that was a sense of economic determinism that in fact the

areas of our country which are struggling and have deprivation, where housing

associations are the people who are doing so much, those areas have no future.

We can challenge that ridiculous deterministic belief and say it is possible to

reinvent regeneration, to find ways that we have not yet seen. But it is going to

be very very difficult. There are examples of this happening already it can be

done.

There are some excellent examples of this happening already, so it ca n be done.

There are housing associations that are an integral part of the social mission

with the local church: Southwark & London Diocesan Housing Association

manages more than 250 properties across their local area and Mitre Housing

Association in the Diocese of Carlisle works with Eden Housing Association,

focusing on rural communities. There are other projects with great imagination

through projects like My Home Finance; but they are only the tip of the iceberg.

It is enormously valuable to be linked to the NHF. They give us very good

briefings and we value the contact enormously. But let me encourage you to

begin the process of developing these relationships further. Get to know your

local bishop or your local church. You may be surprised to find that generally

speaking they are signed up members of the human race. Find out what each

others concerns are, what gifts you each bring to the place where you are, and

then let us imagine what we may do together. In some places youll find

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churches are already involved in providing services around debt advice; youll

find them capable of running IT support and help; youll find they have

volunteers of the kind of people you need and with the motivation you require.

How do we do it? Everything starts locally, but we need to have a great vision,

and there are no easy answers. I do know that we have the space and the

challenge, because government, through necessity or choice, has withdrawn or

is forced to withdraw from some areas, to renew the passion for community

regeneration. To challenge the determinism which says communities are just in

endless decline. To renew community resilience that should be our response to

poverty and need and has been that of the churches at their best.

We have the means to challenge that path. In the 1930s the resources were

found in far bleaker times to start a movement that changed our cities, as the

Housing Associations went on to do or be part of. It is a gigantic task of a

generation at least, but within our ranks is the capacity, if we work together,work locally and build great partnerships and coalitions not just housing

associations and churches but reaching out with a clear view of changing the

environment and context in which we live, taking responsibility and leading

with vision.

It needs more than just a few of us, but growing our common worship and

extending all our links in communities, links that exist already, gives reason not

for optimism but for hope.

Thank you very much.

Ends

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justin welby housing speech as delivered 2013.09.20

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