Last week I blogged about the impact rogue landlords are having on the health of renters. Nearly one million renters have had their health affected by their landlord failing to make repairs or deal with poor conditions such as mould, damp, or electrical hazards. Shelter has called on local authorities to take tough, visible enforcement action against these landlords.

Last month, major changes in public health offered a new opportunity for councils to take a well rounded approach to eliminating rogue landlords. These changes will allow councils to embed the importance of safe, hazard free housing as a key contributor to the health of the local population

The new public health agenda aims to address the wider determinates of health, such as the physical environment. It is seeking to identify the circumstances that lead to health inequalities and to prevent poor health in the first place.

One of the main practical implications is the establishment of local authority Health and Wellbeing Boards, which will be responsible for assessing the needs of their residents through quantitative and qualitative evidence collection.

We hope that these Boards can be used to facilitate a multi-agency response to poor private sector housing. This will be particularly important at a time of increased budgetary constraints.

A housing presence, such as a landlord accreditation body or an environmental health expert, on Health and Wellbeing Boards (something that a number of local authorities have argued should be mandatory) will ensure that this joined up approach is encouraged and maintained.

Local authorities will also be tasked with creating local ‘health and wellbeing strategies’ that implement a community-wide approach to preventative health care. As there is a clear link between health and housing these strategies should look closely at the home environment of their local population. As more and more of us become long-term tenants these persistently poor conditions are damaging local communities.

It is also up to those of us campaigning for reform to make the case for involvement in this new public health world. To justify the allocation of resource we must continue to gather evidence on and draw attention to the health impact of poor housing. Something that the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health have expertly arguing for some time.

Councils should continue to use the powers at their disposal to bring effective enforcement action. But this new preventative health environment presents an exciting opportunity for local authorities and the housing sector to think innovatively about tackling the rogue landlords and poor conditions that are putting renters at risk.

Has your council signed up to evict rogue landlords?

Which is why as the housing market changes and the private rented sector expands significantly (particularly in swing areas), it’s interesting to view which of the main parties successfully speak to the growing demographic of people who rent their home. Below, Ben Marshall from Ipsos MORI gives us an update on the state of play among the three main tenure groups.

The results are food for thought for the Housing Minister, Mark Prisk, who heads into the CLG Select Committee today to give evidence to their inquiry on private renting. Support for the Coalition among those who rent privately has fallen from 62% in 2010 to only 29%. There is still hope for the Government on this front, though. Labour has yet to make this group their own. The loyalties of renters are still very much up for grabs – will the Government seize the chance?

Ben Marshall, Research Director at Ipsos MORI says:

Last week we published our latest poll showing a three point Labour lead over the Conservatives among those certain to vote. Supplementing this with new analysis of aggregated polling data across the first four months of 2013 allows us to look in detail at the four main tenure groups. Two things are evident:

• the voting power of owner-occupiers is stronger than that of renters; and
• the trend since the turn of the year has been towards ‘other’ parties, most especially UKIP.

Every month we ask ‘How likely will you be to vote in an immediate General Election, on a scale of 1 to 10?’ In May 67% of property owners rated themselves as 10 (absolutely certain to vote), as did 45% of private renters and 49% of social renters. Broadening this out, 81% of owner-occupiers lay between 7 and 10 compared with 68% of renters.

This is important because it could have implications for the way the political parties treat the issue of housing. Adam Forrest recently wrote in the Big Issue; “Homeowners remain the favoured, mollycoddled children of politicians and much of the press. Generation Rent, meanwhile, is skint, restless and angry”. Even if true, will anger lead to electoral impact when renters are half as numerous as owner-occupiers and less likely to vote?

Looking at voting intention, our analysis in January found that the Conservatives had a 36% share among mortgage holders certain to vote, matching their share at the 2010 election. At the same time, though, they had lost support since the election among owners (-6), social renters (-6) and private renters (-10). Support for the Liberal Democrats had fallen by double digits among all four groups, while Labour and ‘others’ had gained.

Across the first quarter this year, the Conservatives’ share among mortgage holders certain to vote fell to 33%. It fell to 15% among social renters from 24% at the 2010 election. Meanwhile, among private renters the share commanded by the Coalition parties was 37% in 2012, down from 62% in 2010, and is now only 29%.

While Labour has strong leads among both renter groups, Ed Miliband is not yet cutting through. For example, in May his ratings were 38% satisfied versus 47% dissatisfied among social renters, although better among private renters at 36%-37%. And, as has been well documented, the main beneficiary has been UKIP: the party’s share between January and April among those certain to vote was 14% among owners, 13% among social renters, 10% among mortgage holders and 7% among private renters.

Of course, what people say they will do now is not necessarily what they will do in 2015. As well as watching vote shares and popularity, we should continue to keep an eye on likely turnout.

Follow Ben at @BenM_IM

Technical note: Ipsos MORI’s Political Monitor aggregate analysis (January to April 2013) is based on 4,052 interviews with British adults including the following numbers certain to vote: 719 mortgage holders, 813 owners, 254 private renters and 267 social renters.

Policy makers are trying to provide a politically appealing and genuinely affordable offer for low to middle income households – but as the slating that the government’s Help to Buy idea received shows, it’s no easy task.

First, who are low to middle income households and why should we worry about them? Blue collar workers, the Squeezed Middle, Alarm Clock Britain – whatever you want to call them, low to middle income families have been a decisive group to win over in key marginal seats in recent elections.

As we’ve been highlighting for some time, housing is a key issue for this group. Increasingly the low to middle income family is renting, or stuck on the lower rungs of the housing ladder unable to trade up as their family grows. Their housing situation is too often not meeting their basic needs, let alone their aspirations.

We’ve seen politicians get wise to the need to improve this group’s lot. The Help to Buy scheme was initially touted as the second-coming of the Right to Buy, but seems set to actually help very few low and middle income families to buy a home.

Counter-intuitively, the smaller deposits enabled by Help to Buy mean bigger loans and more expensive repayments, so Help to Buy still leaves the average home out of reach for the average family in much of the country.

So what about the Gentoo Genie product? By cutting deposits out of the equation, it is more instantly attainable than saving up a deposit and taking out a 90% mortgage. But with a comparatively high APR it works out even less affordable on an ongoing basis than the Help to Buy 95% mortgage. It removes the deposit barrier, but the gnarly affordability barrier remains in much of the country.

Resolution Foundation’s initial analysis confirms this picture. Low to middle income households fare ok in some markets, but there are many which are quite or very unaffordable for local families. In these markets, neither market rent nor conventional home ownership are serving ordinary families well – meaning they have to stretch their finances to the edge or live in a home that’s too small for them. Resolution Foundation’s analysis shows that in each scenario, shared ownership works out significantly more affordable.

Whichever way you look, whatever the financial whizzery in your product, however small you make the deposit needed; at current prices, mortgaged home ownership remains unaffordable for low to middle income households in much of the country. We need a better understanding of these markets and how big the affordability gap is.

There could be a big prize in a politically appealing and effective solution to low to middle income families’ housing problems. To make a real difference, we need to focus on solutions to the real problem: affordability. Politicians’ and the industry’s focus on deposits will only take us so far. The Resolution Foundation’s analysis suggests shared ownership can be a more affordable option in unaffordable areas – policy-makers need to explore further how shared ownership can plug the gap in the market.

The bad news is that our new research, released today, shows that this unscrupulous minority are having a significant impact on the health of renters, particularly on the health of children.

To find out more about the work local authorities are doing to combat rogue landlords, I spent a day with one of the local authorities that have signed the statement of support: Islington.

We visited a retired tenant suffering from serious mobility issues. His bedroom had become uninhabitable because of the cold. It had been built as an extension and as a result had three external walls. These walls contained no insulation and left the tenant completely at the mercy of the elements. Both the kitchen and the bathroom also had significant damp.

His quality of life was being severely reduced because of these poor conditions. The Senior Environmental Health Officer (whose duty it is to respond when the health of a tenant is in jeopardy) was visibly appalled: enforcement action will commence immediately.

Later I joined an inspection of suspected houses of multiple occupation where we met a new landlord who had purchased his property 11 months ago. This landlord had inherited four tenants, but had scant knowledge of his legal responsibilities. The house was in need of a deep clean and a number of the fire alarms were visibly damaged. His casual disregard for the wellbeing of the renters that call his property home was staggering.

Both visits brought home just how dangerous elements of the sector are. It is unacceptable that some landlords are still able to put their tenants at risk, especially as more and more children are now growing up in rented homes.

Many are vulnerable. They have very few rights and in a high pressure market they cannot voluntarily escape their surroundings, even if they are making them ill. The dearth of available, affordable housing leaves renters with little or no control over where they live.

It is up to local authorities to take tough, high profile enforcement action that will force these landlords to clean up their act and push the worst culprits out of the sector. But the Government also has to ensure that the penalties these landlords receive are substantial and that the legislation exists to properly protect renters.

My day with Islington showed just how serious the problems are, but also how hard some councils are working to combat them. In the face of increased budgetary pressures Islington have joined forces with local charities and community groups to continue proactively rooting out rogue landlords and uncovering tenants at risk. These sort of innovative techniques, coupled with a genuine desire to protect tenants, prove that when the will is there a lot can be achieved.

The appeal is obvious. It feels like every week a news story goes out reporting rising rents. And, as research by Jones Lang LaSalle found, many subscribe to the “small island” theory – that Britain is so small that it will never have quite enough homes – and so property investment will always pay off.

With first time buyers fast becoming an endangered species, there’s been a lot of focus on helping more of them get on the property ladder.

But the growth of buy to let threatens to undermine these efforts. NewBuy, Funding for Lending, FirstBuy and now Help to Buy are all aimed at making it easier for first time buyers to borrow and get on the ladder, by under-writing or reducing some of the risk they pose to lenders. As a result of these schemes, some first time buyers can now get a mortgage with only a 10% or 5% deposit.

By contrast, landlords typically put down  20% or 25% deposits to get a buy to let mortgage, meaning they have a lot more cash to invest, can buy a home with less borrowing, and so have lower monthly mortgage costs than first time buyers do.

It’s little wonder then that the 9 million renters in England, most of whom want to buy a home of their own, find that they can’t compete with the buying power of landlords, even if they can raise a 10% or 5% deposit.

The risk issue is significant too. When I was buying my flat I was up against a foreign investor with a big lump sum to put down (yes, even in a less salubrious part of Hackney!). I know that my seller was keen for the swiftest and safest sale, and that my rival’s big deposit was a big attraction for them.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, the Help to Buy scheme actually makes mortgages more expensive for first time buyers, as lower deposits mean more borrowing and higher monthly costs. These put borrowers at greater risk of running into difficulty with their repayments, making the bank more likely to turn down their mortgage application, causing the sale to fall through. Sellers may therefore see landlords as being lower risk, as they are putting down a bigger deposit.

The implication for government is that their current suite of first time buyer policies will be unlikely to open up ownership to a wider group of people, because investors with more cash will have more buying power.

Even if we do finally get round to building the homes we need, a generation of first time buyers may still see the dream of homeownership that their parents achieved so easily slipping away, as investors beat them to it.

The government needs to really think through how its schemes can be made to help more renters compete in this market.  Deposits are only one barrier: ongoing affordability is the real issue, which current initiatives have failed to address.

P.s. if you are interested in this issue, sign up for a debate that the Strategic Society Centre is convening on Help to Buy. It’s free and takes place on 5 June in London.