Friendly Housing Action

Friendly Housing Action was initiated by
the Radical Routes network of co-ops working for social change

 

We have set up Friendly Housing Action to secure for small, fully mutual housing co-ops in England and Wales the same exemption from tenant protection legislation as already exists in Scotland.

The Problem:

Fully mutual housing co-operatives that are not registered with the Housing Corporation have, for the first time and without specific consultation, been included in legislation aimed at protecting tenants from unscrupulous private landlords.

Until the advent of the Housing Act 2004, these co-operatives had been exempted from tenant protection legislation, alongside Registered Social Landlords (Housing Associations registered with the Housing Corporation) and private homeowners, etc. (see, for example, the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 and Housing and Housing Associations Acts 1985 and 1988).

This is because any and all surpluses in a fully mutual already go to the betterment of the housing of the people who live there and who are responsible for the management of their own property. Friendly Housing Action has been set up to address and reverse this change in our situation.

In Scotland, where the new housing law was first tested, small, fully mutual housing co-ops have a specific exemption. This is because the Scottish Parliament recognised that "Any house which is owned by a Co-ownership Body, the management of which is undertaken by General Meeting, shall not be regarded as a house for the purposes of this Order."

A co-operative housing association is a ‘co-ownership body’.In England and Wales, it is still the case that "Co-operative Housing Association" means a society registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965 and which is "fully mutual", i.e. the rules of the association:
i) restrict membership to persons who are tenants or prospective tenants of the association, and
ii) preclude the granting or assignation of tenancies to persons other than members.

Given that the above paragraph is consistent with definitions used in previous Housing Acts in England and Wales (eg. the Housing Associations Act 1985), and that there has been no repeal of such definitions, there is no legal reason why England and Wales should differ from Scotland.

Members of small, fully mutual housing co-operatives are joint owners of the property by virtue of their shares in that co-operative. They are also the housing association, as all the members/tenants make up the management committee, take part in all the running of the fully mutual co-operative and have an equal say in general meetings.

However, a large number are not Registered Social Landlords, as they either do not have the money to meet Housing Corporation registration criteria or do not wish to compromise their autonomy by doing so, considering themselves as single, private households or communities.

This is why they have been given specific exemption alongside RSLs in previous legislation.We estimate that there are at least 20,000 properties owned by fully mutual co-operative housing associations in England and Wales. This means there are probably about 100,000 people whom this legislation may affect directly or indirectly, many of whom live quite happily in groups of more than two in one house.

The burden of HMO legislation may very well be financially intolerable for many small housing co-operatives. The end result of applying HMO rules to them could be their enforced closure and disappearance from the housing map of England and Wales.

This would lead to people who are very happy with, in control of and managing their housing being made homeless, and thus forced into lower quality housing - the opposite result to that intended by the Act.

Friendly Housing Action has been formed to negotiate a solution to the continuing problem of the status of small, fully mutual housing co-operatives within social housing legislation to the satisfaction of all concerned.