Enabling or Disabling? Increasing Involvement of Charities in Social Housing

Since 1997, there has been a general policy trend towards the inclusion and use of the third sector to provide some public services, services which have traditionally been regarded as the responsibility of the State. Over this time, the Government has viewed the third sector as a, �€œkey partner in a mixed economy of public service provision, alongside the public and private sectors�€.The third sector includes organisations, which are charitable, �€œnot for profit�€, voluntary and community sector, social enterprise, mutuals, co-operatives, and non-governmental organisations and all work independently of governmental direction. Statistics indicate that there are around 250,000 voluntary and community organisations in addition to the 150,000 general charities in existence.2 It is further thought that the sector contributes at least £7 million to the UK economy.3 In 2002, the Rt Hon Paul Boateng, MP, stated: �€œ[O]ur aim must be to build a new partnership using the sector's strengths to challenge and stimulate new ideas, complement our shared objectives and take forward the development of social policy generally. This partnership is about fresh ways of thinking through the role and structure of government and the voluntary sector and the way we deliver public services.�€ This paper seeks to consider the role of charities in housing, and the increased focus on charities actively discharging rather than *CONVPL 210 supplementing housing services, as part of government initiatives and beyond. In a sense, there is strong feeling that, at the time of writing, the �€œcredit crunch�€ in the United Kingdom and impending global recession will lead to a �€œnew dawn�€ for the social housing sector, in which charities may have a significant role to play. The purpose of this paper is to consider the effect of the wider involvement of charities in public service provision in housing the mentally vulnerable. The focus is narrow to allow for clear exposition of the issues, but many of the issues raised will be of interest to all charities dealing with public services and property. The question ultimately is would charitable involvement as a third arm of public service provision exacerbate the existing problems of fragmentation, as well as destroying some of the key advantages of the charitable sector? Answering the questions posed requires the context of charitable involvement to be established, which involves an examination of the role that the charitable, public and private sectors have played in social housing to identify what is new in current thinking; before analysing how charities as primary, rather than supplementary, providers of public housing services might either enable or disable effective service for the mentally vulnerable.