Stigma and shame
Research this year by End Furniture Poverty found that 1.2 million UK adults are living without flooring in their home, of whom almost two-thirds – or 760,000 adults – are social housing tenants.
The new Welsh Housing Quality Standard (see page 50) will mandate that all social lets must include flooring, but it remains to be seen whether Scotland or England will follow suit. Standard practice across most of the social rented sector is not to include carpet or flooring in new lets, and many rip out flooring from previous tenants. Many new tenants are taking on debt to pay for it, or else living in cold, unwelcoming homes. But when those in social housing are among the country’s poorest, why is flooring not included with new tenancies, and how is this lack of provision affecting people?
A survey conducted in late 2022 by consultancy Altair with the Longleigh Foundation found that just one in 10 social landlords across England, Scotland and Wales provide flooring (beyond the kitchen and bathroom) in all of their properties. And 42% do not provide flooring in any of their properties.
A survey by Resident Voice Index in summer 2023 found that half (49.6%) of the UK’s social tenants said there were no floor coverings in their home at all when they moved in, and a further 27.5% said it was only “partially” equipped with floor coverings, meaning no flooring in the bedrooms, living room or hallway.
This lack of flooring provision can have significant impacts, not least the financial burden – which Altair estimates at an average of £920 a home. A quarter of tenants who did not have floor coverings when they moved in took out a loan to fund it. And for those who simply cannot afford it, a lack of flooring means the house is harder and more expensive to keep warm, dirtier, less safe and more likely to cause noise issues for downstairs neighbours.
Moreover, a lack of flooring can contribute to stigma, “feeling poor” or struggling to settle in. Two-thirds of tenants said they felt ashamed to invite people over.
To those outside the social housing sector, says Claire Donovan, head of policy, research and campaigns at End Furniture Poverty, it seems “a wasteful, bonkers thing” that housing for the people on the lowest incomes in the country does not come with flooring included. But Ms Donovan says that in the sector, it is “a long-standing tradition that social [housing] comes with nothing in it”.
When asked why they do not provide flooring to new tenants, landlords cite a number of key reasons and barriers. Some mention liability for trips and falls, or concerns about dirt or fleas, although Ms Donovan says there are simple solutions to “deal with all that”. She adds that another “big excuse” is that tenants do not want pre-owned flooring. But, she notes: “For someone fleeing domestic violence or coming from homelessness, if the choice is between flooring with marks on it, or nothing at all, you’re going to take the flooring.”
Anne-Marie Bancroft, who led the research into floor coverings by Altair, says: “The majority of people we speak to are bought into the moral case, they just don’t believe there’s a business case.”
Altair’s survey found that the leading barrier cited was financial cost to the organisation, followed by unnecessary delays to the void process and the ongoing maintenance of the floor coverings.
But there is a 35,000-home housing association in the North East that has made the business case more than stand up. “All the challenges we’ve had, all the ‘what ifs’ – there’s always an answer,” David Ripley, Thirteen Group’s executive director of customer services, tells Inside Housing, as we walk around two freshly carpeted re-lets in Middlesbrough. “But there’s got to be that real commitment.”
In 2018, Thirteen piloted an enhanced standard for empty homes and applied it to 100 properties. It found that those tenancies performed markedly better across key metrics such as re-lets, arrears and reported repairs. On exploration, Thirteen found that flooring and paintwork were the most valued elements, so rolled that out as standard across its portfolio.
Where carpets and flooring are in good enough condition from the previous tenant, they are kept or replaced in part, while around 60% get new carpet and flooring across the whole property and fresh paintwork, Mr Ripley says.
Thirteen spends around £1.5m a year on carpets, which is matched by the amount it saves from the reduction in voids: now down from 3,500 a year to around 2,300, and fewer repairs due to the tenants taking better care of the property. The cost of doing this work is much lower for the landlord than it would be for the tenants, because they were able to buy from direct retailers and negotiate with local fitters.
“My job was to make the financials stack up, but actually what we needed to start with was that moral buy-in,” Mr Ripley says, as we walk around an empty property in North Ormsby, which is among the top 1% most deprived wards in England. The home smells of fresh paint, the plush grey carpets are newly fitted and large French doors open out onto neat communal gardens. All the properties surrounding the gardens are Thirteen’s, and they are all brought up to this standard before they are re-let.
Other housing providers have not gone so far, but are finding other ways to fill the gap, such as introducing a policy to leave old flooring in when it is in good enough condition, or partnering with local charities for donations of pre-used flooring. But Thirteen is one of the few across the country that has committed to the investment across its portfolio.
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