Islington Gazette - Residents' fight over estate plans pays off: "Residents' fight over estate plans pays off
nlnews@archant.co.uk
21 February 2007
CAMPAIGNERS - (left to right) Kathy Donald, Cheryl Gillett, Bill Newman and Terry Lewis
CAMPAIGNERS - (left to right) Kathy Donald, Cheryl Gillett, Bill Newman and Terry Lewis
AN ASBESTOS-RIDDLED estate that could collapse if there was a gas explosion is finally facing demolition - if Islington Council approves the redevelopment plans.
It is almost four years since it was revealed the Packington Estate, off Essex Road, Islington, was at risk of collapse if there was a gas explosion.
But now residents say they are delighted with redevelopment plans submitted by housing association bosses at Hyde Housing - who will take over control of the estate from council chiefs in the spring.
The proposals will see the sprawling 539-flat estate replaced by a mixture of 840 houses and flats on a street-based scheme.
Cheryl Gillett, chairwoman of the Packington Square Shadow Board, representing residents' views on the redevelopment, said: 'These are our homes that we're losing through no fault of our own. We've been in many a battle to get what we want and we've got everything we want.
'We're looking"
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Big Issue founder says 'lock up the homeless' | the Daily Mail
Big Issue founder says 'lock up the homeless' | the Daily Mail
Big Issue founder says 'lock up the homeless'
By JOHN BIRD - More by this author »
In a tough and provocative article, Big Issue founder John Bird argues that the present homeless policy is utterly useless and the only 'cure' for most is compulsory treatment in mental hospitals...
I know a fair bit about homelessness. It's a condition I've experienced first hand as both a child and an adult. My first period of homelessness came at the age of five when my family were down and out in what were then the slums of Notting Hill, London.
I've slept rough and in shelters and, having pulled myself out of that hole, 15 years ago I publicly bound myself to the problem of homelessness by founding The Big Issue magazine.
It isn't something I've ever had the luxury of taking lightly, or liberally.
It is something on which I have strong opinions. Last year Channel 4 asked if I would be interested in making a programme and they assured me that the take on homelessness would be mine and mine alone.
The resulting film will be shown on Friday, and I'm confidently predicting a lot of people taking exception to what I've got to say.
But you know what? I don't care. I'm past bothering with being polite and tiptoeing round the less-than-comfortable facts of a problem that affects hundreds of thousands of people in this country.
The way that the Government - and the plethora of charities creating what can only be described as the homeless industry - 'treats' this problem is just plain wrong.
The system isn't curing anything. At best it's masking the real nature and extent of the problem.
At worst it's drip-feeding the decline of individuals who are stuck in the homeless trap and kept there by the very system that's supposed to be helping them.
Imagine your doctor telling you that you are seriously ill. He books you into hospital for an operation. You go in, are shown to your bed and are asked what you want for supper.
The next day you sit by your bed, now familiar with the hospital and its regime. You wait patiently.
The next day is followed by another. Nothing happens. The days turn into weeks; and then months.
And one day a nurse says: "Tomorrow you are going home." "But I thought I was seriously ill," you say in surprise. "Oh, you are," she replies, "But our budget doesn't extend to curing you. This is all we can afford." Insane?
Yes. But this is what happens every day in the lives of the homeless. The majority of hostels can deal with whatever crisis has brought another person through their doors.
That crisis dissipates, the homeless person moves towards coping, they are placed in their own unsupported housing and, in a way, they return to society.
On paper this counts as a 'cure'. It is anything but.
Because the illness that caused the crisis in the first place is still there, untouched and untreated. Only now it is fed by the indulgence of the State and by the well-intentioned charity of homeless organisations.
What nobody wants to acknowledge is that 90 per cent of people in and around homelessness have drink and drug problems. And 90 per cent of that figure are people who cannot control it.
It is addictive behaviour and the only way to tackle it and stand any chance of 'curing' the homeless is to treat it as the mental problem it is. Addiction doesn't fall under the remit of the 1983 Mental Health Act. But it should.
The people who are homeless through addiction are feckless, unstable, unreliable, incapable of holding down a job, feeding themselves or cleaning themselves.
You take them into a hostel, patch them up and put them in State housing on benefits and they continue to kill themselves at the State's expense.
They are ill and should be 'sectioned' - lifted from the streets and confined in the care of the mental health system, behind bars if necessary.
It sounds drastic - and I expect a lot of outraged criticism - but it is the only realistic solution.
The hundreds of thousands of pounds wasted every year on maintaining hostels should be channelled into opening institutions like the Promis Centre in Kent which I visited when making the Channel 4 film.
It's a private clinic, like the Priory, that treats addictions of various types with a programme of complete submersion. It was started 20 years ago by two doctors whose son was an addict. They managed to 'cure' him.
I'm not saying you can cure everybody. But this sort of programme has a 60 to 70 per cent success rate. Treated in this way, a huge number of homeless could be 'cured' rather than maintained in the homeless trap.
The whole liberal, supportive system as it stands is just wrong. It's the road to hell paved with good intentions and the flood of well-meaning ignorance that sprang up 40 years ago with the screening of Cathy Come Home.
People saw that and thought, "Oh I've got a church we can open up, we can get the homeless all in there." Instantly, another problem was created. How are you going to get them to move on from there? I certainly know people who never could.
Jim was somebody I knew well. He died last year from alcohol abuse, having been slowly rotted by the system that, nominally at least, kept him out of homelessness for 25 years.
He teetered on the edge of society, there to be a pain to the hard-working people he lived among.
Periodically, he would wreck the flat he lived in, supplied by the council. Periodically, the police would reason with him. And periodically, he would calm down. All the time he was funded by the State.
The taxpayers paid for Jim to drink himself to death because nobody would accept the fact that his addiction was a state of mental illness.
Bill is in a similar situation. He is a walking disaster. Mentally unstable, a nuisance to himself and to others.
He has been housed for five years but still lives the life of a homeless person. He simply no longer sleeps rough. His flat is full of last week's takeaway wrappings. Sometimes he remembers to charge up his electric key. Most times he is in the dark.
He lived in a hostel for a while and had to behave. But he was never 'cured'. And so, when he was rehoused, his existence was always going to be that of a sustained victim.
He never eats properly or sleeps through the night, is jobless and unemployable. But, as far as some homeless agencies are concerned, he's been 'successfully rehoused'.
It shows just how much the system masks the problem - to the tune of an estimated £60,000 a year in Bill's case.
There are countless people who manage to escape homelessness. But you have to be stable before you can be transformed. The really ill can't be helped. Jim had hundreds of thousands spent on him with little result. His life was wasted along with the money.
He needed to be treated as a mental health patient. He, like thousands of others, had his life decimated by addiction. He needed to be institutionalised and treated.
Mollycoddling doesn't work. I'm not interested in giving people the benefit of the doubt. I'm interested in saving lives.
Mental illness doesn't account for 100 per cent of the homeless problem. But it accounts for the vast majority of it. I hope my film will get people thinking about the real nature of the problem and how we can end it rather than continue to pay money to perpetuate it.
John Bird is co-founder with Gordon Roddick of The Big Issue and is its editor-in-chief.
The Insider: Get Tough With The Homeless is on Channel 4 at 7.30pm on Friday.
Big Issue founder says 'lock up the homeless'
By JOHN BIRD - More by this author »
In a tough and provocative article, Big Issue founder John Bird argues that the present homeless policy is utterly useless and the only 'cure' for most is compulsory treatment in mental hospitals...
I know a fair bit about homelessness. It's a condition I've experienced first hand as both a child and an adult. My first period of homelessness came at the age of five when my family were down and out in what were then the slums of Notting Hill, London.
I've slept rough and in shelters and, having pulled myself out of that hole, 15 years ago I publicly bound myself to the problem of homelessness by founding The Big Issue magazine.
It isn't something I've ever had the luxury of taking lightly, or liberally.
It is something on which I have strong opinions. Last year Channel 4 asked if I would be interested in making a programme and they assured me that the take on homelessness would be mine and mine alone.
The resulting film will be shown on Friday, and I'm confidently predicting a lot of people taking exception to what I've got to say.
But you know what? I don't care. I'm past bothering with being polite and tiptoeing round the less-than-comfortable facts of a problem that affects hundreds of thousands of people in this country.
The way that the Government - and the plethora of charities creating what can only be described as the homeless industry - 'treats' this problem is just plain wrong.
The system isn't curing anything. At best it's masking the real nature and extent of the problem.
At worst it's drip-feeding the decline of individuals who are stuck in the homeless trap and kept there by the very system that's supposed to be helping them.
Imagine your doctor telling you that you are seriously ill. He books you into hospital for an operation. You go in, are shown to your bed and are asked what you want for supper.
The next day you sit by your bed, now familiar with the hospital and its regime. You wait patiently.
The next day is followed by another. Nothing happens. The days turn into weeks; and then months.
And one day a nurse says: "Tomorrow you are going home." "But I thought I was seriously ill," you say in surprise. "Oh, you are," she replies, "But our budget doesn't extend to curing you. This is all we can afford." Insane?
Yes. But this is what happens every day in the lives of the homeless. The majority of hostels can deal with whatever crisis has brought another person through their doors.
That crisis dissipates, the homeless person moves towards coping, they are placed in their own unsupported housing and, in a way, they return to society.
On paper this counts as a 'cure'. It is anything but.
Because the illness that caused the crisis in the first place is still there, untouched and untreated. Only now it is fed by the indulgence of the State and by the well-intentioned charity of homeless organisations.
What nobody wants to acknowledge is that 90 per cent of people in and around homelessness have drink and drug problems. And 90 per cent of that figure are people who cannot control it.
It is addictive behaviour and the only way to tackle it and stand any chance of 'curing' the homeless is to treat it as the mental problem it is. Addiction doesn't fall under the remit of the 1983 Mental Health Act. But it should.
The people who are homeless through addiction are feckless, unstable, unreliable, incapable of holding down a job, feeding themselves or cleaning themselves.
You take them into a hostel, patch them up and put them in State housing on benefits and they continue to kill themselves at the State's expense.
They are ill and should be 'sectioned' - lifted from the streets and confined in the care of the mental health system, behind bars if necessary.
It sounds drastic - and I expect a lot of outraged criticism - but it is the only realistic solution.
The hundreds of thousands of pounds wasted every year on maintaining hostels should be channelled into opening institutions like the Promis Centre in Kent which I visited when making the Channel 4 film.
It's a private clinic, like the Priory, that treats addictions of various types with a programme of complete submersion. It was started 20 years ago by two doctors whose son was an addict. They managed to 'cure' him.
I'm not saying you can cure everybody. But this sort of programme has a 60 to 70 per cent success rate. Treated in this way, a huge number of homeless could be 'cured' rather than maintained in the homeless trap.
The whole liberal, supportive system as it stands is just wrong. It's the road to hell paved with good intentions and the flood of well-meaning ignorance that sprang up 40 years ago with the screening of Cathy Come Home.
People saw that and thought, "Oh I've got a church we can open up, we can get the homeless all in there." Instantly, another problem was created. How are you going to get them to move on from there? I certainly know people who never could.
Jim was somebody I knew well. He died last year from alcohol abuse, having been slowly rotted by the system that, nominally at least, kept him out of homelessness for 25 years.
He teetered on the edge of society, there to be a pain to the hard-working people he lived among.
Periodically, he would wreck the flat he lived in, supplied by the council. Periodically, the police would reason with him. And periodically, he would calm down. All the time he was funded by the State.
The taxpayers paid for Jim to drink himself to death because nobody would accept the fact that his addiction was a state of mental illness.
Bill is in a similar situation. He is a walking disaster. Mentally unstable, a nuisance to himself and to others.
He has been housed for five years but still lives the life of a homeless person. He simply no longer sleeps rough. His flat is full of last week's takeaway wrappings. Sometimes he remembers to charge up his electric key. Most times he is in the dark.
He lived in a hostel for a while and had to behave. But he was never 'cured'. And so, when he was rehoused, his existence was always going to be that of a sustained victim.
He never eats properly or sleeps through the night, is jobless and unemployable. But, as far as some homeless agencies are concerned, he's been 'successfully rehoused'.
It shows just how much the system masks the problem - to the tune of an estimated £60,000 a year in Bill's case.
There are countless people who manage to escape homelessness. But you have to be stable before you can be transformed. The really ill can't be helped. Jim had hundreds of thousands spent on him with little result. His life was wasted along with the money.
He needed to be treated as a mental health patient. He, like thousands of others, had his life decimated by addiction. He needed to be institutionalised and treated.
Mollycoddling doesn't work. I'm not interested in giving people the benefit of the doubt. I'm interested in saving lives.
Mental illness doesn't account for 100 per cent of the homeless problem. But it accounts for the vast majority of it. I hope my film will get people thinking about the real nature of the problem and how we can end it rather than continue to pay money to perpetuate it.
John Bird is co-founder with Gordon Roddick of The Big Issue and is its editor-in-chief.
The Insider: Get Tough With The Homeless is on Channel 4 at 7.30pm on Friday.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Glossaries on research, evaluation, planning, and communications
Glossaries on research, evaluation, planning, and communications
A-B testing | Above the fold | Accessibility | Accountability | Activity (evaluation) | Actor | Actor-network | Actor-observer effect | Actuality | Agenda-setting | Advertorial | Affective | Aggregate | Alien interviewing | Analytical induction | Anchoring | Anova = Analysis of variance | AHP = Analytic Hierarchy Process | Archetypal analysis | Archetype research | Ascription | Attitude | Attributes | Attribution | Attrition | Awareness | Axis (of graph)
Balanced Scorecard | Bandwagon effect | Baseline | Bayesian | "Before and after" design | Benchmarking | Bias | Biographics | Black box | Blind testing | Bootstrapping | Box-and-whisker plots | Brand mapping | Breadcrumb trail | Breakout | Briefing | Bubble chart | Burst (advertising)
Capacity building | Casewise | Category (coding) | Catharsis | Cell (statistical table)| Central tendency | Channels (in marketing) | Chi-squared test | CIPP = context, input, process, product | Classification variables | Cluster (sampling) | CLV = customer lifetime value | CMO = Contexts, mechanisms, outcomes | Co-discovery technique (usability) | Co-evaluation | Cognitive | Cohort | Coincidental | Collective unconscious | Colligation | Competitive advantage | Competitive Intelligence | Conative | Concept mapping | Concept testing | Concordance | Conditioning (among panel members) | Confidence interval | Consensus | Consensus mapping | Confounding | Construct | Constructionism or constructivism| Contingency table | Continuous variable | Control group | Controlled circulation | Co-orientation | Copycat effect | Copytesting | Correspondence analysis | Correspondence bias | Cost-benefit analysis | Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) | Covariate | CPI = Consumer Price Index | Critical incident technique | CRM = Customer Relationship Management | Crystallization | Cueing | Customer Idealized Design | Customer visits
Daypart | Decision tree | Deindividuation | Deliverables | Dependability | Desensitize | Dichotomy | Differencing | Digraph | Disaggregation | Discourse analysis | Dispersion | Dissemination | Domino chart | Double blind | Drip (advertising) | Dummy variable | Duplicated reach
E-commerce | Effectivity | Embeddedness | Emergence | Emergent strategy | Emic | Emoticon | Empathic design | Empowerment evaluation | End-piling | Epidata | Epi Info | Establishment survey | Etic | Evidence-based practice | Expeditionary marketing | Expected value | Experiment | Exposure | Evaluability
Face validity | Factor | False consensus | Field dependence | Fishbone diagram | Fishbowl (training) | Flesch index | Flight (advertising) | Fog index | Fold (above the) | Follow-me-home | Fuzzy logic
Gatekeeping | Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft | Generalizability | Gini coefficient | GIS = Geographic Information System | Goal | Goal-free evaluation | Governance | Group polarization effect = risky shift | Groupthink | Guttman scale
Heaping | Hegemony | Heuristic | Hierarchy of effects | Hierarchy of needs | Histogram | Honorarium | House of Quality
Ignorable bias | Impact (in evaluation) | Imprint analysis | Incentive | Index number | Inertia | Information acceleration | Informed consent | Initiative (~program) | Innovation | Input (evaluation) | In-tab | Interaction | Interactivity | Interpolation | Interval scale | Intervening variable | Ipsative | IVR = Interactive Voice Response
Jackknife (in statistics) | Juster scale
Kano diagram | KASA = Knowledge, Attitude, Skills, Aspirations | KWIC = Keyword in Context
Laddering | Large group intervention | Latency of response | Lateral thinking | Leading indicator | Lead users | Legibility | Linkrot | Listwise | Logframe = Logical Framework = LFA| Logic model | Longitudinal | Loyalty | LTV = lifetime value
Marginal | Marketing | Marketing mix | Marketspace | Matching | Matrix question | Means-end chain | Median group | Mediating variable | Member checking | Meta-analysis | Metaplan | Meta tag | Methodology vs. method | Micro-expressions | Mindshare | Mission | Moving average | Multiple imputation | Multiple perspectives
Naturalistic inquiry | Needs assessment | NPD = New Product Development | News value | Nominal scale | Non-reactive | Norms | Noting | Null hypothesis
Objectives | Occam's Razor | OCR = Optical character recognition | Ogive chart | One on one | One-tailed | Operationalizing | Opinion leader | Ordinal scale | Orientation (toward market, customer, or product) | OTS = Opportunities to See | Optimization (search engine) | Outcome vs output (in evaluation) | Outlier | Oversampling
Pairwise | Panel conditioning | Parameter | Pareto principle | Participant observation | Participation rate | Participatory methods | Pass-on (readership) | Path analysis | Percentile | Persona | PHP (Internet) | Pictogram | Pie chart | Pilot test | Pluralism | Pluralistic ignorance | Polysemy | Positioning | Postcode | Post-test | Power (statistical) | PPS sampling | Praxis | Precision (statistical) | Pre-test | Primacy | Priming | Process tracing | Profile | Program (evaluation) | Program logic, program theory | Propaganda | Psychometric | Publics | Public will | Pulsing | Pygmalion effect | Pyramid of population
QFD = Quality Function Deployment | Q-sort | QUALYs | Quartile | Query string | Quintile
Range | Ranking | Ratecard | Ratio | Ratio scale | Reachability | Readability | Real terms | Recency | Reflexivity | Repertoire | Repertory grid | Replication | Residual | Results chain | Retention rate | Risky shift | Roadmapping | Rotation (questionnaires) | RSS (Internet)
Salience | Sample frame | SAS (statistical software) | Scattergram | Schema | Screen-in | Selective perception | Self-efficacy | Semantic differential | Sensemaking | Sentence completion | Sequential analysis | SES = socio-economic status | Sex ratio | Shaping | Share of mind | Share of voice | Skew | Skipping | Smoothing | Snowball sample | Social audit | Social desirability | Social indicator > see Indicator | Social marketing | Sociodrama | Sociometric methods | Spider (Web searching) | Spider chart | Spiral of silence | Split run | Spot (=ad) | SRS = Simple Random Sample | Stakeholder | Stem and leaf diagram | Stimulus | Stopword | Storyboard | Story completion | Stub (cross-tab) | Subliminal | Superordinacy | Syntagm | Systematic sampling
Tacit knowledge | Technology foresight | Telemarketing | Telescoping | Terms of reference | Test market | Theory of practice | Thick description | Think-aloud method | Third person technique | Threshold | Thurstone scale | Time series analysis | Top line (survey results) | Top of mind | TQM = Total Quality Management | Trait | Transect | Transferability | Triads method | Triple Bottom Line | T-test | Two-tailed
UUnderdog effect | Unduplicated reach | Use case | Utility | UTOS
VALS | Values clarification | Value of Time (VoT) | Variance (statistics) | Venn diagram | Verbatim | Verstehen | Viewing room | Vividness effect | Voting intention | Vox pop< | Vu-lu
Walkthrough | Wall of wonder | Wastage | Wearout | Weblog = blog | Wiki (internet) | Word association | World cafe
X axis
Y axis | Yield management
Z-score
A-B testing | Above the fold | Accessibility | Accountability | Activity (evaluation) | Actor | Actor-network | Actor-observer effect | Actuality | Agenda-setting | Advertorial | Affective | Aggregate | Alien interviewing | Analytical induction | Anchoring | Anova = Analysis of variance | AHP = Analytic Hierarchy Process | Archetypal analysis | Archetype research | Ascription | Attitude | Attributes | Attribution | Attrition | Awareness | Axis (of graph)
Balanced Scorecard | Bandwagon effect | Baseline | Bayesian | "Before and after" design | Benchmarking | Bias | Biographics | Black box | Blind testing | Bootstrapping | Box-and-whisker plots | Brand mapping | Breadcrumb trail | Breakout | Briefing | Bubble chart | Burst (advertising)
Capacity building | Casewise | Category (coding) | Catharsis | Cell (statistical table)| Central tendency | Channels (in marketing) | Chi-squared test | CIPP = context, input, process, product | Classification variables | Cluster (sampling) | CLV = customer lifetime value | CMO = Contexts, mechanisms, outcomes | Co-discovery technique (usability) | Co-evaluation | Cognitive | Cohort | Coincidental | Collective unconscious | Colligation | Competitive advantage | Competitive Intelligence | Conative | Concept mapping | Concept testing | Concordance | Conditioning (among panel members) | Confidence interval | Consensus | Consensus mapping | Confounding | Construct | Constructionism or constructivism| Contingency table | Continuous variable | Control group | Controlled circulation | Co-orientation | Copycat effect | Copytesting | Correspondence analysis | Correspondence bias | Cost-benefit analysis | Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) | Covariate | CPI = Consumer Price Index | Critical incident technique | CRM = Customer Relationship Management | Crystallization | Cueing | Customer Idealized Design | Customer visits
Daypart | Decision tree | Deindividuation | Deliverables | Dependability | Desensitize | Dichotomy | Differencing | Digraph | Disaggregation | Discourse analysis | Dispersion | Dissemination | Domino chart | Double blind | Drip (advertising) | Dummy variable | Duplicated reach
E-commerce | Effectivity | Embeddedness | Emergence | Emergent strategy | Emic | Emoticon | Empathic design | Empowerment evaluation | End-piling | Epidata | Epi Info | Establishment survey | Etic | Evidence-based practice | Expeditionary marketing | Expected value | Experiment | Exposure | Evaluability
Face validity | Factor | False consensus | Field dependence | Fishbone diagram | Fishbowl (training) | Flesch index | Flight (advertising) | Fog index | Fold (above the) | Follow-me-home | Fuzzy logic
Gatekeeping | Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft | Generalizability | Gini coefficient | GIS = Geographic Information System | Goal | Goal-free evaluation | Governance | Group polarization effect = risky shift | Groupthink | Guttman scale
Heaping | Hegemony | Heuristic | Hierarchy of effects | Hierarchy of needs | Histogram | Honorarium | House of Quality
Ignorable bias | Impact (in evaluation) | Imprint analysis | Incentive | Index number | Inertia | Information acceleration | Informed consent | Initiative (~program) | Innovation | Input (evaluation) | In-tab | Interaction | Interactivity | Interpolation | Interval scale | Intervening variable | Ipsative | IVR = Interactive Voice Response
Jackknife (in statistics) | Juster scale
Kano diagram | KASA = Knowledge, Attitude, Skills, Aspirations | KWIC = Keyword in Context
Laddering | Large group intervention | Latency of response | Lateral thinking | Leading indicator | Lead users | Legibility | Linkrot | Listwise | Logframe = Logical Framework = LFA| Logic model | Longitudinal | Loyalty | LTV = lifetime value
Marginal | Marketing | Marketing mix | Marketspace | Matching | Matrix question | Means-end chain | Median group | Mediating variable | Member checking | Meta-analysis | Metaplan | Meta tag | Methodology vs. method | Micro-expressions | Mindshare | Mission | Moving average | Multiple imputation | Multiple perspectives
Naturalistic inquiry | Needs assessment | NPD = New Product Development | News value | Nominal scale | Non-reactive | Norms | Noting | Null hypothesis
Objectives | Occam's Razor | OCR = Optical character recognition | Ogive chart | One on one | One-tailed | Operationalizing | Opinion leader | Ordinal scale | Orientation (toward market, customer, or product) | OTS = Opportunities to See | Optimization (search engine) | Outcome vs output (in evaluation) | Outlier | Oversampling
Pairwise | Panel conditioning | Parameter | Pareto principle | Participant observation | Participation rate | Participatory methods | Pass-on (readership) | Path analysis | Percentile | Persona | PHP (Internet) | Pictogram | Pie chart | Pilot test | Pluralism | Pluralistic ignorance | Polysemy | Positioning | Postcode | Post-test | Power (statistical) | PPS sampling | Praxis | Precision (statistical) | Pre-test | Primacy | Priming | Process tracing | Profile | Program (evaluation) | Program logic, program theory | Propaganda | Psychometric | Publics | Public will | Pulsing | Pygmalion effect | Pyramid of population
QFD = Quality Function Deployment | Q-sort | QUALYs | Quartile | Query string | Quintile
Range | Ranking | Ratecard | Ratio | Ratio scale | Reachability | Readability | Real terms | Recency | Reflexivity | Repertoire | Repertory grid | Replication | Residual | Results chain | Retention rate | Risky shift | Roadmapping | Rotation (questionnaires) | RSS (Internet)
Salience | Sample frame | SAS (statistical software) | Scattergram | Schema | Screen-in | Selective perception | Self-efficacy | Semantic differential | Sensemaking | Sentence completion | Sequential analysis | SES = socio-economic status | Sex ratio | Shaping | Share of mind | Share of voice | Skew | Skipping | Smoothing | Snowball sample | Social audit | Social desirability | Social indicator > see Indicator | Social marketing | Sociodrama | Sociometric methods | Spider (Web searching) | Spider chart | Spiral of silence | Split run | Spot (=ad) | SRS = Simple Random Sample | Stakeholder | Stem and leaf diagram | Stimulus | Stopword | Storyboard | Story completion | Stub (cross-tab) | Subliminal | Superordinacy | Syntagm | Systematic sampling
Tacit knowledge | Technology foresight | Telemarketing | Telescoping | Terms of reference | Test market | Theory of practice | Thick description | Think-aloud method | Third person technique | Threshold | Thurstone scale | Time series analysis | Top line (survey results) | Top of mind | TQM = Total Quality Management | Trait | Transect | Transferability | Triads method | Triple Bottom Line | T-test | Two-tailed
UUnderdog effect | Unduplicated reach | Use case | Utility | UTOS
VALS | Values clarification | Value of Time (VoT) | Variance (statistics) | Venn diagram | Verbatim | Verstehen | Viewing room | Vividness effect | Voting intention | Vox pop< | Vu-lu
Walkthrough | Wall of wonder | Wastage | Wearout | Weblog = blog | Wiki (internet) | Word association | World cafe
X axis
Y axis | Yield management
Z-score
Monday, February 26, 2007
Methadone emerges as new killer - Los Angeles Times
Methadone emerges as new killer - Los Angeles Times
Methadone emerges as new killer
Patients and addicts are mixing the opiate with other drugs, as did Anna Nicole Smith's son.
By Charles Proctor, Times Staff Writer
February 26, 2007
Drug's victims?
click to enlarge
Deadly high
click to enlarge
Related Stories
- Painkiller is effective but can be deadly
Methadone, a potent opiate once used almost exclusively to treat heroin addicts, is increasingly being prescribed by doctors as a pain medication and abused by drug users searching for a cheap, easy way to get high, physicians and federal drug officials say.
The drug, which comes in pill or liquid form, recently has come under scrutiny in the death of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. A doctor in Studio City prescribed methadone to Smith for pain treatment before she was found dead Feb. 8 in her Hollywood, Fla., hotel suite.
A coroner has yet to determine her cause of death, and the doctor said his treatment was "medically sound and appropriate."
Months earlier, Smith's 20-year-old son died in the Bahamas after taking a lethal mixture of methadone and two antidepressants, Zoloft and Lexapro.
Well before these deaths, however, drug counselors and clinicians were concerned about increased abuse of the drug on the streets, in group homes and even in middle schools.
It is an ironic turn in the history of methadone, which for years has been used to treat heroin addiction.
A synthetic opiate, methadone is similar to heroin in chemistry, curbing a user's craving for the illegal opiate by blocking the sensors that heroin stimulates without producing a heroin high.
In recent years, methadone has proved lethal to a growing number of patients or addicts who use it in conjunction with prescription drugs including Valium, Xanax or, in the case of addicts, illegal narcotics such as cocaine.
Sometimes users swallow methadone before or after they "puff," when they seek to get high by slowly inhaling the chemicals from an aerosol can.
"Every year, we see hundreds of these deaths, and the numbers continue to increase," said Bruce Goldberger, director of toxicology at the University of Florida, who has been at the forefront of tracking methadone-related deaths. "It is absolutely the fastest-growing drug problem."
A federal government study found that nationwide methadone-related deaths climbed to more than 3,800 in 2004 from about 780 in 1999. Among all narcotic-related deaths in 2004, only cocaine killed more people in the United States than methadone.
Physicians and others point out that methadone's potential for abuse isn't as high as that of opiates like heroin because it does not induce a strong euphoria on its own.
But repeated use can still cause a physical dependence, doctors say, and when users stop taking it, withdrawal-like symptoms can occur.
Given its low cost compared with heroin and other drugs, its recent proliferation and its potentially lethal potency when mixed with other drugs, officials worry that methadone is largely evading the scrutiny applied to other abused prescription medications, such as OxyContin and Vicodin.
The drug can be lethal even when mixed with antidepressants, or grapefruit juice, experts and federal drug authorities say.
Methadone can linger in body tissue for an unusually long time — 24 to 59 hours in some cases. Sometimes users assume it has worn off, then take other drugs or more methadone, leading to respiratory depression, coma and eventual death.
Methadone is available at clinics that prescribe it to treat heroin addiction, from doctors who can prescribe it for pain or to treat addictions and, increasingly, as a street drug.
The clinics face stringent federal and state regulations as to how much methadone they can administer to patients, but physicians don't go beyond a general rule that says they can't prescribe more than a 30-day supply, said Mark Parrino, president of the American Assn. for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence.
In Southern California, parts of downtown, East and South Los Angeles have emerged as places to buy and sell methadone, said Kalante Holmes, a counselor at a methadone clinic in West Los Angeles. "It's one of those easy-to-get things right now," he said.
It's the "easy-to-get" nature of the drug that has led to the recent spike in methadone deaths, experts and government officials say.
As the study of pain has grown over the last five to 10 years, more physicians are prescribing methadone to patients to treat pain, especially chronic and nerve pain.
The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning in November to all physicians saying that misuse of the drug could lead to breathing problems and possible death.
Patients might prefer methadone to other painkillers because not only is it powerful, but it's also less expensive.
For example, a pharmacy can buy a month's supply of methadone for one patient for as little as $8, whereas it would have to pay more than $170 for a similar amount of OxyContin, according to wholesale pharmaceutical price books.
As the availability of the drug increases, so does abuse and misuse of it, experts and drug officials say. Problems usually don't arise from physicians who specialize in pain treatment and know how to safely prescribe and monitor methadone use, but from general and family practice physicians who may prescribe the drug more often than they should.
"My hunch is that some of what we're seeing with the current problems are the administration of [methadone] by physicians who don't understand how powerful it is to a patient population who might not necessarily need it," said Richard Rawson, an associate director of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA.
Data compiled by the federal government show a steady increase in the number of people nationwide admitted to clinics and programs for methadone treatment, from about 1,000 in 1995 to more than 3,700 in 2005.
"This is an emerging problem," said Bertha Madras of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
It's been a persistent problem for people like Sean, 20, a resident of West Los Angeles and a former heroin addict.
Sean, who asked that only his first name be used because of the stigma associated with drug abuse, carved a steady path to heroin use at a young age. He tried marijuana when he was 11, cocaine at 14 and heroin at 17.
When he was 19, living in a downtown L.A. apartment and experiencing heroin withdrawals, he tried methadone.
Mostly, he said, he used it to satiate his desire for heroin. At least once he took it with Klonopin, a muscle relaxant.
"I don't want to say the feeling was similar to alcohol," said Sean, who is in drug treatment and was interviewed in the presence of his counselor. "But that's sort of what it was like. Your body feels relaxed."
Though he said he had not used methadone lately because he'd heard it had been responsible for a rash of deaths, Sean said he could easily get it on the street.
Recently, on a bus in Santa Monica, he was approached by a methadone pusher who offered him a deal: one pill for $45 or two for $60, he said.
Sean said he declined. But he knows it won't be so easy for others.
"The fact of the matter is, if you're a drug addict and you don't want treatment, you're going to go try to get high off something," he said. "You're broke, you can't afford heroin, so you go get methadone."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
charles.proctor@latimes.com
Methadone emerges as new killer
Patients and addicts are mixing the opiate with other drugs, as did Anna Nicole Smith's son.
By Charles Proctor, Times Staff Writer
February 26, 2007
Drug's victims?
click to enlarge
Deadly high
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Related Stories
- Painkiller is effective but can be deadly
Methadone, a potent opiate once used almost exclusively to treat heroin addicts, is increasingly being prescribed by doctors as a pain medication and abused by drug users searching for a cheap, easy way to get high, physicians and federal drug officials say.
The drug, which comes in pill or liquid form, recently has come under scrutiny in the death of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. A doctor in Studio City prescribed methadone to Smith for pain treatment before she was found dead Feb. 8 in her Hollywood, Fla., hotel suite.
A coroner has yet to determine her cause of death, and the doctor said his treatment was "medically sound and appropriate."
Months earlier, Smith's 20-year-old son died in the Bahamas after taking a lethal mixture of methadone and two antidepressants, Zoloft and Lexapro.
Well before these deaths, however, drug counselors and clinicians were concerned about increased abuse of the drug on the streets, in group homes and even in middle schools.
It is an ironic turn in the history of methadone, which for years has been used to treat heroin addiction.
A synthetic opiate, methadone is similar to heroin in chemistry, curbing a user's craving for the illegal opiate by blocking the sensors that heroin stimulates without producing a heroin high.
In recent years, methadone has proved lethal to a growing number of patients or addicts who use it in conjunction with prescription drugs including Valium, Xanax or, in the case of addicts, illegal narcotics such as cocaine.
Sometimes users swallow methadone before or after they "puff," when they seek to get high by slowly inhaling the chemicals from an aerosol can.
"Every year, we see hundreds of these deaths, and the numbers continue to increase," said Bruce Goldberger, director of toxicology at the University of Florida, who has been at the forefront of tracking methadone-related deaths. "It is absolutely the fastest-growing drug problem."
A federal government study found that nationwide methadone-related deaths climbed to more than 3,800 in 2004 from about 780 in 1999. Among all narcotic-related deaths in 2004, only cocaine killed more people in the United States than methadone.
Physicians and others point out that methadone's potential for abuse isn't as high as that of opiates like heroin because it does not induce a strong euphoria on its own.
But repeated use can still cause a physical dependence, doctors say, and when users stop taking it, withdrawal-like symptoms can occur.
Given its low cost compared with heroin and other drugs, its recent proliferation and its potentially lethal potency when mixed with other drugs, officials worry that methadone is largely evading the scrutiny applied to other abused prescription medications, such as OxyContin and Vicodin.
The drug can be lethal even when mixed with antidepressants, or grapefruit juice, experts and federal drug authorities say.
Methadone can linger in body tissue for an unusually long time — 24 to 59 hours in some cases. Sometimes users assume it has worn off, then take other drugs or more methadone, leading to respiratory depression, coma and eventual death.
Methadone is available at clinics that prescribe it to treat heroin addiction, from doctors who can prescribe it for pain or to treat addictions and, increasingly, as a street drug.
The clinics face stringent federal and state regulations as to how much methadone they can administer to patients, but physicians don't go beyond a general rule that says they can't prescribe more than a 30-day supply, said Mark Parrino, president of the American Assn. for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence.
In Southern California, parts of downtown, East and South Los Angeles have emerged as places to buy and sell methadone, said Kalante Holmes, a counselor at a methadone clinic in West Los Angeles. "It's one of those easy-to-get things right now," he said.
It's the "easy-to-get" nature of the drug that has led to the recent spike in methadone deaths, experts and government officials say.
As the study of pain has grown over the last five to 10 years, more physicians are prescribing methadone to patients to treat pain, especially chronic and nerve pain.
The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning in November to all physicians saying that misuse of the drug could lead to breathing problems and possible death.
Patients might prefer methadone to other painkillers because not only is it powerful, but it's also less expensive.
For example, a pharmacy can buy a month's supply of methadone for one patient for as little as $8, whereas it would have to pay more than $170 for a similar amount of OxyContin, according to wholesale pharmaceutical price books.
As the availability of the drug increases, so does abuse and misuse of it, experts and drug officials say. Problems usually don't arise from physicians who specialize in pain treatment and know how to safely prescribe and monitor methadone use, but from general and family practice physicians who may prescribe the drug more often than they should.
"My hunch is that some of what we're seeing with the current problems are the administration of [methadone] by physicians who don't understand how powerful it is to a patient population who might not necessarily need it," said Richard Rawson, an associate director of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA.
Data compiled by the federal government show a steady increase in the number of people nationwide admitted to clinics and programs for methadone treatment, from about 1,000 in 1995 to more than 3,700 in 2005.
"This is an emerging problem," said Bertha Madras of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
It's been a persistent problem for people like Sean, 20, a resident of West Los Angeles and a former heroin addict.
Sean, who asked that only his first name be used because of the stigma associated with drug abuse, carved a steady path to heroin use at a young age. He tried marijuana when he was 11, cocaine at 14 and heroin at 17.
When he was 19, living in a downtown L.A. apartment and experiencing heroin withdrawals, he tried methadone.
Mostly, he said, he used it to satiate his desire for heroin. At least once he took it with Klonopin, a muscle relaxant.
"I don't want to say the feeling was similar to alcohol," said Sean, who is in drug treatment and was interviewed in the presence of his counselor. "But that's sort of what it was like. Your body feels relaxed."
Though he said he had not used methadone lately because he'd heard it had been responsible for a rash of deaths, Sean said he could easily get it on the street.
Recently, on a bus in Santa Monica, he was approached by a methadone pusher who offered him a deal: one pill for $45 or two for $60, he said.
Sean said he declined. But he knows it won't be so easy for others.
"The fact of the matter is, if you're a drug addict and you don't want treatment, you're going to go try to get high off something," he said. "You're broke, you can't afford heroin, so you go get methadone."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
charles.proctor@latimes.com
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Report backs end to secure council tenancies | Communities | SocietyGuardian.co.uk
Report backs end to secure council tenancies | Communities | SocietyGuardian.co.uk: "Report backs end to secure council tenancies
Matt Weaver
Tuesday February 20, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Council tenants could be forced to prove they still need their homes in regular means-tested reviews, it emerged today.
The proposal, part of a radical shake-up of housing outlined in a government-commissioned report, would end the right to a home for life by giving people fixed-term tenancies of between one and five years.
Under the plan - which the document admits could 'sound outlandish', tenants would be forced to pay more for their home be asked to buy a stake in the value of the property if their circumstances improved.
If children left home, their parents would be forced to move to smaller properties.
The report, written for the government by Professor John Hills, of the London School of Economics, says such system would help free up homes to those who most need them.
'The ability to move 'empty nest' couples or single people might be a way of reducing overcrowding,' it says.
It concedes that the possible loss of a secure tenancy would be 'controversial', but adds that such a move could be needed in order to 'make better use of very scarce and pressured resources'.
The communities secretary, Ruth Kelly, who c"
Matt Weaver
Tuesday February 20, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Council tenants could be forced to prove they still need their homes in regular means-tested reviews, it emerged today.
The proposal, part of a radical shake-up of housing outlined in a government-commissioned report, would end the right to a home for life by giving people fixed-term tenancies of between one and five years.
Under the plan - which the document admits could 'sound outlandish', tenants would be forced to pay more for their home be asked to buy a stake in the value of the property if their circumstances improved.
If children left home, their parents would be forced to move to smaller properties.
The report, written for the government by Professor John Hills, of the London School of Economics, says such system would help free up homes to those who most need them.
'The ability to move 'empty nest' couples or single people might be a way of reducing overcrowding,' it says.
It concedes that the possible loss of a secure tenancy would be 'controversial', but adds that such a move could be needed in order to 'make better use of very scarce and pressured resources'.
The communities secretary, Ruth Kelly, who c"
An equitable answer? | Communities | SocietyGuardian.co.uk
An equitable answer? | Communities | SocietyGuardian.co.uk: "
Interview
An equitable answer?
Interview
An equitable answer?
Social policy professor John Hills has been wrestling with how we can better use existing social housing to help the most vulnerable make the most of their lives. Alison Benjamin takes him to task on his findings
Wednesday February 21, 2007
The Guardian
Professor John Hills
Professor John Hills
Dressed in a corduroy suit, John Hills, director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics and professor of social policy, looks every inch the academic. Talking ahead of yesterday's launch of his eagerly awaited review on the role social housing can play in 21st-century housing policy, he says he hopes it will "spark off a debate. People may realise the problems are different or the challenges are bigger than they thought, and the policy solutions aren't all in one direction."
Hills' independent review was commissioned by the communities secretary, Ruth Kelly, who wants to know what reforms will ensure that social housing helps wider government objectives such as helping people get on in life, creating mixed communities and reducing inequality.
One solution - which she proposed last week in a speech to the Fabian Society and which would allow council and housing association tenants to buy as little as a 10% equity stake in their homes - is in his report, Ends and Means: The Future Roles of Social Housing in England.
Housing campaigners may well ask why the review promotes social housing as a wealth-creating asset, rather than calling for thousands more council or housing association homes to be built when there are 1.5 million people languishing on waiting lists in England - a rise of 500,000 since this government came to power.
Hills makes it clear that his remit was not about increasing the number of homes but about how the existing stock can be better used. His research, he says, has identified three big challenges facing the sector, and he is adamant that building new homes is not one of them.
"Regardless of if we're building 20,000 or 40,000 or 60,000 new units a year, what is happening to the 3.8m units already here and how well we run them is going to be for a long time to come far more important and deserves a huge amount of attention," he says. "Only to concentrate on new building would be a mistake, and it is one we've made in the past."
Satisfaction levels
The first challenge, he insists, is the quality of service offered by social housing landlords. He points to how dissatisfaction rates have crept up in the past decade: one in seven tenants are unhappy with their local area and accommodation; one in five with their landlord; one in four with the standards of repair and maintenance; and under-45s are the most unhappy with their homes. While he admits that overcrowding is more of a problem for council or housing association tenants than for homeowners, or people renting privately, his suggestion to improve satisfaction levels is to give tenants more of a say in how their housing is run.
The second challenge Hills identifies is mixed communities. "Because two-thirds of social housing is in areas originally built as isolated council estates, and over the last 25 years access into social housing has been increasingly dominated by those in greatest need, you end up with geographical polarisation," he explains. But isn't that what people call ghettos? "I wouldn't call them ghettos," Hills replies.
He suggests social landlords could reverse this polarisation by selling, or renting out commercially, property on their existing estates and using the proceeds to buy property for their tenants to rent in other areas where there is less social housing. But improving the income mix isn't necessarily achieved by swapping people: "It's by helping to ensure people already living there have got a livelihood."
This neatly brings Hills, without so much as a pause, to his third big challenge for social housing: how to get more tenants into work. More than half those of working age living in social housing are without paid work, twice the national rate.
"There you have a real conundrum," says Hills, "because one of the fundamental justifications of having social housing where people pay below market rent is that it should help them in the labour market.If you're paying £60 or £70 a week your take-off point to get clear of the benefit trap is much earlier than if you're paying £180 a week rent in the private sector.
"Even allowing for the fact that social housing tenants are disadvantaged in the job market because they are lone parents, or lack qualifications, or suffer from high levels of ill health and disability, there are still fewer in work than you would expect."
"Think through the consequences," he urges. "If you are living on an estate and have two people of working age on either side of you, the chances of them both working is just one in 10. That can have devastating effects on links into job markets. It's one reason why social housing is so concentrated in low-income areas now. Half of social housing is in the most deprived fifth of areas."
Hills wants housing support offered at job centres and help with finding work at the housing office. I point out that the £300-a-week rent charged for temporary accommodation in London is the main barrier to homeless families working, and makes it hard for them to then get a job when they do move into social housing years later, and he concedes that "some aspects of housing policy are unhelpful".
He also acknowledges that pressures in social housing have got "much, much tougher" than when he was last asked to examine the sector seven years ago as part of a forum set up by the Institute of Public Policy Reform think tank.
He attributes the pressure to a lack of turnover in the stock, which he says is the result of rising house prices stopping tenants moving out and a change in the tenants' age profile, so fewer tenancies are coming up as older tenants die. This translates into 80,000 fewer relets a year. "Despite 50,000 fewer social housing units being built and the Right to Buy reducing the pool of council homes, we were still able to take 250,000 new households throughout the 70, 80 and 90s," says Hills. "But when you at look at 2000, it has come down to 170,000. This leads to almost the whole system being gummed up. What we have is a pressure cooker effect."
Hills is concerned that this leads to what he calls a "strikingly" low level of job-related mobility. While nationally one-in-eight moves is associated with work, only a few thousand social tenants each year can move to be nearer a new job.
So why not just build millions of new social homes? Even Kelly acknowledged last week that the government needs to build more than the current supply of 30,000 homes per year, and she said "ambitious" plans for increasing social housing would be set out as part of the 2007 comprehensive spending review.
"The amount of social housing we have as a country depends on how much we are prepared to spend," Hills responds. "Yes, the more social housing we have the less the pressure on the pressure cooker, but with the best will in the world we're not going to build hundreds of thousands of new units every year to replace the 1.9m lost under Right to Buy."
Why not? As an economist, Hills answers by doing the maths. It costs £60k of public subsidy to build a social housing unit, so that's £60m for every 10,000 units. Yet he dismisses any notion that the social cost of housing thousands of families in temporary or overcrowded accommodation could be more expensive. "You can make a good case for building to make up the shortfall of units we lost through relets, but you're doing that to standstill, so we're still left with the questions - how do we make the best use of the stock we've got and how do you best support the livelihoods of the tenants there?"
Hills is keen for a significant expansion in local cost homes that people can part-rent, part-buy. They cost the public purse half that of building a new unit of social housing, he points out, yet they account for just 1% of the owner-occupied stock.
They are one item on a menu of options he suggests could be offered to would-be social housing tenants. Others include a 10% equity stake for existing tenants that is being piloted in west London by Notting Hill Housing. Does this mean that Hills believes that, as tenants' financial circumstances improve, they should no longer be entitled to cheap rents? "If you are serious about trying to increase the livelihoods of tenants, you have to be careful not to set up disincentives," he warns.
The review has opened Hills' eyes to the growing wealth inequality between home owners and tenants. He predicts that cascading housing wealth from generation to generation will further increase divisions. Equity schemes therefore makes sense in the context of a government with ambitious targets for poverty and inequality. "If you are worried about wealth inequality," he says, "then doing something about the asset levels of social tenants is a pretty well-targeted way of doing it."
· Read Ends and Means
Curriculum Vitae
Age 52.
Status Married.
Lives Highbury, north London.
Education Nottingham high school; Abingdon school, Oxfordshire; Cambridge University, BA economics; Birmingham University, MSocSc economics.
Career 1997-present professor, social policy, London School of Economics, and director, ESRC Research Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE; 1994-97: reader in economics and social policy, LSE; 1986-97: senior research fellow/co-director, welfare state programme, LSE; 1984-86: senior adviser to commission of inquiry into taxation, Zimbabwe; 1982-84: senior research officer, Institute for Fiscal Studies; 1980-82: economist, Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee; 1979-80: senior economic assistant, Department of the Environment; 1976-78: fellow of the Overseas Development Institute; 1976-78: research assistant, department of applied economics, Cambridge University; 1973-76: research assistant, European Atomic Energy Commission Institute for Transuranium Elements.
Interests Fell walking."
Interview
An equitable answer?
Interview
An equitable answer?
Social policy professor John Hills has been wrestling with how we can better use existing social housing to help the most vulnerable make the most of their lives. Alison Benjamin takes him to task on his findings
Wednesday February 21, 2007
The Guardian
Professor John Hills
Professor John Hills
Dressed in a corduroy suit, John Hills, director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics and professor of social policy, looks every inch the academic. Talking ahead of yesterday's launch of his eagerly awaited review on the role social housing can play in 21st-century housing policy, he says he hopes it will "spark off a debate. People may realise the problems are different or the challenges are bigger than they thought, and the policy solutions aren't all in one direction."
Hills' independent review was commissioned by the communities secretary, Ruth Kelly, who wants to know what reforms will ensure that social housing helps wider government objectives such as helping people get on in life, creating mixed communities and reducing inequality.
One solution - which she proposed last week in a speech to the Fabian Society and which would allow council and housing association tenants to buy as little as a 10% equity stake in their homes - is in his report, Ends and Means: The Future Roles of Social Housing in England.
Housing campaigners may well ask why the review promotes social housing as a wealth-creating asset, rather than calling for thousands more council or housing association homes to be built when there are 1.5 million people languishing on waiting lists in England - a rise of 500,000 since this government came to power.
Hills makes it clear that his remit was not about increasing the number of homes but about how the existing stock can be better used. His research, he says, has identified three big challenges facing the sector, and he is adamant that building new homes is not one of them.
"Regardless of if we're building 20,000 or 40,000 or 60,000 new units a year, what is happening to the 3.8m units already here and how well we run them is going to be for a long time to come far more important and deserves a huge amount of attention," he says. "Only to concentrate on new building would be a mistake, and it is one we've made in the past."
Satisfaction levels
The first challenge, he insists, is the quality of service offered by social housing landlords. He points to how dissatisfaction rates have crept up in the past decade: one in seven tenants are unhappy with their local area and accommodation; one in five with their landlord; one in four with the standards of repair and maintenance; and under-45s are the most unhappy with their homes. While he admits that overcrowding is more of a problem for council or housing association tenants than for homeowners, or people renting privately, his suggestion to improve satisfaction levels is to give tenants more of a say in how their housing is run.
The second challenge Hills identifies is mixed communities. "Because two-thirds of social housing is in areas originally built as isolated council estates, and over the last 25 years access into social housing has been increasingly dominated by those in greatest need, you end up with geographical polarisation," he explains. But isn't that what people call ghettos? "I wouldn't call them ghettos," Hills replies.
He suggests social landlords could reverse this polarisation by selling, or renting out commercially, property on their existing estates and using the proceeds to buy property for their tenants to rent in other areas where there is less social housing. But improving the income mix isn't necessarily achieved by swapping people: "It's by helping to ensure people already living there have got a livelihood."
This neatly brings Hills, without so much as a pause, to his third big challenge for social housing: how to get more tenants into work. More than half those of working age living in social housing are without paid work, twice the national rate.
"There you have a real conundrum," says Hills, "because one of the fundamental justifications of having social housing where people pay below market rent is that it should help them in the labour market.If you're paying £60 or £70 a week your take-off point to get clear of the benefit trap is much earlier than if you're paying £180 a week rent in the private sector.
"Even allowing for the fact that social housing tenants are disadvantaged in the job market because they are lone parents, or lack qualifications, or suffer from high levels of ill health and disability, there are still fewer in work than you would expect."
"Think through the consequences," he urges. "If you are living on an estate and have two people of working age on either side of you, the chances of them both working is just one in 10. That can have devastating effects on links into job markets. It's one reason why social housing is so concentrated in low-income areas now. Half of social housing is in the most deprived fifth of areas."
Hills wants housing support offered at job centres and help with finding work at the housing office. I point out that the £300-a-week rent charged for temporary accommodation in London is the main barrier to homeless families working, and makes it hard for them to then get a job when they do move into social housing years later, and he concedes that "some aspects of housing policy are unhelpful".
He also acknowledges that pressures in social housing have got "much, much tougher" than when he was last asked to examine the sector seven years ago as part of a forum set up by the Institute of Public Policy Reform think tank.
He attributes the pressure to a lack of turnover in the stock, which he says is the result of rising house prices stopping tenants moving out and a change in the tenants' age profile, so fewer tenancies are coming up as older tenants die. This translates into 80,000 fewer relets a year. "Despite 50,000 fewer social housing units being built and the Right to Buy reducing the pool of council homes, we were still able to take 250,000 new households throughout the 70, 80 and 90s," says Hills. "But when you at look at 2000, it has come down to 170,000. This leads to almost the whole system being gummed up. What we have is a pressure cooker effect."
Hills is concerned that this leads to what he calls a "strikingly" low level of job-related mobility. While nationally one-in-eight moves is associated with work, only a few thousand social tenants each year can move to be nearer a new job.
So why not just build millions of new social homes? Even Kelly acknowledged last week that the government needs to build more than the current supply of 30,000 homes per year, and she said "ambitious" plans for increasing social housing would be set out as part of the 2007 comprehensive spending review.
"The amount of social housing we have as a country depends on how much we are prepared to spend," Hills responds. "Yes, the more social housing we have the less the pressure on the pressure cooker, but with the best will in the world we're not going to build hundreds of thousands of new units every year to replace the 1.9m lost under Right to Buy."
Why not? As an economist, Hills answers by doing the maths. It costs £60k of public subsidy to build a social housing unit, so that's £60m for every 10,000 units. Yet he dismisses any notion that the social cost of housing thousands of families in temporary or overcrowded accommodation could be more expensive. "You can make a good case for building to make up the shortfall of units we lost through relets, but you're doing that to standstill, so we're still left with the questions - how do we make the best use of the stock we've got and how do you best support the livelihoods of the tenants there?"
Hills is keen for a significant expansion in local cost homes that people can part-rent, part-buy. They cost the public purse half that of building a new unit of social housing, he points out, yet they account for just 1% of the owner-occupied stock.
They are one item on a menu of options he suggests could be offered to would-be social housing tenants. Others include a 10% equity stake for existing tenants that is being piloted in west London by Notting Hill Housing. Does this mean that Hills believes that, as tenants' financial circumstances improve, they should no longer be entitled to cheap rents? "If you are serious about trying to increase the livelihoods of tenants, you have to be careful not to set up disincentives," he warns.
The review has opened Hills' eyes to the growing wealth inequality between home owners and tenants. He predicts that cascading housing wealth from generation to generation will further increase divisions. Equity schemes therefore makes sense in the context of a government with ambitious targets for poverty and inequality. "If you are worried about wealth inequality," he says, "then doing something about the asset levels of social tenants is a pretty well-targeted way of doing it."
· Read Ends and Means
Curriculum Vitae
Age 52.
Status Married.
Lives Highbury, north London.
Education Nottingham high school; Abingdon school, Oxfordshire; Cambridge University, BA economics; Birmingham University, MSocSc economics.
Career 1997-present professor, social policy, London School of Economics, and director, ESRC Research Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE; 1994-97: reader in economics and social policy, LSE; 1986-97: senior research fellow/co-director, welfare state programme, LSE; 1984-86: senior adviser to commission of inquiry into taxation, Zimbabwe; 1982-84: senior research officer, Institute for Fiscal Studies; 1980-82: economist, Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee; 1979-80: senior economic assistant, Department of the Environment; 1976-78: fellow of the Overseas Development Institute; 1976-78: research assistant, department of applied economics, Cambridge University; 1973-76: research assistant, European Atomic Energy Commission Institute for Transuranium Elements.
Interests Fell walking."
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Arlington House
Novas Group - Arlington House: "Arlington, which celebrated its 100th birthday in 2005, remains one of the most significant social housing resources in the country.
Over the last century Arlington has been a symbol of Victorian philanthropy and social welfare support for working men, a resource for soldiers and refugees during the two World Wars, a major lodging resource for Irish men working in London during the economic boom of the 1960-70's and recently a provider of high quality support and care services to a diverse range of individual needs from homelessness, dependency to frailty due to old age.
The building is a landmark in Camden Town and a major contributor to the life, character and economy of the local area.
Over this period of time the aspirations of residents have changed and while excellent services are provided there is recognition that the physical environment and fabric of the building is outdated and difficult to maintain. A review by key stakeholders has started to consider the role of Arlington over the next 100 years.
It is agreed that the building requires major refurbishment providing greater privacy and personal space for customers and a need to move away from just providing a bed and looking after physical needs of people experiencing homelessness. A huge leap into the 21st century is required, meeting the employment, educational and creative potential of residents and"
Over the last century Arlington has been a symbol of Victorian philanthropy and social welfare support for working men, a resource for soldiers and refugees during the two World Wars, a major lodging resource for Irish men working in London during the economic boom of the 1960-70's and recently a provider of high quality support and care services to a diverse range of individual needs from homelessness, dependency to frailty due to old age.
The building is a landmark in Camden Town and a major contributor to the life, character and economy of the local area.
Over this period of time the aspirations of residents have changed and while excellent services are provided there is recognition that the physical environment and fabric of the building is outdated and difficult to maintain. A review by key stakeholders has started to consider the role of Arlington over the next 100 years.
It is agreed that the building requires major refurbishment providing greater privacy and personal space for customers and a need to move away from just providing a bed and looking after physical needs of people experiencing homelessness. A huge leap into the 21st century is required, meeting the employment, educational and creative potential of residents and"