Affordability and Housing Options Toolkit
Click here to check out the quick Video Introduction to this toolkit
What is Affordable Rent? - why do we need this toolkit?
Affordable rented housing is: rented housing provided by registered providers, that has the same characteristics as social rented housing and is subject to rent controls that require it to be offered to eligible households at a rent of up to 80% of local market rents (inclusive of service charges) (CLG/HCA, 2011-15 Affordable Homes Programme Framework).
This is a very useful toolkit, a good visual way of showing the variables and gives us the ability to undertake multiple sensitivity analyses.
Joelle Moore, South Gloucestershire Council
Landlords (and local authorities) will wish to consider the local market context when setting rents, including the relevant Local Housing Allowance for the Broad Rental Market Area in which the property is located.
This Toolkit can help you quickly and easily set this new product in the context of local market conditions.
What can the toolkit do?
For a local authority area and any local sub-area of your choice this interactive toolkit enables you to:
- model the rent levels of ‘Affordable Rent’ products - relative to market rents;
- model their affordability - relative to social and market rents;
- test affordable rent levels proposed by registered providers at whatever geographical scale you decide;
- assess the potential “Development Headroom” available to the Registered provider from the proposed affordable rents; and
- determine what levels of household income are required to access affordably properties by bedsize and type for all tenancies.
It also enables you to visualise:
- the relative position of ‘Affordable Rent’ in the market - and other rental options; and:
- the effect of applying an affordability threshold.
One advantage of this toolkit is that you have full control over all the inputs:
- rent levels by property type and bed size;
- income levels;
- the affordability threshold;
- the “Affordable Rent” percentage level relative to local private rents (currently 80% recommended by HCA);
- ‘Affordable Rent’ levels proposed by a Registered Provider.
The unique aspect of this toolkit is that it is interactive. As you change single or multiple inputs and variables on the dashboard you can see the results of these changes immediately on screen.
File formats
Currently the Affordability Toolkit is being distributed as an Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) file. PDFs are widely used and the Acrobat PDF Reader is available free to download from the Adobe site.
What's on the screen - how does it work?
Below is a full screenshot of the Affordability Toolkit Dashboard.
Find out more
Download the factsheet below for more information:
Housing Vision Affordable Rent Toolkit fact sheet
For more information, please contact johnconnell@housingvision.co.uk.