Strangely, perhaps, the one thing we haven't really heard much about as we witness the death throes of Ujima, Britain's first and biggest black housing association, is race.
Ujima's birth, in 1977 was very much about race: about how to house and empower young black people who were discriminated against by a then largely local authority-run social housing system. Its creation was a positive act of defiance in the face of an establishment that believed, in effect, that black people could not or should not manage community assets. Thirty years on, and with Ujima, now boasting assets of £1bn, it feels different.
As regulator the Housing Corporation
sweeps up a broken Ujima into the London and Quadrant housing association, I've not come across anyone accusing the corporation of racism. Agressive and insensitive, yes; failure to act early enough to ensure Ujima's problems did not spiral out of control, yes. But no 'r' word. Even the friends of Ujima, like Lord Herman Ouseley, accept that its demise was caused in part by over-optimistic expansion and mismanagement. This feels like a business and regulatory fiasco, not a burning injustice.
It is curious, however, that the Ujima brand seems likely to disappear. Places for People, a failed bidder for the bones of Ujima, which had proposed to resurrect the doomed housing association and inject fresh capital, reckons the brand had value, that it should retain its distinctive identity (and its community support services). Presumably this is the kind of rescue bid the Save Ujima campaign
had in mind when it criticised the corporation's failure to consider what it calls "culturally appropriate proposals". A Hackney councillor, Patrick Vernon, makes an impassioned case for black-run housing associations here
The corporation, however, appears to have given little weight to the race factor, prioritising the interests of tenants, tax payers and lenders. Presumably the government, publicly mute, as far as I can see, on the fate of Ujima, agrees. An interesting aspect of the whole episode is that the corporation's chief executive (and prior to that its acting CEO, deputy CEO, and London regional director) Steve Douglas
is black. It is a tough call for Douglas: rescue Ujima and some would regard it as a special favour to the black community; kill it off, as he has done, and others will see this as a betrayal of the black community. It doesn't help Douglas that Ujima is the first housing association to go bust: the corporation had no precedent to follow.
I suspect we haven't heard the last of this. The corporation faces calls for an inquiry into how it failed to spot Ujima's financial problems, despite having, as funder, allocated it £47m in development money in 2005. It was chipper this week about how Ujima's problems "do not reflect on the overall financial health of the sector" and confident that the collapse would have no significant "long-term impact on the pricing of housing association debt". Not everyone shares that view. According to one housing association I was in contact with this week, "the issue has had an adverse impact on lenders perceptions of registered social landlords (RSLs) as a sector and is likely to lead to a greater focus on individual organisations as lending risks".
Meanwhile, Inside Housing reports an ominous warning from the Council of Mortgage Lenders that Ujima was "a sharp reminder that lending to RSLs is not risk-free".
Pricier loans for housing associations could mean less borrowing and few social housing units built: a credit crunch if you like. Not good for the government's homebuilding aspirations. No wonder some people are talking about this being the housing association sector's very own Northern Rock.
