1: Monday Media Release – National Family Week
Bring back ‘Sons and Daughters’
It’s time to stop ignoring the extended family in housing policy
A Cambridge think tank argues that it is time to bring back ‘Sons and Daughters’; not the classic Aussie soap of the 1980s, but a housing policy dumped in the early 1990s. During National Family Week the Relationships Foundation is highlighting a range of measures that can promote stronger families. RF want housing policy to take the social and welfare needs of extended families into account and to prioritise their co-location.
During the late 1980s Tower Hamlets operated a ‘Sons and Daughters’ scheme giving priority on the housing list to children of established East End families. There were complaints that the policy was racist, discriminating against new arrivals from Bangladesh. The Commission for Racial Equality successfully challenged its application. However, times have changed and the East London Advertiser recently reported that, ‘Almost two decades on, with a dramatically changed population demographic, a 20,000-plus housing waiting list, and, according to the Town Hall, Bangladeshi offspring particularly unable to find homes near their parents, Labour councillors have had a rethink.’1 The Relationships Foundation thinks that a change in policy, restoring the ‘Sons and Daughters’, is required at a national level.
The late Michael Young observed in ‘Family and Kinship in East London’ that in the 50s each older person in Bethnal Green could expect an average of 13 relatives living within a mile; 53% of older people had their nearest married child living in the same dwelling or within five minutes’ walk. Today, many older people are likely to live a lonely existence.2 A former resident said, ‘I would lay part of the blame for family break-up on council housing. In days gone by, children used to live with the parents even after they got married. Now that is not accepted, so the parents get left in inner London, places like Hackney and Tower Hamlets, while the children have to go out to Essex to get a council house.’3
Abandoning the ‘Sons and daughters’ policy has proved expensive for many extended families and the government. ‘Because of our preoccupation with nuclear families, our housing policies have not in fact helped the old to stay close to their adult children, and yet the family is blamed for failing to care for their elderly kin.’4
Some countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong use their housing policy to enable elderly relatives to live near other family members. In Singapore, schemes are open to children who are married or shortly to be married, or to elderly parents seeking a property in the same town as each other. Successful applicants receive increased grants or a reduced waiting time. The rationale for these schemes is that the government saves in welfare costs as family members assist one another. Elderly relatives are cared for in extended family units, whilst grandparents can offer childcare for working parents. The result is that more than 69% of elderly people in Singapore co-reside with their children.5
Relationships Foundation researcher Peter Lynas commented, “Co-location works in other countries. Families are the basic unit of welfare in society. Enabling extended families to live close to each other makes it much easier for them to provide practical support. This brings extended families closer together and has the added bonus of saving the taxpayer money in the long-term.”
Michael Trend, Executive Director of Relationships Foundation comments: ‘National Family Week is an exciting time for new ideas to promote the extended family. We need national housing criteria that are clear and supportive of extended families. Families want to help each other, but local housing rules can make this difficult – this must change.’
For more information please contact: Peter Lynas – p.lynas@relationshipsfoundation-org.stackstaging.com 01223 341286 or 07546 590902
Notes:
1 Gemma Collins and Ted Jeory, Dumped ‘racist’ housing strategy could return to East End, East London Advertiser, 15 May 2008.
2 Alessandra Buonfino and Geoff Mulgan, Goodbye to all that, Young Foundation, January 2006.
3 Kate Gavron, Besieged in the East End, and only the BNP is listening, Young Foundation, April 2006.
4 Hilary Land and Roy Parker, “Family Policy in the United Kingdom”, in Kamerman and Khan (eds) Family Policy: Government and Families in Fourteen Countries, Columbia University Press, New York, 1978. p.363.