Leasehold Estate: Rights & Responsibilities of Tenants & Landlords - Essay Sample

Introduction

Estate for years is a commonly used term to refer to a leasehold estate of any given period of time be it a day, a week, a month or a year. Even though the tenants under a leasehold agreement usually pay rent to landlords, in most cases, a leasehold contract does not act like a normal lease but instead, the leasehold agreement offers the tenants a right to possess and exclusively use the real estate for a given period of time. The landlord in this case surrenders the usage as well as other rights during this time period however retains the ownership or property deed. A leasehold agreement confers benefits to both the tenant and the landlord.

Mixed Tenure Housing Development

Mixed tenure could be at times referred to as tenure integration or the integrated housing and it is an urban planning strategy mostly adopted by most governments whereby more affluent and poorer residents get to live in mixed communities. Its generally accepted that the mixed tenure communities need to be an important component of both the redevelopment of the existing mono-tenure estates as well as new housing development. In all situations, there is no single formula that will always work however the local stakeholders needs to access local market conditions to agree on a more transparent vision within an early stage of the development process.

Mixed tenure is frequently used to mix different income groups so that the new housing areas should comprise integrated populations with different ethnic profiles, different lifestyles, different household size as well as different ages. Research shows that there are many benefits that results from such measures taken however, it is also recommended that the developments should ensure they are well designed and that they maintain a careful balance between communality and privacy. It is for this reason that it is important to establish responsive systems of management as early as possible in order to maintain the main vision of the social mix as well as resolving the inevitable tensions that could arise among different parts of the community.

Good practice in the management ensures some aspects that could be critical in ensuring sustainable development within the mixed tenure and at the same time ensure that the tenure is in the long-term attractive. There exists a growing consensus that mixed tenures have more benefits that outweigh the disadvantages however there still exists some evidence that shows there being challenges and dis-benefits that arise from the application of the strategy. There exists evidence from different surveys showing how most of the residents within the new developments are frequently neutral on tenure mix question while others may opt to live close to the households comprising of different patterns of consumptions and lifestyles.

Also, its noted that the young, single people usually do not mix well with less affluent or pensioners families with children. Most of these issues could be resolved by grouping or blocking different forms of housing however, this does not guarantee the formation of a strong and cohesive community. There are cases where focusing on community centers, schools as well as other facilities as being locations for social interaction could be more productive than the assumptions that social interaction mainly takes place at homes or in the streets.

Currently, there exists large gaps in how people understand the way different parts of the community respond to their neighbors and in what design however, management and others features usually discourage or encourage interaction. Tenure mix is therefore likely to remain on top of the policy agendas for quite some time and is fully entrenched within the sustainable communities' strategy by the governments. The effectiveness of tenure mix highly depends on how far the positive features could be disseminated widely as well as how far lessons can be learnt. Hence government policy is created to encourage the fluidity within the housing tenure by the means of strategies to intermediate and homebuy housing.

Current Policy Directions

While mixed communities and social balance have been the key principles of a good planning since the British New Towns and the Garden City Movement, it has only been recently that there has been greater attention on the policy. Both the Urban White Paper and the Urban Task Force reports highlighted for the need to enhance liveability within residential environments as well as meeting all the housing requirements in all sections of the community. In 2003, the sustainable communities' strategy was launched with an aim of raising the communities' quality of life through the reduction of inequality, tackling crime and anti-social behavior, increasing prosperity, more employment, better education and health, better public services as well as others more.

According to the Housing Corporation 2006, mixed communities play a great role in promoting equality and choice, help in addressing community cohesion and social exclusion as well as avoiding concentrations of deprivation. In a detailed guidance that was issued by the local planning authorities in 2006 in PPS3, it required the local authorities to evaluate the housing needs within their parts, set clear targets, make sure that there was adequate land available as well as create mixed, sustainable and inclusive communities in these parts both rural and urban. Ever since 2003, there have been a series of strategic growth areas, millennium villages, eco-towns, urban extensions, housing market extensions as well as other pilot project that have been announced incorporating the mixed tenures principle.

An example if English Partnerships who has embraced the approach fully and has commissioned a Design Code for the enhancement of four hundred homes in Upton. Houses for shared ownership and rent are pepper-potted across the estate. Large-scale development projects involve a wide mix of housing tenures and sizes that are distributed in segregated, integrated or segmented patterns. Several agencies in Scotland such as the New Gorbals, Glasgow and the Ardler Village, Dundee are currently promoting such mixed developments with all aspects of house tenures and sizes. The policies that relate to housing, environmental issues and sustainable communities are rapidly developing and construction of high-quality homes within pleasant environments, the housing providers are required to meet the demand standards based on climate change.

Promoting Mixed Communities

The exists many different motivations that underpin the obligation to mixed tenure communities. These could be practical approaches or universal principles that are supported by experience from the ground. Below are some of the reasons why mixed tenure developments are advocated for.

Refuting of the adverse neighborhood effects as well as promoting advanced provision of integrated services and facilities. The most crucial policy currently is mainly aimed at the process of building a cohesive and stable communities. Within the past three decades, several strategies have been devised with an aim of improving the housing quality and to deliver integrated and improved services to those areas with frequent high levels of social exclusion and deprivation, specifically as research has shown that households with low income get trapped in disadvantaged areas while those individuals and groups with high incomes are able to escape.

Several researchers have conducted several evaluations on a number of neighborhoods through time-limited programs and found out that there was limited evidence on their success. Most residents within the mixed tenure constantly remain isolated from services and job opportunities that the more affluent areas take for granted despite the policies emphasizing on improvement of housing quality and services within most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Even though it is widely known that reputations take years to change, there exists evidence proving that mixed tenure communities usually do not suffer from the poor reputation and stigmatization attached to most traditional mono-tenure estates. Studies have specifically shown that mixed income communities have had success to some extent in improving the neighborhoods' external perceptions.

Mixed communities create stronger communities, promotes social cohesion as well as reduces social exclusion. Community cohesion emphasis maintains that it is only in highly localized areas that community relations are formed and therefore mixed communities should be more than just an income mix. According to the sustainable communities' strategy, alongside respect, tolerance and engagement of different people from different cultures as well as beliefs and backgrounds, a sense of community belonging and identity are also important. It is difficult to measure the impact level of social cohesion within mixed communities since the evidence of cross-tenure social network available varies from one place to the other.

Some studies hold that people would become more integrated to their neighborhoods as the households gain more experience of living within mixed schemes. One of the main advantages is that increasing the levels of owner-occupation could lead to residents remaining in their own neighborhoods instead of being bound to move elsewhere. The main problem in the underprivileged neighborhoods is population turnover and therefore enabling the residents to stay in the communities could help in enhancing ultimate cohesion and stability.

Mixed communities help those families with children to be part of the building inclusive communities. Mixed communities play a role in supporting the extended family networks and this could be mainly at school level where they mostly children interact and therefore if schools are planned carefully, managed and delivered with the families in mind, this could have an impact specifically for young families. This can be confirmed by several research studies that concluded that children who mix without esteem to tenure tend to have stronger friendships.

It is also important to note that not all mixed communities would attract a mixture of residents in an education facility also other policy areas could serve the purpose of undermining the agenda of mixed income. Mixed tenure supports the conservation of kinship networks by allowing children to settle in their parent's areas even after becoming adults while the parents remain in the same area in the process of relationship breakdown.

Mixed communities encourage the developers to offer a full range of house tenures, s...