SOCIAL housing is facing another challenge that has the potential to wreck much of the good work done in Glasgow.

Community based housing associations have been a success, with people having control of their homes through management committees.

The associations, especially the larger ones, do much more than hand over the keys and collect rents.

Regeneration projects, community safety programmes with police, money advice and even help with job hunting and support for students in education are among the 'extra' services some offer.

In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher's 'right to buy' scheme was responsible for a huge reduction in social housing because the best council homes were snapped up at bargain prices.

The community lost out as the homes were denied to the next generation and the only people who benefited were those individuals who sold the houses on for huge profit.

Under Thatcher's ideology this was obviously a good thing. Now, decades later, the new threat is to the associations.

The under-occupancy rule - nicknamed the 'bedroom tax - for those receiving housing benefits, is one threat that is hitting tenants hard.

Try finding an extra £50 a month towards your rent when you are already on benefits and coping with increasing food and energy bills.

Little wonder food banks are sprouting up everywhere and legal loan sharks are thriving.

Meanwhile, arrears are piling up. The Evening Times contacted several housing associations in Glasgow, small, medium and large, and found all had seen an increase in arrears since the bedroom tax was implemented. This is just in the first few months.

The situation will get worse, when Discretionary Housing Payments run out. When the new Universal Credit system comes along in October there will be an even bigger threat.

Associations are preparing their tenants for that now, but Universal Credit will be paid monthly to claimants, while rent no longer goes direct to the landlord.

Many housing officials fear those not used to managing their finances in this way will end up in difficulty and more will run up rent arrears.

Calls for landlords and councils not to evict tenants for bedroom tax arrears, while it would help tenants, does not solve the wider problem and will not address the challenge faced by social housing providers.

They will have to cope with reduced incomes, still spend money trying to recover the rising debt and risk that others will simply stop paying their rent too.

All this means less cash not only for housing, but the wider work mentioned earlier that is being done to strengthen communities.

Community based, not-for- profit social housing is under threat from welfare reform and unless we want to see the progress unpicked it should be resisted.