Camerons plans to reform social housing.

[DJKillaQueen]

It's a good point....to be fair to Cameron he is just throwing ideas into the ring at the moment. There's a whole debate to be had before anything is shaped.....and I think he'll run into trouble before any of it becomes law.

[Jeremy]

The right-to-buy scheme - in theory - does have benefits, provided the right restrictions are put in place. Labour went some way to addressing this in 2005.

The damage was done by the original Thatcher scheme, which made it far too easy for the homes to be resold onto the private market, and effectively prohibited councils from spending the proceeds on building new housing.

[DJKillaQueen]

That's absolutely right Jeremy. It's one thing to let people buy their council homes, but to then not allow the money from the sale to be reinvested in housing was bizarre (and politically motivated rather than based on any real thought about housing provision). Most councils just banked the money and refused to spend it in protest.

I doubt we will ever be able to replace the 8 million social homes lost from the scheme. Cameron though has recently suggested incentives to local authorities who new build - which amounts to a grant equivalent to the council tax that the property when finished would yield. Ironically that is essentially a tax subsidy - albeit a very samll one against the cost of building new homes. Councils prefer (for obvious reasons) PPI schemes - part private investment - anyway. What council has the money after all to build housing stock in the numbers required?

I totally agree about restriction on resale and I would go further and say letting as well. Because what many tenants did, was to buy their council home...and then quckly jump on the buy-to-let ladder (because that after all requires very little capital investment - another thing that needs to change - and the FSA are now looking at that) to make that their main home whilst letting out the council property.

[Easties EL]

How the hell does David Cameron expect to sort of the areas of Newham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets with his bs social reforms. All the hard work that Labour have done, in the last 15 years will go to ****. These areas are never in Camerons plans. Shame on him and his Government.

[GinaG3]

Typically the flat I rent in the private sector is ex local authority as were most of the flats I viewed that were within my price range.

In my personal opinion council housing shouldn't be allowed to be sold off, neither should people get the right to buy. Council housing should be used as an aid to help people in the most need. If you enter a take up tenure on a council home you should have your circumstances review after X amount of years. This happens with benefits so why not housing? There are definitely people out there who need a secure tenure for life and I have no problem with this whatsoever, but the majority of people living in council housing do not need this.

It seems extortionate that my rent in the private sector for one month could keep 2 families in council housing for a month. Would it not be cheaper in the long run for the council to build, buy or take over properties that have fallen into disrepair than to pay double rents in the private sector for the overspill of people looking for social housing?

[DJKillaQueen]

but the majority of people living in council housing do not need this.

60% of council tenants are unemployed. Most of them will never earn much above minimum wage if they do find work. Of the other 40%, most similarly do not earn much above minimum wage and never will do. So it's not true to say that the majority of council tenants will not qualify for their homes for life, whatever system we apply.

In the private sector, the difference in rent is not paid by councils though...it's paid by tax payers in the form of Housing Benefit to those who don't earn enough to pay the private rent (and I'd still like to see anyone calling for change to show an opinion on this - because by staying silent they are effectively saying that it's ok for tax payers money to be used to pay private landlords mortgages).

Housing is not a single point issue....we need more affordable rentable homes, that need to come BOTH from the building or as you say the acquisition of property by local authorities and we also need a policy to reduce the rate of growth of the housing market so that long term salaries can catch up. Only with those two things combined will we ever see an improvement in the cost of housing provision, both to the state and to the individual.

[Jeremy]

DJKQ, I think you missed Gina's point. She is not saying that the majority of council tenants will one day be able to afford private housing. She was saying that only a small number of people genuinely need a guaranteed council house for life - presumably due to disability or other factors.

[DJKillaQueen]

But it's the same thing. If the majority of people will never have an income to afford private rented accomodation then they DO need their council home for life. I'd much rather see HB topping up social rents than see it essentially paying the mortgages of private investors. So in my view the solution is to build as many social homes as we need and curb the right to buy scheme, whilst re-regulating mortgage lending to slow the market down long term .

Also I would say that why should security of tenure be limited only to those who own homes that are fully paid for (i.e the very rich who don't need mortgages)? It amazes me how little protection private tenants have against being asked to quit (28 days notice is all that a landlord needs to provide). That is unheard of in France and Germany and many other countries.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing on the secure life-long tenure point, but I just think that we need to do more in the private sector too, if we are going to tamper with tenant security within social housing. It's about fairness for ALL tenants at the end of the day.

[Jeremy]

No, it's not the same thing at all!

Promising someone council housing for life (regardless of how their circumstances may change) is completely different to receiving council housing for life because their situation hasn't improved.

[DJKillaQueen]

That's true.

But I still think it wouldn't be a workable process nor that it would free up more than a tiny fraction of homes - and certainly not enough to justify the added cost and workload to housing officers. Who is going to fund that at a time when local authorities are being asked to cut?

And then how do you measure improvement in circumstances? Salary might seem straight forward but it isn't. It would need to be stable, secure employment and how many jobs are that? Many jobs are fixed term and/ or contract. There would also have to be a requirement that the salary has been held for a minimum length of time too. One year? Two years?

It is a very dangerous policy to implement and fraught with problems, esp where children are involved. Those unlucky enough to be faced with losing their home would probably appeal, force the council to evict them through the courts and then appeal again.....and then of course it would require several significant changes in law for both tenants and landlords (not likely to get through).

It's completely unworkable and Cameron has said that it would be up to councils to decide for themselves if they want to implement it (which suggests he's knows that). Given that many councils already don't have enough time or personnel to force those they can legally do so to downsize, how on earth are they going to be bothered with this as well.

[GinaG3]

DJKQ You know my situation so you can understand my frustrations at councils but I can fully see it from your angle too. Something has got to give in this country with housing. I feel complete and utter despair at some stories I hear of trying to get housing. Being declared homeless with a child and still not getting help from your local authority is just not fair. There are some people out there that play the system, same with benefits.

DJKQ Do you know total number of people waiting for housing in Southwark alone? Out of interest. (Its probably going to knock me off my chair but thats okay)

I will actually say I think its wrong that housing benefit makes up the gap between social and private sector housing, but what other option is there right here, right now? Its a right battle even finding landlords who are willing to accept tenants in receipt of DSS, a hell of a lot of private landlords will not accept. But why if as you say they are getting their mortgages paid off for them, the usual argument is not being paid on time or the state the flat will be left in (surely this doesn't matter if your essentially getting the mortgage paid for you, your earning a free house).

Im still finding all of this very interesting but its really making my own situation hit home. At least in council housing you can feel stability, what about all these people thrown into private housing thats paid for them when they receive benefits? No stability here, when starting work the rent cannot be paid so HB come to fill in the gap again, in this situation housing benefit can be relied on for a long long time. No chance of getting council housing once you find other means of accommodation as your covered then, within their bands your not in desperate need. So being stuck in a cycle of never being able to afford your rent by yourself, and never feeling you will have stability is unbelievably depressing.

Some people could afford to pay off a mortgage easier than private rents (I do know people to whom this applies) every month but then to get that mortgage you need stability and that enormous initial cash outlay.

Oh what to do, move to a desert island? No money, no need, no problems?

[DJKillaQueen]

Yes I do know exactly how frustrating your situation is Gina (and I will fight for people like you all day long). I am equally frustrated by the lack of goverment movement (and Labour were as bad as Conservatives on this) to sort it out. It does impact heavily on those affected. It's an impact that no person in secure accomodation can fully understand it seems, as well.

There have always been people who play the system, and we need more resources to weed those people out for sure. But the majority of people who receive help...be it benefits, housing and so on, genuinely do need that help.

Ok the figure of those waiting to be homed in Southwark at the moment is around 9000 households (equating to 24,500 people). That is solely those households waiting to become council or social housing tenants. The new Elephant and Castle development will create 5300 new homes but only 17.5% will be social housing so around 1100 new homes for rent - and not a single one of those with be a council home - but housing association instead - in line with the previous councils policy of moving housing management away from the council.

Accross London the lists are rising by around 8% year on year (as the biggest gaps in private/ social rents are in London)...so the problem is acute. We are effectively seeing low waged people being priced out of the capital altogether.

And thank you for being the only one to take a stand on the cost to the tax payer of HB. The hypocrasy of those that bemoan the lower social housing rents whilst having nothing to say about the amount of tax payers money spent paying private investors mortgages astounds me. That alone says something is very wrong with the balance between salaries and rent in this country. And if we do nothing about it .....it will grow from a third of the workforce to what? Most of the workforce needing HB?

You mention stabilty and I personally think that is extremely important....if nothing else, for people's mental health. If you have a family, it is so important to have stability in your accomodation. Other countries legislate to ensure that.....what is so wrong about us doing that. Housing is an essential part of living...we should be treating it as such instead of the 'fast buck' commodity it has become.

[Jeremy]

DJKillaQueen Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The hypocrasy of those that bemoan the lower social

> housing rents whilst having nothing to say about

> the amount of tax payers money spent paying

> private investors mortgages astounds me.

I don't think anyone is happy about councils paying huge rents to private landlords - except the landlords themselves. Maybe the reason nobody has said anything about it is because... well... there's not much more to say! Everybody knows there is a lack of council housing.

[GinaG3]

I agree that most people living in social housing do need the accommodation. But, personally if I knew I could afford to move out of social and into private accommodation I would to free up space for someone who has become more needy than me. As I know what its like to be turned away. I wouldn't sit in social housing all my life just because I know I can, that to me is rather unfair although I can understand why people do it.

I cannot believe those stats and I was right they did knock me off my chair. I find it even harder to get my head around the fact that E&C development will only provide another 1,100 home for people in need. Thats outrageous, do the other 4,000+ will become available on the private market, or are reserved for 'waiting' residents? Seeing all these boarded up houses, flats and high rises just makes me angry to be honest. Obviously in certain cases it is needed for regeneration but in others the council could just take action to get the owner to sort out the fact its derelict or slap a compulsory purchase order on the place (of course the owner will probably deny this request). The cycle just goes on and on it seems.

[DJKillaQueen]

Trust me, there was huge debate and controversy about the social home programme for the E&C development. Nick Stanton even appeared on the Politics Show to be grilled about it. His view was that an area so close to central London could not be so poor, so read into that what you will...he clearly thinks most homes in E&C should be private (whether bought or rented) and that the poor should live elsewhere in the borough.

At the time plans were drawn up, we had a Conservative Councillor in charge of housing and of course Nick, a Lib Dem council leader who broadly agrees with Conservative policy on the free market and Housing. It's a consequence of that. In my own ward, Labour regained control precisely because of local Lib Dem policy on housing but with coming cuts I think the new Council will have little scope for doing anything differently tbh. Without funding, private investment is the only option for new developments...so councils prefer to give planning permission in return for a certain percentage of guaranteed affordable homes (often part buy part rent schemes), rather than build themselves - with instead Housing Associations brought in to part invest.

It's also estimated that there are 5000 empty/ unused properties in Southwark at any one time and most councillors agree that there should be some mechanism to forceably bring them into use. It would go a long way to helping reduce waiting lists (far more than means testing existing residents every so number of years for example) and again, the only explanation I can give for government not enabling something like that is that we have a culture accross all parties that dislikes interfering with the free market at any cost....especially anything that might deflate or slow the housing market (although to be fair to Cameron, he has asked the FSA to draw up plans to do exactly that).

[James Barber]

Council Housing is subsidised in several ways. All councils run seperate Housing Revenue Accounts. The bulk of Southwark Councils debt, around ?500M of it, was borrowed to build council housing in the 60's and 70's. The interest on this is mostly paid for by central government. The interest rates are around 14% on average last time I looked reflecting when it was borrowed and the bizarre treasury mechanism the loans are taken out under.

Council tenants don't pay towards these debts or interest payments which are covered from central taxation. Equally grants from central government towards the running costs. Gradual moves to eliminates these subsidies and the rents rise to around the Housing Association rent levels.

Under occupation. When the Lib Dems ran the council we introduced a scheme to encourage people to downsize. This was successful.

Last year we changed tenancy agreements so that council tenants could only pass down tenancy to one subsequent generation. It had previously been two.

David Cameron's suggestions and thoughts on council tenancies. They're not part of the coalition agreement and are therefore just his personal views and not the administrations views. Such views were never expressed in either parties manifestos so he has no political mandate for them and he certainly has no Lib Dem agreement for them to be anything more than his hot air.

A far bigger issue for our society is tax cheating which is x10 the size of benefit fraud. With such a huge budget deficit getting to grips with tax cheats would help. It would also send the message we're all in this together.

[DJKillaQueen]

The 50's and 60's programme of house building was a government response to a chronic shortage of decent housing in post war Britain is why current tenants don't pay towards those debts. And council rents have on average, doubled over the past 20 years. The view that social housing rents should be higher will only serve to push the Housing Benefit bill to the tax payer up, given that so many tenants rely on it. Either way....tax payers will pay for it.

Under occupation. When the Lib Dems ran the council we introduced a scheme to encourage people to downsize. This was successful.

Although I know of several examples of suceeded tenants that were not forced to downsize even though the law makes provision for that.

Last year we changed tenancy agreements so that council tenants could only pass down tenancy to one subsequent generation. It had previously been two.

That is true and brings things in line with the law which guarantees the right of one sucession.

I wholeheartedly agree with you James in regards to tax evasion. Ideally there needs to be better means to combat both that and Benefit Fraud but we rarely hear of what is being done to combat tax evasion beyond the odd wittering of some anonymous non dom. And the higher up one goes the worse it seems to be.

For example Al Fayed was able to make a deal with the tax office for an anual fixed amount of tax to pay irregardless of how much profit his businesses made....cheating the country out of millions in tax. How can that possibly have happened? Yet the self employed get fined if they even are one day late with their returns.

There is also the issue of the black economy too, and who knows what the loss to the country in unpaid tax is on that one.

[expat]

>Council Housing is subsidised in several ways. All councils run seperate Housing Revenue Accounts. The bulk of Southwark >Councils debt, around ?500M of it, was borrowed to build council housing in the 60's and 70's. The interest on this is >mostly paid for by central government

So it would appear the council does not own the properties and are subsidised...

[DJKillaQueen]

In relation to sepcific post war building programmes yes...but I did say that in one of my earliest posts when describing where the money came from for some programmes during times of acute housing shortage. The 30's is the other such period.

[Brendan]

James Barber Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> A far bigger issue for our society is tax cheating

> which is x10 the size of benefit fraud. With such

> a huge budget deficit getting to grips with tax

> cheats would help. It would also send the message

> we're all in this together.

Yeah but going after tax cheats would be targeting the conservatives themselves whereas targeting benefit cheats (although they should be dealt with) is going after people who are weaker than you and putting the boot in. This is exactly the type of psychology which the conservative mind responds to and it is the of motivation behind Cameron?s ideas on the issue.

I doubt anyone will argue that someone who doesn?t need it shouldn?t be getting subsidised housing but this can be addressed by putting rents up on a scale in accordance salary or simply removing provisions like the right to inherit a council tenancy.

But no these people get their hardons by talking about kicking people out of their homes and into private rented accommodation (which despite what those who have bugger all experience of it may think is the most exploitative, unfair form of housing provision in the country). All of this to the salivating cheers of the indignant, telegraph reading masses.

You can very easily make people pay full price for their houses if they are earning enough money but there are those amongst us who feel very strongly that you can?t just go kicking people out of their houses in order to make some sort of ideological statement. Wanting to do so just exposes the antisocial, mean streak on which these peoples? political motivations are based.

[Brendan]

Just to illustrate the point.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/the-daily-cartoon-760940.html?ino=6

[Jeremy]

Completely that tax evasion is a far bigger problem than benefits fraud. It also seems some how more socially acceptable (e.g. paying tradesmen in cash), which is ridiculous. But, of course that doesn't make benefits fraud right. Nothing to do with putting the boot in.

I quite like the idea of putting up rents for council tenants who no longer need subsidised housing. It would need an appropriate sliding scale, so people don't feel penalised when their income improves.

[Brendan]

If a single person earns 37K they don't need subsidised housing. So if they are living in a 4 bed council house for low rent just charge them full market rates and they'll soon move somewhere they can afford. But someone earning the same who has 5 kids may very well need the subsidised rent on a similar property.

But the idea of evicting people and forcing them into private rented accommodation being bandied about by people who have never had any insecurity over where to house their families is just offensive. Especially without taking into consideration all the issues with the private rental sector. But even if there was a properly regulated rental market where people could get secure tenure at fair prices and there was fair access to private ownership it is still morally reprehensible.

It is not ok to kick people out of their homes, not now not ever, no decent person would think so.

[DJKillaQueen]

quite like the idea of putting up rents for council tenants who no longer need subsidised housing. It would need an appropriate sliding scale, so people don't feel penalised when their income improves.

In addition let's force landlords to lower people's rents when their income diminishes so that people don't feel penalised when they become poorer, and so that we the tax payers don't feel ripped off when Housing Benefit pays a landlord's mortgage for them.

There is something distinctly unfair about linking the salaries of the poorest to their rent whilst leaving everyone else to their own devices.

[Jeremy]

Not sure why you're jumping on me and not Brendan - I was simply taking his idea and running with it. Anyway... private housing is not the same as council housing, adjusting private rents to suit people's budget is a silly suggestion. We are talking about government assistance... offering people help which is in line with their needs. But you manage to twist this into something quite the opposite.

This isn't debate, this is arguing for the sake of it. Type first, think later. I'm out!