Eviction due to new Cameron law

[LondonMix]

Bic Bash-- What do you see as the alternative in light of the shortage of both social and private housing in London? That isn't to minimise the disruption and upset this must cause to individual families but I know many people who are contemplating leaving the city in the private housing sector due to affordability issues as well. Clearly London needs more housing in general but we can't only develop social housing without exacerbating the shortage of housing in the private sector and vis-a-versa. Its a difficult situation from an urban planning perspective.

DJ- I am certainly in favour of job creation for a host of reasons but I don't think it would solve issues of affordability in London unless rent control was instituted in the private sector-- and even that might not work and is out of favour with both the Tories and Labour. If those that currently rely on housing benefit earned better incomes and moved into the private rental market, the increase demand for private housing would push up private rents. We'd quickly revert to a situation where private rents were too expensive for a significant segment of London's population.

Building more housing (social and private)and boosting economic possibilities outside of London so that every young person in England doesn't believe that migrating to the capital is the only way to become successful, in my opinion, are the only long term solutions. Until building catches up with demand, affordability issues will continue to drive people out of the city (both those on benefits on those in the private sector).

[right-clicking]

One option the Council/Government seemed to left to the wayside , was to means test it's social housing tenants, How many couples/families reside in assisted housing whilst their pay-packets are easily in the range of being able to afford a mortgage? admittedly when they first started residency they may well have been a just case, but fortunes/careers turn around, Is it fair that a couple on say ?60.000 joint income get to enjoy/profit from cheap rent? The authorities could remove some of their subsidies and bring the rent up to near the LHA and use the income on say (Gasp!) build more affordable housing? The people whom are effected should from their own gumption move on or pay the going rate, and free up some of the existing stock. It is another way to help re-distribute the enormous wealth that exists in this country.

[LondonMix]

I thought the government was doing exactly that. Has there been a change in policy?

right-clicking Wrote:

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> One option the Council/Government seemed to left

> to the wayside , was to means test it's social

> housing tenants, How many couples/families reside

> in assisted housing whilst their pay-packets are

> easily in the range of being able to afford a

> mortgage? admittedly when they first started

> residency they may well have been a just case, but

> fortunes/careers turn around, Is it fair that a

> couple on say ?60.000 joint income get to

> enjoy/profit from cheap rent? The authorities

> could remove some of their subsidies and bring the

> rent up to near the LHA and use the income on say

> (Gasp!) build more affordable housing? The people

> whom are effected should from their own gumption

> move on or pay the going rate, and free up some of

> the existing stock. It is another way to help

> re-distribute the enormous wealth that exists in

> this country.

[DJKillaQueen]

I think you won't find many in social housing with incomes of ?60k (or anywhere near it) RC and therefore as a policy it would barely make an impact on the housing crisis. Similarly any household with an income of ?60k is more likely to exercise their right to buy.

That's the problem with citing extremes as reason for change - a bit like, because a small number of large families cost the tax payer a ridiculous amount in benefits, that means all recipients of benefits are costing the tax payer too much. It only serves to spread ignorance of the facts whilst sounding good to those demanding action from the government to curb the 'scroungers'. Meanwhile, many decent people are suffering real hardship with no hope of escape from their circumstances whilst things carry on as they are.

I think you make some good points LondonMix and broadly agree with you. I especially agree on the issue of lack of economic regeneration outside of London and in the north. There has been a constant migration south since the 80's. Liverpool, my home town, has lost a third of it's population in this time and as a result homes have been demolished because there aren't the people to live in them.

I think as a nation, sucessive governments have been terribly bad at balancing the economy accross the nation as a whole. In fact they've made little effort to do so, hanging on the mythical mantra that the free market will take care of everything. The free market is exactly why we are in the mess we are, and I don't expect anything to change any time soon.

[LondonMix]

DJ, I agree. The only real attempt I've seen is the previous government's decentralisation plan. A few gov't agencies (such as the Standards Board) were moved up north (a surprising number of the previous London employees moved up north to follow the institution). This has its limits though as certain bodies do need to coordinate with one another so a certain concentration in London is logical. There really is no easy fix. At the heart of it, London is fantastic and dynamic and more people want to live here than there is housing or development to meet that demand and middle and low-income people are feeling the squeeze. Personally, I feel we need to make sure that this reality does not turn London into a "rich ghetto", while ensuring that everyone including middle-income workers feel that policies are fair and balanced. In the end, everyone is likely to feel hard done by no matter what just because there is no realistic way to accommodate everyone.

How to revitalise other areas of the country is key and should be a major focus of any government housing policy. Money generated in the capital needs to be redistributed to other areas of the country to support various business initiatives. Companies need to be given incentives to set-up outside of London and areas need to be revitalised so that companies know they can attract the talent they need when the locate outside the capital. Its all inter-dependent.

[Ridgley]

Most of you on this thread have made some really good points about this topic, I am not very savvy on the details of this but I can only go by what I see and how all this new legislation will effect a lot of people I know and some of them have already lost their jobs and seeking JSA and other benefits and others are working but can?t make ends meet.

I also think we have become a less caring society ? I am ok jack I don?t give a stuff until it happens to me ? It is a bit like high crime wave when it effects inner-city area?s no one gives a crap until it effect suburbia then the community wants something done about it.

Finally I can?t help thinking that the government are using these policies to deceive the public by finding someone to blame pick on the poorest in society focus on the work shy point the finger if you have no job through no fault of your own. I am not saying that there no work shy people but the majority do work it is very humiliating going to the job centre after you have worked all your life and you are made to feel like a scrounger.

Divide and conquer that is what they are doing and we need to wise up to this.

[Burbage]

DJKillaQueen Wrote:

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> I think you won't find many in social housing with

> incomes of ?60k (or anywhere near it)

Funny you should mention that. ?60k happens to be the threshold for at least one housing association.

It's obscene, of course. But it's well-meant. The aim being to get a nice mix of people in social housing, rather than end up with ghettos for the unemployed and dispossessed. Though, thanks to subletting, it can sometimes be difficult to tell.

Your point about extremes is a good one, given that 'market rents' are an average of a market that, in London at least, has no ceiling. As that was partly the reason they needed a limit in the first place, there's an irony to that which would be delightful if it wasn't so miserable.

The way they've implemented it would be almost impressive to anyone who'd not had the pleasure of working with our allegedly public servants. Averages, as any schoolkid might once have known, are tricky things, and there is a bit of a difference between the median and the mean.

In this case, and countless like it, what seems to be happening is that landlords, being 'guaranteed' a rent of 80% of the "market rent", irrespective of anything more than postcode and number of bedrooms, aren't going to be slow in making sure their rents match that 80% figure, whatever the state of the property.

For a great many properties, that will involve an increase in rent which will increase the 'market rent' which will increase the 80% limit. So, instead of being trapped in a spiral of market-driven rent increases, councils will now be trapped in a spiral of government-sanctioned rent increases.

The tragedy is that it will take a while for rent rises to affect the market rents and for the market rents to affect the housing benefit limit. And, during that while, tenants will have the choice of making up the difference or throwing themselves on the mercy of the council, thereby increasing demand and, with all the poignant beauty of a mathematical certainty, increasing the market rents.

In short, the government, and that branch of the civil service that has never run a business nor worried about paying their own rent, have merely replaced one vicious cycle with another. Except that, instead of holding councils to ransom, it'll make thousands homeless, too, no doubt to be 'decanted' to areas that last saw employment when Nelson had a pulse, and thus "trickle-down" the "London Premium" across the British weal much in the manner of the "Olympic Legacy", the "Knowledge Economy" or the "Finance Sector".

I don't particularly blame the politicians, who rarely have the wit for detail, as it was clear that some sort of limit was necessary. But the way the civil service has drafted it would count as breathtakingly incompetent in any other country. The only reason it's allowed here is because they've worked so tirelessly to amass such a staggering portfolio of cock-ups that a few thousand people on the streets counts as almost a result.

[DJKillaQueen]

Great post Burbage. I agree with your analysis entirely.

[Huguenot]

Well I'm always impressed by the energy of your opinions, but I can never quite make out a viable proposed alternative.

DJKQ seems to think the solution to social housing is to increase housing benefits and provide more social housing whilst capping private rent and creating jobs out of thin air.

The first two seem nonsensical, rent caps have a mixed outcome (sometimes good and sometimes bad), and the final point is simply one side of an increasingly polarised debate about austerity or investment that has no basis in provable fact - only hypothesis.

Creating jobs is a very successful strategy in Singapore, where government funds companies to expand their worker base and drive productivity. They don't pay welfare, they pay salaries.

In the UK I'm sure DJKQ would be the first to see this as an insult to the unemployed, christen it 'workfare' and stamp the boots of revolution!

My suspiscion is that DJKQ as at heart a profound believer in centralised soviet-style politics and social management - a system that only ever impresses in philosophical debates, and never fails to disappoint in practice.

At least 50% of Burbage's comment was a rant against administration and bureaucracy in general, with no proposed solution. Not difficult to 'get it right' in that context ;-)

[DJKillaQueen]

That's a bit unfair H......and I haven't quite said that. All I have said is that the present situation can not continue, which is rents increasingly outstripping salaries, too small of a percentage of the population in work to support the needs of the rest, and some people suffering severe hardship through no fault of their own.

I totally agree that the solutions are debateable, even if any exist.....and I'm happy always to engage in debate around those. The problems however are easy to identfy and they are real. I would counter that your solution is to do nothing and bash the poor even harder. Only a complete fool would fail to acknowledge the need for affordable housing for those who need it and I think even you would rather see more affordable housing, instead of HB being paid to private landlords to house people in the expensive private rented sector.

If nothing is done, the consequences will be increased homelessness, overcrowding and poverty, and an increased burden on the state.

I don't know where your comment jobs out of thin air comes from. I have long argued for investment in business and start up help, particularly to regenerate other areas of the country. I understand completely the difficulties involved but we have failed miserably to generate business and industry in the UK (outside of London) in recent decades.

''My suspiscion is that DJKQ as at heart a profound believer in centralised soviet-style politics and social management - a system that only ever impresses in philosophical debates, and never fails to disappoint in practice.''

That's just ridiculous and designed to provoke. Tell me, if Singapore gets it so right, what is the minimum wage in Singapore and what is the level of poverty and hardship? Do you even know?

Here's a detailed study for your amusement.... (it states that almost 30% of the population don't have enough income for daily essentials)....

http://13pangsh.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/singapore-poverty-inquiry.pdf

Perhaps you've never had a ill a parent H who needs full time care......which is what my brother became for my mother....and she was too wracked with pain for half her life to ever have had any prospect of supporting herself financially or otherwise. These are the kinds of people that find themselves at the bottom, through no fault of their own, and as a civilised society we need to be better balanced than we are to make sure that those who need it, are taken care of, and that we have enough people in employment to pay the required taxes to support it. And just because person A or B has succeeded where others fail doesn't mean everyone can. Just be thankful you are able to work, have a quality of life that is decent enough. Not everyone is so fortunate, particularly in Singapore.

So I will continue to speak out for the poor, not because I'm a self styled soviet communist, but because I have an ounce of humanity that makes me care enough to do so. Yes the issues are complex, and possible solutions even more so, because everything, including regulation has an impact on someone, somewhere. At the end of the day I argue for a fair society (fairness in both opportunity and reward), which is something we don't have at the moment (if ever we did). And that has nothing to do with left or right politics.....just common sense.

[Huguenot]

Sure thing on the voice for the poor, I don't doubt that, and of course I provoke you ;-) - I'm just not sure your proposals solve it.

Worse (from my point of view, not yours), I believe accommodation along with subsistence provision must become the role of centralised economic planning - although I give a 50 year window for that, not the next 5 years.

I just think that some of your views are too short term - a landlord who can't afford to reduce his rent is forced to sell or accommodate the loss. The aggrandisement of this buy-to-let individual as the new robber baron is weak. Just kill the tax breaks as I've always insisted.

I'm not sure that the redistribution of workforce is essentially wrong. Yes it's bad to families and communities, but I think we killed this bird in 1991. ED isn't a community where everyone knows their neighbour.

I retain my belief in universal healthcare, although I believe there is too much abdication to the 'authorities' on this.

For the record, I don't believe in austerity. I think it's now the time to move. I think quantitative easing could have been bumped through SME and driven employment. If you're printing money, give it to someone.

I don't believe in the 'rich gap', it can be killed through inflation without even blinking. I believe in allowing the median level being a satisfying lifestyle.

We still need aspiration and competition. Egalitarianism is bunkum, it demotivates. Equal opportunity is my mantra, I don't really give a shit about qualification so long as the person can get the fundamentals.

Jobs? Yes! Through workfare. I don't believe in job seekers allowance.

[DJKillaQueen]

lol....I've learned not take your provocations too personally H. For all of our battles (and our occasional moments of 'losing it' on both sides) I absolutely respect your passion for debate.

I think we are more on the same page than you might think. I agree that poverty, accomodation etc and solving those inequalities need centralised sconomic planning at the heart. It's in a way what the 60's reformists tried to do with the challenges they faced with sub-standard housing and the creation of the NHS for example. Their motive was to provide a better quality of life for all, so the motive was good in essence. But the aspects of the model that seemd to work at the time of say the creation of the welfare state don't work now. So I'm not adverse to things such as welfare reform per se. What irriatates me is that everything (and this is true of successive governments) is always reactionary, and at the point crisis, so the reform is always more extreme than is comfortable to bear. There is a total lack of planning or taking the long view. I entirely agree that it would take generations, maybe even 50 years, as you say to do anything meaningful. But of course by then...who knows what new challenges will have emerged.

I totally accept your points on rent capping and the impact on landlords. And to be fair to me I have always argued for measures that slow the rate of growth in house prices (primarily to allow salaries to catch up) expecting that to be a 30 year process too, rather than putting landlords in financial difficulty. There would still be growth but just not on the level there has been since the 80s. Having said that....nothing the current coalition is trying is steming the rise of house values or rents. It's a curiousity to me that in spite of three recessions and the severity of the current one (in three decades) that housing inflation has remained unscathed. And maybe that apparent invincibility keeps confidence high in bricks and mortar, and confidence is the key to any market staying boyant.

I also tend to think that any government is reluctant to reign it in because we are also facing a pensions crisis in the future and governments are quite happy to have people invested in property, because they can always tap into that equity, if the pension falls short. Nothing's clear cut......

I agree with your point on quantative easing and I also agree with your point about median level being a satisfying lifestyle. I've always considered excessively taxing the rich to be a red herring.....as though that somehow would be a solution to anything. I'm more interested in tax avoidance by the rich than how much they are actually taxed.

And I wholeheartedly agree on the equal opportunity mantra. Not everyone will make use of opportunity when they could do so and that is their choice, but let's at least make sure we can give everyone the choice and I think you'd agree there is still much work to be done in that respect.

JSA is only given on the condition the claimant makes an effort to find work. I'm a big believer in voluntary work for the unemployed, for lot's of reasons. And many unemployed people who want to work voluntarily are able to find something they enjoy doing too.

My brother, after giving up six years of his working life to be a full time carer to my mother then had a breakdown after her death. So at that point in time he needed the support of the mental health services and benefits etc (and me too) to keep him going. It takes time (sometimes years) for a person to recover from a breakdown, but he has had a lot of support from the agenices that were set up to support people like him and now he does voluntary work for the housing office as a scrutiny officer, and they send him all over to conferences and on courses. He still has his bad days and isn't well enough for full time work yet but he is at least keeping his hand in, doing something useful, which may well lead to a paid job with an understanding employer. I would defy anyone to begrudge their tax being spent on him whilst he gets well.

So voluntary work can be very good for some on health related benefits. I can absolutely understand why an employer wouldn't be interested in employing a person who can not guarantee from day to day if they'll be well enough to work. Voluntary work is flexible though, so I'd favour in some ways a more complex system of benefits, but one that offers additional payments above the base benefit for those that really are trying. And again, successive governments know what the issues really are, but have failed as yet to come up with any kind of strategy that works for the long term unemployed.

I personally think it is relatively easy to work out who is trying and who isn't, just as it is relatively easy to make decisions regarding illness (and I have to say the recent re-assessment process has been shockingly bad) and I know you would agree with me when I say that those that do have families should be supported a little by those families. Not everyone is lucky enough to be in that position but I do feel more could be done to make us as a culture more supportive towards our own kith and kin.

I guess the underlying conflict for me is that governments try to be efficient by creating one size fits all solutions, whereas I would argue that a more individual approach is the right way to help the unemployed....but of course...that costs money.

[????]

as an aside, I'm interested that many northeners (and others) seem to moan about a London Centric wealth distribution/economic powerhouse etc and yet seem to expect and want a top down London centric solution to the problemregional/northern civic economies. How about LAs in the north take a radical approach to attracting businesses ro invest in their regions rather than expecting the government to make the BBC or the Inlnd Revenue to relocate there. I think more imaginative and entreprenural regional governemnt approach is the way forward as some city and LAs have realised and been successfull at - Manchesters population and GDP per head is growing I belive for instytance. Leeds had success at an inner city retial rennisance in the 90s etc. Expecting London to dole out money is a bit passive.

[DJKillaQueen]

I don't think anyone is asking for London to dole out money. And a government is elected to govern for the UK, not just London (which it seems to forget from time to time). Central government funding exists for ALL areas of the country, not just London. Given the cuts LAs have had to endure recently, I can't see where investment can be found for new enterprise there. The banks were bailed out with public money yet still aren't lending to small or start up businesses either.

Manchester has seen some regeneration that is true, but it's been mainly helped by european funding. The relocation of media services to there and the expansion of the existing Granada studios have been a significant impetus, along with the branding of Manchester United, as too is the location of Manchester, well linked by motorway and canal to the sea ports of Liverpool and by motorway and rail to London.

Most LAs seek European funding for various regeneration projects. And in the past there have been regional (or as they were formerly known) metropolitain government. But Thatcher abolished them all. Even if they were to be reinstated, they would have to be funded just as LAs are funded from central government from all the taxes collected. The treasury doesn't just collect money from London taxpayers after all.

[Ridgley]

Great debate as ever DJKQ