Consultation on the future of council housing in Southwark

[TE44]

http://news.sky.com/story/1089813/bedroom-tax-blamed-for-womans-suicide

This woman left a suicide note blaming goverment, after struggling to pay her bedroom tax.

Of course, there are many things that lead to this act, but there are many people

who are struggling day to day with mental and physical health problems who

are facing losing there homes. I cannot understand how tackling the issues of

under occupied houses with bedroom tax without any attempt to consult or offer

alternative housinng for people in this situation.

[DJKillaQueen]

That's very sad and not that rare. 1300 people have died after failing an ATOS assessment (since its introduction). People ARE dying because of this government's reforms. If a person is living on the breadline (and benefits are just that) and on top of that are suffering from depression (a condition that the government doesn't think is a disabling illness btw) then it's not hard to see why trying to find an extra ?10 a week for rent can be the tipping point of despair.

The bedroom tax is nonsense of course, designed by people who have no idea what they are doing. And if they could find a way to reduce basic rate benefit (the ?71 or so of JSA) they would. They can't do that without legal review though, which might well decide that people need MORE to live on. So instead they attack periphery benefits.

With regard to councils, when they sell through right to buy...they are not getting anything near the market value of the property. The Tory government have always decided that massive discounts should be given to council tenants (Labour reduced the discount - the coalition have made if bigger than ever). WHY? It's designed to render councils incapable of replacing that stock. WHY? Because we have affluent and ignorant tories in power who think we should return to a Dickensian world of overcrowded slums for the poorest, provided by private landlords.

There was no concultation regarding the bedroom tax with local authorities, to a) find out how many properties each authority held that were under occupied and b) to find out if local authorities had enough alternative smaller accomodation to rehouse people to. Incomptant for sure but also an indication of just how nasty this government is. They really do not care if the housing market can not provide suitable affordable alternatives.

[Chillaxed]

"With regard to councils, when they sell through right to buy...they are not getting anything near the market value of the property. The Tory government have always decided that massive discounts should be given to council tenants (Labour reduced the discount - the coalition have made if bigger than ever). WHY? It's designed to render councils incapable of replacing that stock. WHY? Because we have affluent and ignorant tories in power who think we should return to a Dickensian world of overcrowded slums for the poorest, provided by private landlords."

I don't follow the logic here. How does the right-to-buy scheme render councils incapable of replacing that stock?

[DJKillaQueen]

Because tenants are given anything up to ?100k off the market value. Imagine if you owned a home worth ?200k but were only allowed to sell it for ?100k. Discounts can be up to 70% of the market value. Labour reduced the discounts, the coalition have made them bigger than ever.

Also when Thatcher's government first introduced this policy, councils weren't allowed to spend any of the money from the sales at all on house building (Labour changed that). It was an out and out attempt to reduce social housing.

Over the past thirty years around two and a half million homes have been lost to the private market through right to buy, and worse still, a third of those sold homes are now in the hands of private landlords. The son of one former Tory Housing Minister owns 40 ex local authority homes alone.

There are around five million people nationwide on social housing waiting lists. There's no doubting that the right to by scheme has been a disaster for affordable housing in the UK (but that was the point). It's worth also adding that the bigger and better homes (especially houses) were amongst the first to go. That too is why there is a shortage of council owned family sized homes.

So we now have the crazy situation where councils are paying out to house homeless families in properties they once owned at four times the rent they charge the tenants living in properties they still own. Meanwhile we have a government who in spite of knowing all this are reducing what they will pay to house the low waged and unemployed and disabled. The result is a return to overcrowding and poor sanitation and increased costs to local authorities in trying to manage it all.

A few days ago Stephanie Bottrill walked under a lorry on the M6 because 'she couldn't afford to live'. The welfare reforms had just been too much for her. The bedroom tax was the tipping point. We should all be ashamed that is happening in our country, from a government that wasn't even elected with the majority mandate of the people. Cameron et al did not earn or win the right to govern in anything but a hung parliament.

We need more affordable housing, and fast. That's number one. And number two, we need the bedroom tax abolished, or at least waived if a local authority doesn't have suitable accomodation to rehouse someone. There needs also be a grace period of adjustment, so that only those who genuinely have no desire to adjust, by turning down reasonable offers of alternative accomodation, are punished. Driving people out of their homes of 18 years and longer without any sensitivity or proper alternative is just nasty.

[Chillaxed]

Thanks. I've no doubt you're more knowledgeable than me or most on this subject, so bear with (educate!) me.

If you are taking a council tenant out of the pool by selling them a home, why do you need to replace that stock? Or, with the proceeds of the sale (albeit reduced) shouldn't you be able to at least partically replace that stock?

I ask as my first reaction to council homes being sold at a discount to council tenants is not that it's a plot to return to Dickensian slums. What are the steps in between?

[LondonMix]

DJKillaQueen Wrote:

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

> And number two, we need the bedroom

> tax abolished, or at least waived if a local

> authority doesn't have suitable accomodation to

> rehouse someone. There needs also be a grace

> period of adjustment, so that only those who

> genuinely have no desire to adjust, by turning

> down reasonable offers of alternative

> accomodation, are punished. Driving people out of

> their homes of 18 years and longer without any

> sensitivity or proper alternative is just nasty.

I agree with the above entirely!

I agree generally with the sentiment that everyone should be housed without over-crowding etc and this should be judged by need. However, I wonder if the money it would take to create all the housing demanded in London (including the infrastructure spending needed to keep up with the expanding population) wouldn?t be better spent on creating jobs elsewhere in the country. Maybe London will just turn into a super-metropolis, which is fine I guess but it seems like abandoning the rest of the country..

The right to buy scheme is a tough one as I?ve seen both sides of it. I know people who bought their homes that way, fell on hard times, had to sell them to someone else and burned through the profit the made. It didn?t lift them out of poverty at all and now they are being housed in private accommodation on housing benefit. On the other hand, one of my colleague's Irish-Catholic family was lifted out of poverty by it (according to him).

If right to buy meant that the people who bought would never need social housing again (nor would their children) then it would be a good idea. Allowing people to own their own homes rather than rent them off the council is a good thing. But life isn?t as simple as all that!

[DJKillaQueen]

There are no in-between steps really. For the first 12 years of right to buy, councils were not allowed by law to reinvest the money from the sale of homes in house building or buying of new stock. So none were built.

Secondly the demand for affordable housing has not decreased with the sale of social housing for the following reasons.

Traditionally, people moved from social housing when they could afford to buy a home in the private market. But that was when house prices were still within the realms of average salaries. My parents for example did that. They were only allowed to borrow 2.5 times my fathers income and they bought a run down terraced house. My dad was a bus driver. Today a bus driver borrowing 2.5 times his annual salary could not afford to buy anything....let alone a three bedroomed house anywhere. So for that reason there is an increased demand for social housing.

In the 80's two things happened. Deregulation of mortgage lending restrictions and cheap credit which led to a housing boom in the private sector and the sell off of social housing at discounts to get lower waged families on the property ladder.

The result 30 years on (in simple terms) are house prices that are no longer in the range of most average salaries (house price inflation) and a growing need for affordable housing with a shrinking level of affordable housing available, including council owned property.

And when first time buyers dry up, the government and banks just create another scheme, like part by pert rent, buy to let and now grants for first time buyers....anything to keep the prices going up and up. We've had three recessions in as many decades, and the housing market has been barely touched by any of them.

I use the Dickensian analogy for good reason. At present we have real issues with over crowding in small properties, especially council properties where entire families are housed in small flats. There are no affordable houses for them to rent. The kind of property I'm taking about has two teenagers sharing bunkbeds in one a room not big enough to house a wardrobe too. And this is something the government now demands.

These small dwellings have real issues with condensation. Often low waged tenants can not afford to heat them daily which exacerbates the problem and it's not uncommon to find mould and mildew covering whole areas of walls and ceilings. Mould IS a serious health issue. How do children also find the space they need to study, or do homework in those kinds of conditions too? The conditions people live in has a huge impact on many things. Damp, cold, mouldy and overcrowded living spaces are not unlike anything in Dickens time.

Almost one million people in full time work need housing benefit to pay some of their rent. Again this was unheard of 30 years ago. Governments, instead of recognising that it's the unaffordability of hosuing that creates the squeeze, instead choose restricting benefits in some lame attempt to squeeze landlords into reducing their rents. But many landlords can't reduce their rents because they are still paying mortgages on those properties and in reality, what has happened is that landlords have decided to no longer rent to the low waged or unemployed...which in turn increases demand for affordable housing.

It's a complex issue...brought about by many things. The solutions are not quick, cheap or easy either but it can't continue as it is.

[LondonMix]

Landlords can't set rents to cover their mortgage. It works the other way around. Demand for housing is what drives rents. Enough people who own houses and have lost them to the bank can attest to that.

Similarly, mortgage companies have put in covenants in their contracts for many buy to let deals that they can't rent to tenants on benefits (which is really just discrimination dressed up like business).

I think the point Chillaxed is making which is a fair one is that if people hadn't been given the right to buy, they would still be in social housing so that in and of itself hasn't created a shortage.

Demand for social housing has gone up for all the reasons you've mentioned so all things being equal more social housing is needed than before, but that would be the case whether certain people had bought their homes or not because those people are either now living in their homes or would still be renting from the council. The two issues aren't as closely related to each other as you make out in your post above. However, I agree that property ownership doesn't forever end the cycle.

[DJKillaQueen]

I've always said LM that investment in things like small businesses and anything that gets people working for themselves and in turn creating jobs has to be part of any plan to reform anything. And I've yet to see any government in my living memory do anything significant in this respect. All I've seen is 30 years of a shrinking economy and the decimation of any kind of industry. So I completely agree with you.

The irony is that homes have been demolished in my home town of Liverpool because so many people left the city (two thirds of them over the last 30 years) to find work. Again I laugh at governments suggesting people move to find jobs because we've all been doing that for decades. They really do not have any clue of life outside the South East.

I think at the time, right to buy seemed like a great idea, but over time I think it's not been a successful one. It's a bit like the sub-prime market in the US. You are trying to sell a lifestyle to people who can't really afford it, and have no comfort zone if circumstances change or things go wrong. Another crucial social change though is the loss of Jobs for life. That was a central factor in enabling lower income families to buy their homes. Job insecurity and employment by fixed period contract has also pushed up the cost to the welfare state. For me it shows a basic lack of understanding by those that dream up these things of how difficult upward social mobility is for those at the lower end of it all.

[DJKillaQueen]

I take your point on right to buy and tenant replacement, but I'd still argue that there are 2.5 million homes that were formerly owned by the council that no longer aren't and that a high proportion of them are not occupied by the tenant that bought the property either.

It's hard to know if right to buy had never happened, if those tenants would still be there (so not freeing up any properties anyway) or if tenants would have bought in the private sector instead (again increasingly unlikely as those property prices soared). It's definitely a point worth considering though, so you have got me rethinking that one a little.