Has the ED housing market reached the bottom yet ( II )

[TheePope]

Sidestepping the debate above, I'd been wondering what that curved flat, shoe-horned into a garden at the top of Dog Kennel Hill would be going for, and now I know.

?445k gets you 3 beds and a very odd shaped kitchen.

http://www.winkworth.co.uk/Sale/WNKDUL000886?mode=Sale&type=flat&priceMin=20000&priceMax=1000000000&offID=dc6abe7a-7da5-4cf4-968b-5bcd41aa130c&pageIndex=0

Now back to the council v private v Thatcher debate.

[Keef]

Thatcher was given a house in Dulwich once, wonder what that's worth these days? ;-)

[Huguenot]

I'm flabbergasted Chav.

Are you honestly trying to tell me that a resident in social housing at 400 quid a month (and probably receiving more than that back in other social support) is paying more into the public purse than someone on 30 grand a year paying 1000 pounds tax a month and making no claim on income or residential support?

The crying shame is that you probably do believe this. Whilst everybody else is bailing out over 50% of social housing recipients of working age who do no paid work, they're sat there justifying it in this outrageous mockery of logic.

We need to get a grip that we cannot blame a 'government' as an oppressive entity for the fact that the public do not feel it's convenient to bail out loafers with their own hard work.

The key element in the 'Defence' case is 'need'. I don't accept that a CWALD needs social housing, and I certainly don't accept that your daughter should be demotivated by having it promised on to her next! Talk about incentivising failure.

[*Bob*]

Has the ED Housing Market Thread reached the bottom yet? If only..

But it's great fun watching all the pantomime villains and heroes, doom-mongers and blind optimists come forth to wag fingers, shake heads (or bury them in the sand) and tell everyone they told them so.

I do enjoy dipping in, despite having hardly any any interest in house prices whatsoever.

[indiepanda]

Keef Wrote:

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

> To clarify, I am NOT an opponent of council

> housing, I just wish it was more fair, and I don't

> think anyone should have a right to it based

> simply on the fact that their parents had it.

Wow, I really didn't know this. I imagined all council housing would be means tested in some way given the limited supply.

How can this be a logical use of our resources?

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

My kids are all doing quite well, and no I don't get any subsidy to live here thanks.

I've always worked and so have my kids, but I feel justified in claiming my rights to a council house as my Grandfather and Faher were Labour Party activists and fought most of their lives for everything Thatcher and Blair have been trying to dismantle.

You obviously didn't read the report you attached tho, because even though it's conclusion was weak and they didn't look at retaining rent receipts or capital receipts as part of the solution, they did say that mixed income council tenants are needed to regenerate areas of high council housing. So you see, I'm doing my bit.

I could have sodded off to Kent years ago, but tried my best to stay and fight for my community - until I moved here 2 yrs ago and gave up.

After doing the 9 to 5 for the past year and a half, I'm thinking of going part-time and getting involved in community fights again, not here tho, in Peckham (through the church) as you guys seem perfectly able to fight your own battles.

Oh yes, thought I'd mention, I left the Green Party cos they elected a leader and I don't agree with centralisation and follow the leader - so I'm not doing Politics any more.

[Jeremy]

I don't think anyone is anti-council housing as such... nobody is saying that council housing shouldn't exist.

But I think a lot of us feel that the councils (and maybe central government) should have more strict criteria for eligibility. Council housing should be for people who cannot afford private housing - not for people who just don't want to pay for private housing - and eligibility should be re-evaluated periodically. I really don't see how anyone could objectively argue otherwise!

[lard]

Wot he said ^

Nobody minds a fair system, it is when people abuse/work the system to the detriment of others that is the problem.

In addition, the system itself needs a few changes. These stories of housing benefit of 90k a year highlight some of the problems.

There needs to be a balance between providing assistance to those that need it, whilst also providing incentive to work and the subsequent "freeing up" of social accommodation. Nobody should be better off not working than working. That's just not fair.

I am sure you "do your bit" etc CWALD, but the justification given regarding your "right" because your father and grandfather were activists is a little obtuse. Wouldn't their "fight" have been for those that need it most?

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

No.

Council housing was housing for all, until the 1980's when policy makers ghettoised it by selling off as much as they could and restricting access to it so that only people in the most need (read - people with problems) could get a tenancy.

This was a deliberate policy to try to destroy council housing which was seen as a threat to the profits of land speculators and private landlords.

My Grandfather was in the Labour party from the age of 14 and was a councillor and Alderman of Liverpool for years. He fought alongside others in the Labour party for council housing for all. When he died in about 1980, his funeral was massive, he'd fought all of his life for his community and hundreds of people came out to pay their respects.

That's why after being a council tenant for 25 years, have not been able to disrespect his memory and excercise my right to buy (plus my morbid fear of being indebted to a bank) - but I am not totaly against right to buy - I just think if a tenant sells, the council should be able to buy it back, minus the discount and the receipts from sales should go into building or buying up new stock.

[lard]

I suspect there are still some people fighting the war in Vietnam too.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Keep grinning - I'm sure you won't be affected by the lemming driven housing/banking bubble.

[Jeremy]

Council housing for all? That's an interesting idea, but I don't know where all the money would come from. I'm pretty sure that the rental income from council properties would not cover the building costs (i.e. they are subsidised in real terms).

Regarding right to buy - it does have its upsides... I've lived on council estates before, and there is a genuine advantage, as it helps prevent the "ghettoisation" CWALD mentioned... mixing transient tenants with the more permanent residents. But I agree that when they come to sell them on, it should either be sold back to the council, or the profit should be shared.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

On the question of funding:

"With access to lower interest rates and by using in-house expertise councils can build, manage and maintain homes cheaper than the private alternatives.

Investment via stock transfer may take most of the expenditure ?off balance sheet? but it is more expensive (?1,300 more per home than if the council did the work according to the Public Accounts Committee) and there is a large hidden cost to the public ? which is ?on balance sheet?. The public loses the asset (and the continuing value from it after 30 years which is not included in the transfer price calculation); Treasury pays more in Housing Benefit costs as tenants? rents increase, and there are increasingly hefty early redemption payments on loans before the sell-off can take place.

This is on top of the army of consultants paid out of the public purse to advise and ?facilitate? transfer.

Good and excellent performing councils have unnecessarily spent tenants? money on setting up a new private company (often acquiring new offices, expensive re-branding and increasing senior managers? pay) just to meet the government ?arms length? criteria to access the additional money on offer to ALMOs.

Millions more have been poured into endless headline grabbing shared homeownership schemes ? priced beyond the means of most in housing need. The latest example is ?key worker? homes built with public subsidy being sold on the private market because they were unaffordable to key workers.

Public subsidy that once went into council housing and was then diverted to Registered Social Landlords is now on offer to private developers to add to their profits. There has been no public debate on this policy shift.

By finally dropping a dogmatic insistence on promoting private alternatives to council housing Ministers can meet the aspirations of millions for first class council housing and save money at the same time.

[Jeremy]

Yes, yes... I'm sure that councils can build and manage properties cheaper than the private sector. But that doesn't mean that the cost is so low, that it can be covered by the rents. In fact, your final chapter seems to state that council housing is indeed subsidised.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

It was in the dim and distant past, but the subsidies have shifted to privately owned, so called 'social landlords' and now outright to private developers.

Snouts in toughs again.

[Shaggy]

I think I may be missing something here. Why should anybody able to look after themselves be housed by the state? And isn't this all a little off-topic? Surely all Chav is saying (although couched in dogma) is ``You people with mortgages may be stuffed, but I'm not - fuck you all?" So what? Who cares?

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

What about the subsidies to the developers/buy to let landlords/banks etc?

Ok, so why should anyone who can look after themselves be educated/treated and operated on by the state?

Why are the NHS, state education and indeed a national army/air force/navy paid for collectively?

Why don't we all just pay for our own health/education/militia?

[Shaggy]

Quite right. Why? Scrap it all. Not sure about the army though, as the French might walk in and take over.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Do away with the police and secret services too and I'm with you.

I'll round up my mates and get right on with the redistribution of land and resources myself!

[neilson99]

Interesting line of debate, hope I'm not intruding...

I'm with those here that think that council housing should go to those who need it i.e. can't afford decent standard of housing due to their earnings. I;m more than happy that my taxes go to help those in real need, that have lost their way, to provide a safety net to the must vulnerable. Indeed I think its a moral duty to do so. Why there is a more general assumption that after one passes a certain threshold you should entitled to subsidy at the expense of the wider community baffles me. And the arguement that a council property should pass down the family line is plain ludicrous. I could point to a good number of people working in the City on very good salaries (for the time being anyway) who would admit to be from a "working class" background, or at least their parents or grandparents were. If I'm earning ?100k plus a year why should I have the right to a council house just because my folks lived there?

I actually would also debate the necessity for council provision viz management/regulation on the basis of standard. I don't think that there can be much debate in the fact that standards of housing in the private sector are better than in the public sector. Yes there is a profit motivation, and one may argue thats is snouts in the trough, but thats exactly what keeps the housing stock standard higher to some degree. If private corporations can run hospitals, schools, waste disposal, utilities, why not all housing stock? Regulated and managed by the councils.

BTW, CWLD - surely some inherent contradiction by not believing in centralised political system with a leader and yet advocating state operation of housing, NHS, education etc...?

[SteveT]

Admin' why isn't this thread removed and put into the property department of ed forum?

Why under local gossip?

[ruffers]

http://www.discogs.com/release/328892

Lounge.

Wrong thread you say?

[Huguenot]

Ah, SteveT, your contribution is to slap the debaters down? There's a constructive response!

If you don't want to listen then please, there are plenty of other threads to follow?

This is a perfectly reasonable discussion of the allocation of housing resource in ED. It relates to ED prices in that it alters supply and demand variables. It uses macroeconomic debates to populate local economic issues.

I'll be perfectly happy in the Lounge of course, it gets more traffic and raises the profile - I just don't understand why you're being so sniffy?

[Keef]

I'll round up my mates and get right on with the redistribution of land and resources myself!

What, without being voted in to such power? Wouldn't that make you a bit of a dictator? ;-)

[iggy_pop]

I suspect Liverpool in the 50s was a very different environment to East Dulwich in the 21st Century. I'm sure I'm not the only one that thinks that CWALD would like to live in a museum..

I'm surprised he's using the internet. He could make a perfectly good sandwich board from a couple of 'For Sale' signs and deliver his anachronistic points of view just as well..