Why should one household that earns £60k pa but lives in a council house have the right to pay less than another household that earns £60k, but for whatever reason is in the the private sector and paying market rates.
I would suggest there should be a taper on the “discount” on the rent for council houses. All rents set at market rate and then a discount applied based on earnings starting at 100% for the lowest earners and then reducing to 0% as you move up the scale.
Is there? If so, I’d think that the Conservatives would be the last people to be arbiters of what is fair for people living on council estates. This is a government that has a definition of fair so loose that it is trying to retroactively change the terms and conditions of previously agreed financial agreements (student loans), thinks it’s fair to remove benefit payments from disabled claimants and believed it was fair to introduce the bedroom tax.
At the same time, they’re letting multinational giants get away with not paying hundreds of millions, or in some cases, billions of pounds worth of revenue.
They know little about fairness, from my perspective.
Why should one household that earns £60k pa but lives in a council house have the right to pay less than another household that earns £60k, but for whatever reason is in the the private sector and paying market rates.
I would suggest there should be a taper on the “discount” on the rent for council houses. All rents set at market rate and then a discount applied based on earnings starting at 100% for the lowest earners and then reducing to 0% as you move up the scale.
The answer remains the same. Build more houses, and for fuck’s sake stop trying to penalise those that want to do well and stay in communities they love.
Pap is sticking up for his privileged, toffee-nosed mates who were born into this lap of luxury. They look down on ppl living in squalor, or struggling to pay market rates, and they just Laugh from their Council subsidised Palaces. Why don’t you build your own house, they say. Or rather get some mug to pay for it, build it, and then you can live in it forever on peppercorns rates. That is how the World Works for these Silver Spoon bros, who look down on Normal People.
Lack of low-cost housing and community cohesion are obviously factors; nevertheless, I suspect that if I earned £60,000 and rented a subsidised house I would feel bad for blocking a home for a more deserving family.
Whether I’d feel bad enough to actually move to a more costly place I can’t truthfully know.
One of the reasons people would stay put is to be near and around family members, be part of a support network. Another is being comfy in that environment. Perhaps some fervently believe in the principle of council housing and want to ensure that the property remains in council hands.
If the provision were adequate, I don’t think guilt would be a factor. Seemed alright 30 years ago. Sure, there were waiting lists, but nothing like they are now. I can remember many of my relatives getting places quicksmart in their early 20s in the early 1980s.
If the money had been reinvested into social housing, we’d have far fewer issues. Even now, the Conservatives are electing to prop up an artificially inflated market with more money, which ultimately keeps prices high. What’s bloody depressing is that there used to be a time, back when the Conservatives fancied themselves as paternalist, that they’d compete with Labour to see who could build the most.
I get pap’s points. But do generally find myself agreeing that those on incomes enough to support themselves should probably not block up what precious little social housing there is, whilst families with nothing are forced into B&B’s for months on end.
Obviously, as with most problems in this country, the problem stems from successive governments (both red & blue or blue & yellow) chrnically under investing in infrastructure.
This is why house prices are so high, why waiting lists are so long and why there is so much pressure on other services. We have either sold off too much and not replaced, failed to build when things were rosy or ideologically slashed away at the worst possible time (i.e. cutting whilst in recession is the wrong way to fix a problem).
As per, we won’t blame the rich, or the decision makers. Those that get the blame will be those with nothing/not very much. Or, of course, the immigrants.
What I would do if I was President, is I would make it Open Season on Planning Consents. I.e. If you’ve got land, you can build what the fuck you like on it. That would sort out Housing Prices in an instant. It might cause other problems I suppose, but you can’t make omelletes. Well, I can’t anyway. They keep coming out looking like Scrambled Egg.
I get pap’s points. But do generally find myself agreeing that those on incomes enough to support themselves should probably not block up what precious little social housing there is, whilst families with nothing are forced into B&B’s for months on end.
And this is where the source of the policy pain starts to get muddled. Waiting for a social house doesn’t usually put someone in a B&B. Most people on the waiting lists are in overcrowded accommodation, such as the house parents live in, etc.
Being evicted from your house could easily put you in a B&B. Ironically, with the levels set at 30K per household, this move could easily sink those “high earners”, leaving them in just as much shit as the people we say we’re trying to help.
As I said earlier, I’ve got a reasonable understanding of how these dynamics work. Priority has been traditionally based on need. If you bounce these people off the estate, then any need-based prioritisation for their replacements is going to plump the neediest people into those empty properties.
Superficially, it seems like a great policy, at least for the person getting the house. The reality is that if we proceed along those lines, we guarantee areas of low achievement, low expectation and low aspiration, where people are afraid to better themselves because they can’t afford to.
And those “high earners”? Most of them stay on the estates for one reason; to be close to family, often acting as a financial release valve for their less well off rellies. Any money you take from them is money they can no longer distribute.
As I said before, my gf is a Junior Doctor training to be a GP. The proposals would see her facing a 30% pay cut. That is a serious hit no matter who you are.
Has anyone seen that annoying automated videon produced by Facebook on their FB feed? I got one and I guess most of you with FB accounts got one too. Well, here’s David Cameron’s:
To be fair, I think it is pretty harsh to draw a link between Gideon and his brother’s actions. I’m sure my brother would be mortified and his good name dragged through the mud if he and his associates knew some of the things I’ve done.
