Frankly, yes. It’s not their house. It’s a subsidised rental of a house paid for out of MY taxes and everyone else’s. The owner of the house is the state; social housing is a state benefit. Ask shelter:
http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/housing_issues/Improving_social_housing/what_is_social_housingSocial housing provides affordable housingA key function of social housing is to provide accommodation that is <strong>affordable</strong> to people on low incomes. Rents in the social housing sector are kept low through state subsidy. The social housing sector is currently governed by a strictly defined system of rent control to ensure that rents are kept affordable.
It’s designed to prop up those who are earning less money and have a genuine need for housing. Frankly I feel sick when I see people earning huge amounts of money and living in a council house.
Not everyone wants a council house. You don’t get to choose the size or type of house, or the amenities that the house has, garden, garage etc, you don’t get to choose the position or area that you live in, you are pretty much told where you will live and the type of house that you will live in. Therefore, you don’t need to provide every single household with a council house. That isn’t the suggestion. There are suggestions for providing more housing, that don’t require a peasants revolt.
For instance, make it so that nationalised industries cannot sell off land that was once owned by the state, except to the state, thus when they find they do not need the land any more, for whatever reason, the state can buy the property back and create housing if it is deemed appropriate for housing to be built there.
For an example, the Olympic site was owned by British Rail, there are a number of homes being built on the site, there is capacity for over 5,000 homes. Yet none of them are social homes. They are stated as being “affordable” but that is purely subjective, and requires people to actually buy them, which is not always an option for everyone.
The fact is that we allow the continued idea that housing should be bought, and if you can’t buy, then that is your loss, we don’t promote social housing in anyway at all, and when given the opportunity, such as the Olympic site, we don’t make use of it.
This is a policy problem, not an issue of lack of resources, or lack of space.
My local authority has lost over 1,000 social homes in the last 3 years, about 300 a year, some to Right to Buy others through regeneration that has resulted in the destruction of tower blocks. I am not complaining I am glad those blocks have gone. There has been no replacement of these lost homes, and this is replicated across the country. No new social homes are being built.
This is due to a policy not to provide.
Now we have painted ourselves into a corner where there is a severe shortage of social homes and instead of attacking the policy that got us here, we wish to attack those in social homes and try and strip them of whatever rights they may have.
I don’t agree with that description of being subsidised.
I have put in a FOI request to my Council to find out their profit and loss on rental properties and hopefully I will get a reply, and we will see just how much they are losing on the rental properties that they own.
Yes they are kept low, but I do not believe that the cost outweighs the price that people pay.
“ARCH has been arguing for a number of years for a fairer funding system as at the moment a substantial number of us are in what we call negative subsidy, so the Government effectively takes money away from us every year to plough back into other sectors. My local authority loses about £2 million a year and when you try to explain that to councillors and tenants that we don’t actually get the rent we collect, that we give £2 million of that back every year to the Government, they look at you in complete disbelief.”
You don’t think there’s a lack of resources or space for social housing in central london? Building new homes on previously industrial land is expensive, just cleaning up the land cost a fortune (I’ve worked on a few inner city private/social housing projects on former industrial sites). If the governement aren’t subsidising then where are all these millions of pounds coming from?
There are two answers to this, firstly, the last Government ran a failed scheme. The plan was to build homes for £30,000, the homes cost £30,000, but the land added to the cost and eventually those homes were sold for £250,000, once you remove the cost of the land itself, and even if you factor in double the price we are still only talking £60,000.
Secondly, social homes are not subsidised, as the piece above described, social homes actually put money back into the Government pot…now there are issues with that, like for instance 70% of most social housing in deprived areas is occupied by people in receipt of Housing Benefit so really that is just a back and forth of money that previously existed, however, it doesn’t need to be that way.
If we accept that, and we accept an average weekly rent of about £90 (I think this is conservative btw).
That means that in 12 years, those homes will have paid for themselves, if we take the higher cost value of £60,000, if we can actually build them for £30,000, as the scheme succeeded in doing, then that is merely 6 years.
I am quite happy to change the way that social housing is allocated so that less of it is funded by Housing Benefit.
Noble effort, but you are forgetting at least one major point - cost of capital. Councils have a significant amount of capital tied up in owning council properties. They may not have paid much for their housing, but they could sell it for an awful lot. Also, don’t forget that a lot of council properties are high rise towers. Maintenance costs on those are very high, especially considering that they are now getting towards the end of their useful life, and rebuilds will be unaffordable, so maintain them they must.
Bottom line - if the rent isn’t a market rent (regardless of your view of market rents) its subsidised. And don’t forget that one of the factors pushing rent prices up is the fact that council tenants are subletting, reducing the availability of council housing - its a viscious circle, isn’t it…
Your Primark bag may represent the true cost, but goes nowhere towards the true value of a Gucci bag. Primark can put out complete **** and no-one grumbles when it breaks because the prices are low, and the value of the brand is in prices. When a Gucci bag breaks, the owners go ape-**** and demand back more than they paid, because you have expectations from the bag. Ergo, its value is in more than simply the cost of the raw materials.
Same with housing. The price reflects the value (including scarcity of the main raw material - developable land), not the ‘cost’. Are you seriously suggesting that we move to an entirely cost based method of trade? In which case what really is the point?
Same with housing. The price reflects the value (including scarcity of the main raw material - developable land), not the ‘cost’. Are you seriously suggesting that we move to an entirely cost based method of trade? In which case what really is the point?
[quote]
There is a moral, ethical case for a cost based methods of trade in relation to those things which are basic necessities - food, shelter, medical drugs - this is an active moral and political debate and not a hypothetical one.
On the other hand If someone wants to spend a huge amount of money on a luxury item like a Gucci bag or a Ferrari which is about vanity rather than human necessity then yeah - subject them to the market.
Face it - your free unregulated market which was supposed to solve everything and meet all our needs has failed totally in an area of a basic human necessity like housing - it hasn’t only failed - it’s actually made things worse by hugely inflating prices and making housing unaffordable - which is a source of frustration and misery for growing numbers of people - particularly those who want to start families and are having to stall until they can get together the huge deposits needed to put a mortgage down on some over-priced shitbox.
We need more housing stock, the market has failed to provide it - certain aspects of vital national infrastructure like housing (and transportation but that’s another debate) can’t be left to the vagaries of the free market - they require strategic long term planning and cross-party consensus grounded in common sense and avoiding any partisan or idealogical bias.
Actually, I believe we’ve had this out before (not personally, but on the boards). We don’t really need more housing stock - we need a redistribution of housing stock. House prices are so completely and utterly up the wall because we have an older empty nester generation sitting on family housing. This restricts the supply, pushing up the cost. What we need is for the cost of housing to be truly reflective of the use (i.e. to recognise when housing is a necessity, and when it is a luxury). The council tax system spectacularly fails to achieve this (in some instances encouraging housing as a luxury), and the stamp duty system also fails, as it is strictly done on price. There is actually only a small under-supply of housing in the UK.
[quote] NinjaJunkie (03/01/2012)
[quote] Bobzilla (03/01/2012)
Same with housing. The price reflects the value (including scarcity of the main raw material - developable land), not the ‘cost’. Are you seriously suggesting that we move to an entirely cost based method of trade? In which case what really is the point?
That’s an interesting, original and constructive approach - thank you
If such a policy was promoted - is it not likely that it would come under fierce attack from libertarian and (propertied) establishment interests (spearheaded by the tories) who would charachterise it as a heavy handed left wing attempt at social engineering?
Hmmm no reply yet from Bobzilla - maybe the realisation that the total and catastrophic failure of your beloved markets has forced you into a solution which could be charachterised by the right as a classic left wing attempt at social engineering has blown your neo-liberal mind . . . :Whistling:
I had the same situation earlier where the complaint was…why should those people have it.
I turned that around and pointed out that the argument is just as valid when you ask why people like David Cameron should have the wealth of his family.
Yes people do grumble and they are fully entitled to rely on the law to return the bag for a full refund.
You are no more entitled to more than a full refund from a Gucci bag than you are a Primark bag. You may be able to claim that it should be of a better quality, therefore very minor defects may amount to an unsatisfactory quality, where such minor defects might not amount to such on a Primark bag…but you are not legally entitled to more.
So by suggesting that we remove the cost of Land, which is artificially high due to the fact that 70% of it is owned by 1% of the population, this is somehow akin to suggesting that we move entirely to a cost based method of trade?
Seems to me that you are using an exaggerated form to dismiss an argument that is sound in nature to what it was created to apply to.
Wow people are still talking about bags… Must be nice bags. He only gave them as an example.
Anyway just came back to this thread to give Kaos a Hi5 as its still going. Would have thought people would have lost interest by now. But my letterbox post still beats this one :w00t:. Immature but I’m bored :D.
That’s an interesting, original and constructive approach - thank you
If such a policy was promoted - is it not likely that it would come under fierce attack from libertarian and (propertied) establishment interests (spearheaded by the tories) who would charachterise it as a heavy handed left wing attempt at social engineering?
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With the current restrictive planning laws the scope for redistribution of housing stock is limited. If planning made it easier to convert large single occupancy houses and empty property to flats it might help in areas of high housing demand.
With the current restrictive planning laws the scope for redistribution of housing stock is limited. If planning made it easier to convert large single occupancy houses and empty property to flats it might help in areas of high housing demand.
[/quote]
define large single occupancy houses.
what is large for you?
Some houses I’ve seen (and the house I’m living in right now, a 3-bedroom house), is ridiculously small for a ‘house’. it may be that coming from Germany I have higher standards, but seriously, some houses here are a joke for ‘large’.
Yes, someone asked a question and you ignored it and answered with a slightly related different question - good to see the law school paying off.
In answer to your question - there is obviously a difference between someone choosing to give their wealth to their offspring (or any other person of their choosing) and someone recieving a benefit from the government (regardless of whether there is an actual cash cost, it is a limited resource), acting on behalf of a nation, who can choose to give it to whoever they see fit - my argument would be that they should give it to those most deserving, in my opinion people struggling to make ends meet deserve subsidised housing more than people with well paid jobs who could afford to pay market rates.
This sort of answer stems from a lack of knowledge and understanding of the housing problems.
This already happens in the private market, massively, because you can make a lot more money from a multi-occupancy dwelling than you can from a single dwelling. A 4-Bedroom house might be rented for £300 a week, but you can get £80-100 for one room.
Even if you ONLY include the bedrooms, that is an extra £80-100 a week and most people that do this will also change the living or dining area to another room, boosting the money made to £160-200 extra a week. Yes there are other costs involved, but once you have the rooms running, you can make more money.
The problem with social housing is completely different.
For instance.
The waiting list in my borough for a 1-2 bedroom flat is roughly 7-9 years. (Dependent on where, ground is longer than 7th and above)
The waiting list in my borough for a 3-4 Bedroom house is 16 years. Roughly about double the average waiting time for a 1 bedroom place. Information Here
We don’t need to break up more large housing to accommodate multi-occupancy…what we need to do is the exact opposite, which is make it ever more restrictive for buy-to-let to be a way in which people can make money, by making it ever more difficult to break up properties in this way, by ever more difficult, I mean ever more expensive in terms of taxes paid.
:w00t:. Immature but I’m bored :D.