How is this for a housing fix?

Off-topic
1

Given that the cost of housing is a big problem in this country, was looking at the Tesco thread and I realised that a young person living in a bedsit would be paying from 40% to 50% of their income in rent alone if they were working on the wages that Tesco pays, just as an example, I had this thought.

I discovered recently, after the misleading statements about subsidised social housing, that my local council was spending less on maintenance and management for social housing than they were gathering in rent, far less. They are creating a profit of about £56m a year from social housing.

I also discovered that they don’t get to keep this money.

So my idea is: Why not let the Local Councils keep the rent they collect from social housing, but earmark it for use only in social housing, add a proviso that they cannot lower rents, but must spend the money within a 3 year period, so money gained in 2012 must be spent by 2015.

This would give my Local Authority roughly £56m a year to spend on renovation, regeneration and buying properties to convert to social housing, whether they be derelict properties, ex-commercial or brown field sites etc, and if they needed more they could pool the money from a couple of years to create a very large amount to buy up expensive land if necessary.

Lastly, how about an incentive for the Councils. In 10 years, they can keep the profit they make from social housing to spend on other services within their boroughs. This would create an incentive for Councils to increase their social housing stock. The more homes they have in the future, the more profit they will make, the more they will be able to spend in their boroughs for the people that live there.

It will create more social housing and in the long run will allow people who live in a borough, to see an increase in services which they have paid for through their rent.

Anyone see any downsides to this proposal?

2

The destitute & homeless should go and sleep in their local Tesco store - they get a roof over their heads and free snacks; Tesco get to improve their caring, sharing image.

2 birds, one stone. :slight_smile:

3

Wow. Kaos, you’re like a broken record player, repeating over and over and unable to change record. Wouldn’t be so bad if the record was something decent :slight_smile:

4

I am seriously liking this idea lol :w00t:

5

+1 …I’m having trouble finding a new place that I can afford…and I already feel like I spend most my time in Tescos…hmmm… :laugh:

6

No offence mate but the same could be said for you…

He’s actually finding stuff out that most of us would not even be bothered to look for, putting such trust in a system that no one really knows how it works. All you’ve done is criticise the majority of his posts with the same comment?

I agree that Kaos can argue points to death :smiley: but what’s the point of an online forum if you can’t discuss…? He’s just sounding off an idea because he happens to be on this site… If you find a thread boring, I don’t see the need to comment on it, just let it die a natural death.

And if you don’t find social issues decent, well that’s you… I personally do and no matter where I get the info from, info is always useful, whether it be to form my own opinions or actually do something about it!

@Kaos - how did you come across this info? Would be useful to have a link…

7

Which bits!

http://www.newham.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/33008C23-8622-4E3A-8FDE-CDA7960A86DF/0/HRABusiness.pdf

Is an audit of Newham Council’s costs in regard to housing

http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=9555106

Is the link to the question of the money not being usable by the local council.

Tesco’s pays between £12-15k for their Shelf Stackers, and bedsit rent is about £500 a month, which equates to £6k a year. (Bear in mind that tax is paid on some of that) so 40-50% of income.

Not sure what else I have said that might need a reference.

Szymon, did the housing crisis magically fix itself over the last couple of weeks then? Is this no longer a problem in our society? If it is then I will happily stop talking about it, but considering I don’t think it has fixed itself, I will continue to discuss and generate ideas that might help to fix it.

I can see why that might seem a bit silly to you…no actually I can’t.

8
9

Nah I am a fair weather rider in my old age. I tend to avoid riding when it is rubbish weather.

Am thinking about taking the battery out the bike and giving it a charge though, flat as a pancake right now, but the weather is set to improve near the end of the week and might just get to the point where I can go for a ride and enjoy it.

10

Sounds like a very sensible idea, so will probably never happen:ermm:

11

I put up the piece for responses, and I realised myself that my maths was out, I forgot about the management, and the planned repairs.

The total my council would have, if you took just the dwelling rents and the costs of maintenance and management, would be £24m.

Still a hefty sum to be used, but half of my original claim. Just putting this up for clarity.

12

The Government under Thatcher’s made what you say the way it is, so all I am saying is now you have to find out why Thatcher dictated this mandate before you could argue about dismantling it.

Just saying. I have no idea why she did it, but you’re up against a Tory demigod countering her political ghost…

13

Kaos like your thinking mate but personally I reckon the only way to sort the S**t out there is force a reset of everything…as follows…

step 1) Stop benefits!..and replace with subsidised wages…min wage £10 per hour…companies pay the £5.93 or whatever it is and the government tops up to £10…as each year passes the companies contribution goes up…the governments goes down…overall this works out cheaper than paying out for rent, council tax income support jsa and the rest of it…plus…when the government taxes on these earnings they get their money back :slight_smile: The above would be for british residents only…if you come to work here from abroad there will be no subsidy from the government and your minimum wage should be set at £15ph wholely picked up by the company…this would encourage them to employ uk people…and would not affect high skilled europeans(hrrr herr schmidt)… coming in and helping the economy.

It would simply mean that your average cleaner/street sweeper, burger flipper would be an incentivised uk resident getting £400 a week for their trouble :slight_smile:

Step 2) Cap private rent to a level no more than 10% above what council rents are…This will stop hawking landlords taking the P and charging rent which far exceeds normal peoples income…the void between social and private housing is as much as 50% for the same amount of bricks and mortar…its wrong!..The effect of this step will be that lots of landlords will not be able to afford to maintain multiple properties…forcing them to default and lose them…knock on of this will be housing market crash…prices will slump vastly and all of a sudden the people i spoke of in step 1 will be able to afford to get on the housing ladder. Crisis solved in 2 hammerswings…

No doubt some of the above is contraversial, some of it will have peoples backs up…others will be nodding in agreement…but if i was pm…I would implement this tomo!.. lol

Crash the system…save the people <<<< oooh… party slogan lol

14

As someone who’d like to see my kids leave home, i agree… its too hard for them to move out, and hard for me to keep them here as i get penalised via tax credits etc

15

@silentwalker

I believe Thatcher did that because she did not like social housing and wanted to bring about its demise. I don’t think that is a good idea but I don’t think there was any other reason behind it.

@SeebyRJohno

Shocking ideas. I kind of like them, but if you stop benefits, does that mean that the unemployed get £400 a week too as a basic wage? Would there be any incentive to do low paid menial work? I would say keep benefits at the poor levels that they are, the guarantee of £400 a week should be enough to get people motivated and into work, especially combined with a lowering of rents which would equate to a lot more money into people’s pockets. I think half the problems with long term unemployment is the despondency created by earning barely more than you get for doing nothing, for working for 40-48 hours a week, whether that pisses people off or not it is a reality that it is hard to motivate people to go to work for a week when at the end of it they get very little.

16

Well the right wing ideology is small government, and Thatcherism was right to buy, neither of which explains Labours position for over a decade. They could have changed things but didn’t.

What I do know of the current position is there are lots of empty properties that nobody will renovate. Lots of land owned by developers that will not have houses built on them yet and a current ConDem government talking about selling more land to these same developers.

Leaving me with the answer that the reason no homes are being made is because those who can don’t want to. So the question who are these persons and why? Who benefits from high rents, or house values.

Makes you wonder if it is the same people who are to big to fail and own the worlds governments… the banks.

Anyway, one problem with your idea is by law government is forbidden to make profits from nationalised industry. So in the case of home ownership they tried doing what you suggest by selling the homes to private Housing Association.

17

Aye kaos…but there would be no unemployed…every meanial job would pay £10p/h minimum…40 hours a week is £400 and that is plenty incentive…I mean hey…I would sweep peoples sick off the pavement for that money…If after the system changed someone didnt wanna work they would go hungry…simple…as you say, the reason long term unemployed do not want to work is because they get shafted with high rent and low wages…and are trapped in their situation…I dont blame them…its simple economics…if i stay on the dole we keep our house, feed ourselves and can still have a HDTV…If I work little johnny wont be able to go on school trips, eat while at school and I cannot cover child care for my youngest so i stay on the dole.

housing costs are more of a pressing issue than wages tho…example : My old dear is in social housing…she has a nice 3 bedroom house in dulwich, front and back garden…its lovely, costs her £420pm and if something goes wrong(boiler packs up or something) it is rectified in the blink of an eye.

The privately rented house I was living in not so long ago in forest hill also had 3 bedrooms, front and back garden and was no where near as well maintained(because of a tight arse private landlord who i had to battle with to do anything) was £1350pm!!! …That man did not deserve that money, Its needs to change.

These people need incentive to work for life, not wages that require them to live for work…They need to be able to rent affordably or buy… And on £6 an hour and and a 30k deposit to find they just are not gonna do that :confused: …too much money is in too few peoples hands and some parts of the system that allow this to happen need to be torn down and restructured.

I realise this sounds like an anti capitalist rant but its not…I dont mind capitalism, its all good…go out there and make your money but remember the people that work for you or rely on you for housing need to have a life too and not be economic slaves…

The saddest thing of all is though, for all this talk nothing will change…and realistically?..it will only get worse lol

Anyway…I am going tea hut…rant over lool…for now :smiley:

18

It might change? I don’t have all the history of it, names and years, but the idea of economic slavery was developed by a think tank during the Thatcher regime. It is kind of like the American Dream in principle.You pay a relatively small few very high wages to be managers. These are those you aspire to be, the dream. The rest you make working a sufferance on the premise they must work harder for the dream. For some reason it actually works inpractice too.

The opposing position was labelled as socialist and tied with Unions. Three day weeks and the like. Before Thatcher that was the workers dream, and now Thatcher has the name Union asa dirty word. Much like Republicans in America has being called a socialist or liberal as a despicable word to be called thanks to the right wing media. (FoxNews)

19

The new benefit laws would penalise you also for every empty room when they leave. You just can’t win unless you break or is that ease through the laws with an advisor (ie accountant).

20

Taking the last year those figures are for - 2010/11 then total housing revenues are listed as £82,037,000 with total housing expenditure of £83,104,000 meaning that the council spent £1,067,000 more on social housing than they raised, so where do you get the £24,000,000 figure from?

Unless of course you don’t think that the council should spend money on upgrading/modernising it’s existing housing stock or repaying the loans that they took out to finance building them in the first place?