OK, you oiks, your time's up ... out into the street you go.

[non sociopath skin]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/03/lifetime-council-tenancies-contracts-cameron

Nick? NICK? Where are you Nick? Can you hear me ....???

The Skin

[ikri]

1. Got to get them out of the price controlled public system

And into privately rented accommodation.

We can't have money staying within the public sector where housing benefits paid by the government pay for publicly owned council housing, or, god forbid, have someone actually paying rent directly to the council out of their earnings. Much better for that money to flow into the hands of private landlords.

It isn't like there's a shortage of social housing or anything and we certainly couldn't have the government trying to stimulate the economy by actually building new social housing.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Disgusting

Taking Thatcherism to its logical conclusions. At least in the 80s Shirley Porter's shenanigans weren't official party policy.

No use calling on Nick - either Dave has locked him in a cupboard, or he's suffering from galloping Stockholm Syndrome, or very likely both.

What is needed is an Opposition. When is the Labour Leadership battle going to *end*? Is there a fixed five-year term for that too?! Even David Miliband would be a lot better than no Opposition Leader at all!

[T_i_B]

3. Hmmm....

The Tories love to blather on about "rewarding success", but this policy will create a situation where people stand to lose their house if they get a job. How on earth is that rewarding success?

The Tories also love to blather on about the cost of administrating the public sector, but this policy will inevitably require a heck of a lot of administration and that ain't going to pay for itself.

[non sociopath skin]

5. Always with the right-wing fetish about A Nation of Home Owners

Could it be - horror of horrors - that some people actually PREFER to rent rather than saddling themselves with a mortgage (if they can get one!).

Or is this another area, like gay marriage and abortion, which the NeoCons and Libertarians have exempted from their Freedom agenda.

The Skin

[tjwmason]

6. I'd guess a mixture

of the fetishisation of property ownership and the fetishisation of the private sector over the public.

[TheBigotBasher]

7. Neo Con Labour?

Under whom you could only get your Council house repaired to a decent standard if you "opted out" of LA control via LSVT, ALMOs or some other weird device.

The same Neo Con Labour that built fewer public sector houses than the Conservatives?

The same Neo Con Labour that fostered hyper inflation in the property market for political advantage?

It's quite obvious what to do with housing but flat-lining house prices for at least 10 years will not please the Daily Diana or the Daily Hate and so it will never be done by any Party. Although that may be a side effect (desired or otherwise)) or banning self certified mortgages.

[non sociopath skin]

8. No, I was talking about NeoCon Tory and NeoCon Lib Dem ...

... who intend to up the ante on what the NeoCon Blairites "achieved".

Unless you think they're about to reverse the social housing measures of the last government .... ?

The Skin

[TheBigotBasher]

9. I doubt any of them will.

On housing Labour certainly do not have clean hands. All Parties still are addicted to house price inflation and the only person to have ever called out the stupidity of house price inflation as an element of policy was Neil Kinnock.

[non sociopath skin]

10. They most certainly don't. But were I currently living in social housing ....

... I'd know where my bread was most likely to be buttered.

The Skin

[TheBigotBasher]

11. Really?

Did you read any of the Housing Green Papers published by the last Governemnt?

Labour's solution to not having Council Houses at a high enough level or of sufficient quality was to dispose of them quicker than at any time under the Tories.

Labour had set in place a rent strategy that would move all RSL and Council Tenant rents towards private rented levels so that the provider of the accommodation was no longer an issue.

That is why a lot of councils now have "introductory tenancies" which means taht they provide their new tenants with what are effectively assured shorthold tenancies.

Much of the above bollocks was being applauded but you had the Benefit workers looking on in horror. In most LAs around 60% of the rental debit is collected through Housing Benefits so if you double the rent you not only double the levels of rent for those on full benefit you increase the numbers who are entitled and the amount who are only entitled to a small amount.

Still it was labour policy. It still sounds to have been sold to the silly lot now in. The only way that they could "restrict" the rents of those who are in too big a council house would be to increase them to average 3 bed levels so you could cut them back down again.

It is madness. It comes with having one Secretary of State for Social Security charged with reducing benefit expenditure and only a relatively junior minister charged with the polar opposite of reducing direct housing subsidy.

There were much easier ways of doing the latter which would have led to a natural reduction in the former.

[non sociopath skin]

12. So if you were a Council or Housing Association tenant, you'd be rooting for Cameron, then?

The Skin

[T_i_B]

13. I don't think it's a matter of prefering to rent...

...more a case of not being in a position where you can afford to buy, especially with how much it costs to get on the property ladder these days. Hence council housing is oversubscribed.

However, the people in charge clearly don't even grasp the concept of not being able to afford a mortgage.

[TheBigotBasher]

4. I heard Beckett discuss this at a Housing Cnference.

The same issues apply now as then.

Some Housing Associations (RSLs) already do this, including the offering of a range of tenancies based on assured shorthold tennacies and those are not just those on temporary housing registers for homelesness. Some of the RSLs use it as a way of cross funding other more secure long term builds.

Some Local Authorities already are providing tenancies on an assured shorthold basis as "introductory" tenancies. Many of these do move on to private rented accommodation, only a relatively small proportion become long term secured tenants with a LA Assured Tenancy.

The argument Beckett put was to find a way to assist people to get out of social housing to aid those who need to be provided with it.

This is where it all falls down. The very best areas for social housing are mixed tenure types, offering everything from low cost social housing to fully owned properties. Creating only social housing estates creates a ghetto of poverty and increasing levels of crime.

There is an issue with under occupation of houses by elderly people where it used to be a family home. In London this problem is being dealt with by not allowing the tenancy on that property to be inherited but simply only allowing a tenancy. This results in Councillors having to face the difficult circumstance of having to explain to a daughter who had lived in a family home for years with her elderly parnt why she has to move to a one bed flat in some estate nowhere near as nice as the one she is in.

There is not a great desire to get out of secure tenancies into the insecurity of the private rented market. There is a significant number of people on Housing Benefit who do this but by and large this is because they are in over accommodated homes moving in to larger properties. This of course comes with a a doubling or tripling of the bill that is picked up by Housing Benefit. That hardly seems sensible.

In fact the focus of all of this and the benefit changes remain completely wrong.

Councils have the capital resources available for building. The best opportunity for major building, which would have been better than the 2.5% VAT cut was missed but it does not mean that a programme of Council and RSL home building should be ignored, nor should the government ignore the huge range of stock of one and two bed empty properties built in town centres.

There is no point trying to provide affordable housing while another part of the Government is deliberately encouraging hyper inflation in the housing market making them unaffordable. That mistake is being repeated, The Country is addicted to house price inflation.

One of the options to make "tenure choice" no longer an issue was to raise RSL and Council Tenancy rents to private rented levels and so all tenure types would be subject to the LHA. That would have done wonders to the HB bill.

Housing Benefit grew in cost because of the recession and also because of an increase in the proportion of private rented properties. The recession caused an increase in claims from people in privately rented properties. £200 per week private rents will always be more to pay than a Council Tenant on a £70 a week rent.

Despite this, private HB levels per property did not rise. LHA worked (originally a Tory idea). The 30th percentile reduces HB back to 2008 levels but the removal of the £15 shopping incentive is stupid. If tenants do not have that incentive the maximum HB level will be the level charged. There will not be a 10th or 20th percentile. LHA has been the only rent restriction policy that has worked since pre 1989 registered rents. Regardless private sector rents are higher than public sector rents.

Oh well forget housing, let's carry on bombing people who look a bit different and committing ourselves to buying some machismo toy bombs we could never use.

Stupid politicians the answers stare them in their faces but they are too ashamed to admit the obvious.