Social housing policy

[woodgnome]

The reconfiguration of London is akin to social cleansing

-- Link to Guardian article --

Residents woke up yesterday to the sight of "Yuppies Out" scrawled across the gleaming glass windows of the new branch of Foxtons estate agents in Brixton, south London. The graffiti follows an earlier incident last weekend which saw "yuck" written in smaller letters on the glass.

The graffiti taps into local fears that Brixton is on the frontline of a process of demographic change sweeping central London, with a combination of high rents and housing benefit cuts ensuring that places such as Brixton will no longer be affordable to those on low incomes. A similar situation across London has seen councils such as Westminster and Newham hit the headlines for proposals to rehouse tenants as far afield as Derby, Nottingham and Stoke. For many, this process goes much further than the gentrification the capital has long been used to and is akin to the "Kosovo-style social cleansing" that the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has been repeatedly warned of, but appears to have done little to address.

Meanwhile, it seems that housing worries are not limited to those on low incomes, with the wife of Mark Carney, the new Bank of England governor, complaining that her family is struggling to find a place to live in London, despite his £874,000 pay packet and £5,000-a-week housing allowance. In fact, Diana Carney's ill-judged comments reflect the reconfiguration of London, with shockingly high property prices in "prime" central London continually breaking new records, while large parts of the capital move out of reach for those on low incomes. According to the property website Rightmove, a five-bedroom apartment to rent at London's most exclusive address, One Hyde Park, costs £45,000 a week, which is well beyond the Carneys' budget.

The influx of a new class of plutocrats, seeking to take advantage of London's global status as a tax haven, is undoubtedly skewing the top end of the property market. But while this is having an impact on the rest of the city, London's reconfiguration is largely the result of deliberate housing policies, with cuts to housing benefit paralleled by plans for large-scale demolition and redevelopment schemes which will change the social composition of central London.

The proposed demolition of a number of London estates, including the Heygate estate in Southwark, the Carpenters estate in Newham and two estates connected to the Earls Court redevelopment project, follows this pattern, with large areas of social housing replaced by predominantly market housing.

The Carpenters estate, on the edge of the Olympic Park in east London, is the subject of a battle between residents and Newham council, which plans to demolish the estate where hundreds of residents still live and replace it with a new campus for University College London.

To the south in Southwark, another London borough facing a housing shortage, 1,100 homes now lie empty on the vast Heygate estate. It's a similar story in Earls Court, where proposals to demolish 760 homes on two adjoining housing estates are opposed by the great majority of the people living there.

My new report (PDF), published by the lobbying transparency organisation Spinwatch, details how this process, which is widely opposed by estate residents, is subverting local democracy. The consultation process is derided as a "sham", while government promises to build much-needed affordable housing remain unfulfilled.

At the Heygate, only 79 of the 2,535 planned new homes on the site will be available to rent as social housing. And while 25% of homes have been earmarked as "affordable housing", since the definition of affordable housing was changed by the coalition to mean up to 80% of market rent, that rules out the vast majority of those on lower incomes.

For cynical residents this approach is a continuation of the previous government's discredited Pathfinder programme, which aimed to increase land and property prices by demolishing existing homes in well-located areas in northern towns to build new properties that could be marketed to a wider social mix of people at higher prices. That policy, which saw thousands evicted from their homes and was widely regarded as a failure, led to widespread accusations of "social cleansing". Now we are seeing the same in London.

[spindrift]

A Daily Mirror investigation found a third of ex-council homes sold in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher were now owned by private landlords.

In one London borough almost half of ex-council properties are now sub-let to tenants.

Tycoon Charles Gow and his wife own at least 40 ex-council flats on one South London estate.

His father Ian Gow was one of Mrs Thatcher’s top aides and was Housing Minister during the peak years of right-to-buy.

Other wealthy investors own scores of ex-council properties via offshore holding firms in tax havens in the Channel Islands, the GMB union has found.

Boss Paul Kenny said: “You couldn’t make it up. The family of one of the Tory ministers who oversaw right-to-buy ends up owning swathes of ex-council homes.”

Our probe comes as the housing shortage facing ordinary families hits crisis point.

There are five million people waiting for social housing in Britain and house building cannot keep up with demand.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...ouncil-1743338

Research by the GMB suggests the owner of the 93 could be Charles Gow.

In one single ex-council block of 120 flats in Sherfield Gardens, Putney, 62 of the leaseholds are registered to different addresses.

Of these, Mr Gow owns 35 while his wife Karin owns another five.

Ian Gow was Mrs Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary between 1979 and 1983.

Right-to-buy peaked in 1984, by which time he was Housing Minister.

He was killed in 1990 by an IRA car bomb.

Land Registry records show his son began buying properties in Sherfield Gardens in 1996 for £100,000 each.

His firm KCG is offering four-bedroom flats there for £1,500 a month.

Kerching!

[Officer Dibble]

Originally Posted by saddle_point

I had a look at the planning application at Barratt's Downtown development, and note that all 11 houses are being used for S106 commitments. The same goes for the 16 houses at Barratt's Cannon wharf development.

This is probably not the right place to discuss social housing, and I won't be able to afford a town house in SE16 for a million years anyway, but something is not quite right with that.

Well, this is the right place to discuss social housing, and I agree that something's wrong there. There's plenty of demand for houses, and yet the only ones being built are "affordable". Isn't that an expression through planning rules the idea that the only households that should have children are those that are dependent on the state? Wouldn't it be healthier (for the kids especially) if at least some of those families had a chance of paying their own way?

[Bowater]

What really pisses me off is council tenents who feel they have a right to live in an area no matter how expensive it is simply because they have lived there for a long time. I was born in an expensive area too and when people have grown up they buy a house in another town where they can afford the house prices.

Privatise all council houses! Then people can claim for housing benefit and live in a more suitable property.

[Toadboy]

Originally Posted by Bowater

What really pisses me off is council tenents who feel they have a right to live in an area no matter how expensive it is simply because they have lived there for a long time. I was born in an expensive area too and when people have grown up they buy a house in another town where they can afford the house prices.

Privatise all council houses! Then people can claim for housing benefit and live in a more suitable property.

Thatcher lives!

[Sesquip]

Originally Posted by Bowater

Privatise all council houses! Then people can claim for housing benefit and live in a more suitable property.

This will result in a net loss to councils, as private rents are much higher than council rents.

And yes, we should try and maintain communities in their homes. People come first, not money. So sad that this is not even aspired to these days

[Bowater]

Originally Posted by Sesquip

This will result in a net loss to councils, as private rents are much higher than council rents.

Sell a ex authority flat for £500,000 in Chelsea/Kensington/Knightsbridge, take your pick and it would take 41 years for the council to make a loss on £1,000 a month (hardly cheap) rent.

Originally Posted by Sesquip

And yes, we should try and maintain communities in their homes. People come first, not money. So sad that this is not even aspired to these days

Sorry did you say council tenents become before my money and therefore me?

Can you please explain why I should sacrifice the opportunity to live in places such as the town I grew up in to instead give my earned income to others to live in the areas they grew up in?

It's simply incredulous, and it's the government that has formulated these policies not the recipients but the end result is to breed animosity and resentment. Stupid.

[Sesquip]

Originally Posted by Bowater

Can you please explain why I should sacrifice the opportunity to live in places such as the town I grew up in to instead give my earned income to others to live in the areas they grew up in?

I don't understand, what money of yours is being given to anybody?

[Bowater]

Originally Posted by Sesquip

I don't understand, what money of yours is being given to anybody?

Okay so I pay tax. The government takes this money to spend on for the most part welfare and the NHS.

My tax has gone up in recent years due to the government's efforts to close the hole in the budget.

However if the government were not frittering money away on social housing, excessive housing benefit payments, and all those benefits that keep the idol off the unemployed figures (incapacity and disability, and careers) then the government would not have a massive hole in their finances and they would not need to increase taxes.

In the same spirit the government ought to privatise the biggest estates - the Crown estate, the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster and make that certain family of Royal scrounges pay their own way!

[Sesquip]

Originally Posted by Bowater

However if the government were not frittering money away on social housing

Council housing makes a net profit. It is not subsidised.

excessive housing benefit payments

Which continue to rise as more claimants move into the private market. Of the people I know who claim housing benefit, only one is unemployed. The others work, but could not afford to rent in London on their wages alone. Therefore, they claim housing benefit. This costs councils dearly, because private landlords charge the market rate, which is excessively high due to the 30 year rise in house prices. Before the great sell-off of council housing, they would have been eligible for a council flat, which they could afford to rent. The council would actually make a profit off them, instead of a loss.

[Bowater]

Originally Posted by Sesquip

Council housing makes a net profit. It is not subsidised.

Oh you think so do you...? So at present we have 'affordable homes quotas' in new housing developments, which are basically a tax on home construction. This is best illustrated when developers opt to stamp up millions to be released from this tax. And ironically new home construction is discouraged as a result.

Moreover if the government were collecting this tax in monetary terms, as sometimes happens now when developers opt to buy-out their obligations, then the tax could be redirected to housing benefit. Or we could not burden new home construction with added tax at all!

Originally Posted by Sesquip

Which continue to rise as more claimants move into the private market. Of the people I know who claim housing benefit, only one is unemployed. The others work, but could not afford to rent in London on their wages alone. Therefore, they claim housing benefit. This costs councils dearly, because private landlords charge the market rate, which is excessively high due to the 30 year rise in house prices. Before the great sell-off of council housing, they would have been eligible for a council flat, which they could afford to rent. The council would actually make a profit off them, instead of a loss.

The market rate is a reflection of what people are able and willing to pay. So for example flats in Richmond fetch £4,000 a month, whereas homes 10 mins further down the train line in Feltham are closer to £1,000. However tenents in Richmond would still rather pay £4,000 to live in Richmond than Feltham ...presumably for the ambiance.

Council houses distort this equilibrium. The result is tenents living in flats and homes that others would pay a lot to rent, and the tenents given a choice of the rent money or the property, would go for the £££ and live further out. This situation is ludicrous!

As for the housing benefit, well it's too high! When I was unemployed I was eligible for a one bedroom flat (but I did not claim for). Now I'm earning £60k a year I choose to rent a room for £400 a month. That's because I appreciate the cost when I'm actually paying whereas council tenents/housing recipients do not see the cost. BUT the councils give them the rental power to bid up prices of the market.

Housing is perhaps the hardest market to allocate in all fairness but the current system needs improvement and npmore social housing is not the solution.