Single Aspect Blog

UPDATE: – Jules Birch has written a much better article  on this subject (or here) and Part 1 here or slow link here.

This is not so much an article so much as more a collection of comments but it tells the story of a man, his decision and its outcome.  None of it makes pleasant reading.  It’s time to reduce the Housing Benefit bill not by moving families out of London to the sticks but by starting a process of restoring capital grants for low cost housing and actually building places for people to live instead of shuffling families around the country like so much livestock.

This year there has been a dramatic surge in the number of families being housed in B&Bs, with figures from the National Housing Federationshowing a 44% increase over the past year. For families with children, the rise has been even sharper – an increase of 60%, according to the homelessness charity Shelter. Almost 4,000 families are now living in hostels, and the most dramatic rise is in central London.

https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/15/bed-and-breakfast-families-crisis

Guacamoledave 9 November 2010 9:59PM

Just back from the Chartered Institute of Housing Eastern Region conference at Stanstead, where it rapidly became clear that the government is making it up as it goes along. John O’Mahoney from the Homes and Communities Agency was clearly out of his depth while trying to explain how the new regime of “Affordable” (i.e. 80% market rents i.e. not affordable really) would fund 150,000 new social homes over 4 years, and how that didn’t conflict with reducing the HB bill (answer: don’t know) and making people more dependent on benefits (answer: don’t know), and how that would be achieved at the same time as removing regional planning targets and putting control over new development in the hands of the nimbys, sorry, local people (answer……).

Back in the late 1980s William Waldegrave I think it was who said, as the government prepared to cut capital grants for new social housing, that “Housing Benefit can take the strain”. This meant that a one-off grant that produced housing with rents low enough that people on low incomes could afford without benefits, was replaced by a system that produced higher rents (because housing associations had to borrow money at market rates to develop) which are not affordable to people on low incomes, which means they have to be subsidised via housing benefit indefinitely. Madness.

And now, through “Affordable rents” subsidising new development, one set of poor people (and the tax payers who pay the benefits) will be paying to provide housing for other poor people – who will also need subsidising as these rents will also be at 80% of market rents, and thus unaffordable to people on low incomes.

Yes, Labour ducked the issue, by embracing the same market-led, save today pay tomorrow orthodoxy they inherited from the Tories before them. Imagine what it could have been like if the Labour government elected in 1997, with a massive majority and an overwhelming mandate, had been half as radical as this lot are being now, but in the right direction.

https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/09/douglas-alexander-attacks-housing-benefit-cuts

ImNotOnTheTrain 23 November 2011 11:29AM

“…the coalition government inherited a system in need of reform”.
The coalition (a Con. Gov nobody voted for) inherited back the mess THEY created in the late 70s / through their sell / not-invest / light-touch (no problem there then) 80s.

Back then William Waldegrave was TOLD REPEATEDLY his move to cut social housing grants / deregulate rents and let, as he said “Housing Benefit… take the strain” would mean an unstoppable exponential Housing Benefit bill rise forever into the future following his / their decision at that time.

If the monies Waldegrave wasted in that decision which massively inflated the Housing Benefit bill had gone into bricks & mortar instead of rents (as it had before Thatcher) we would not have the housing shortage we do now.

Chickens / home / roost.

But what does he care? Where is he now? Where do you think? House of Lords – comfy red seats… lovely.

Like ALL politicians they are in it for minutes / whatever wins the ‘game’ on that day / feather their nests and f* the rest / take a few cabinet notes for the book deals later – so the idea that Cameron has woken up to England’s housing crises is laughable: its just what he is being told to bark about this week.

https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2011/nov/22/housing-crisis-not-solved