From The Daily Mirror:
Up to a million people could be driven out of their homes* as a result of the Coalition's savage attack on the poor. A cap on housing benefit means low-income families will no longer be able to afford to stay in privately rented property in many areas...
Under changes announced by Chancellor George Osborne, housing benefit from April next year will be capped at £400 a week for a four-bedroom house, £340 for a three-bedroom property, £290 for two bedrooms and £250 for a one-bedroom property.
That still sounds far too high to me. But you can check for yourself at Rightmove and muck about with postcode, number of bedrooms and maximum monthly rent.** Geek points to anybody who can find a postcode without any eligible homes within a three-mile radius.
* As a land value taxer, I am so sick of hearing that. "Instead of having to pay income tax, people will have to cut their housing cloth according to their incomes" is more like it.
** Inspired by Uncle Tom, comment 3 on this thread at HPC.
Wonder If The Trial Will Reveal The Truth?
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14 comments:
W1 has only three still available.
Not sure exactly how many housing benefit recipients live in Marble Arch, but I doubt its very many.
PH32. None at all.
Then again, there aren't any properties for rent within 3 miles of PH32 (Fort Augustus, Inverness-shire).
:)
I think they should move all the social housing out of central London, sell the land off and build new stuff out on the greenbelt.
So if the tories really are trying to 'cleanse' Central London of social tenants I'm all for it.
Surely they could build 10 units on newly zoned land for every one unti they sell in Zone 1?
BQ, I dunno. My sister once lived in a luxurious squat round there.
AC, you win! But if you are prepared to commute up to 15 miles, you can rent this splendid looking 4 bed detached for £850 pcm.
Only a 15-mile commute if you have a helicopter - it's 62 miles by road!
SL, that argument hinges on 'should' but I'll let it pass.
The economically rational thing to do would be to build new council housing a bit further out of town and to rent out the stuff in the middle of town for top whack.
The rents from a central London flat of £50,000 for two or three years would be enough to build one completely new flat, paid for outright. It'd be a money making machine for 'the state' and if they kept going long enough, they'd have so much money coming in from housing, they could scrap income tax etc.
It's be land value tax via the back door.
C, well spotted. But I awarded AC his geek points anyway.
As many people pointed out to Jeremy Kyle today, no low-income families can afford to live in these expensive areas anyway. It's only people on housing benefit and the rich who can afford to. Social diversity, what social diversity?
As I have just noted on my own blog, for once I agree with David Cameron.
Why should working people pay housing costs so that the out of work can live in houses that “they couldn’t even dream of”.
Cute, but you're missing a point here that there are two, completely different property markets.
A flat that you can rent for gbp400 per week in real money paid out of your income will generally be quite nice - but I guarantee that if you're a housing benefit tenant, the landlord won't rent it to you ('no DSS' has been a condition on all the flats I've rented in London). Instead, you'll have to find a slum landlord who'll charge the council gbp400 to put you up in a filthy hovel.
The point that the current system is effectively a massive cash transfer from taxpayers to slum landlords is worth making, precisely because of comments like Bayard's and English Pensioner's. In real life, people on benefits don't get given nicer flats than people in work can afford, at least unless they can actually land a council or housing association property (which, of course, people in low-paid work are also eligible for). HB recipients are just the window-dressing for a massive landowner scam.
(so yes, I support the reforms, but not the stupid class war rhetoric surrounding them)
John B: "The point that the current system is effectively a massive cash transfer from taxpayers to slum landlords is worth making,.. HB recipients are just the window-dressing for a massive landowner scam".
I have said this hundreds of times. HB is a subsidy to land ownership, i.e. the worst subsidy of all. Let's build more council housing instead.
100% agreed. Hurrah!
MW/JB - and I would say that the inflated price obtained by the slum landlord ripples up the chain so that non slum landlords can charge non HB tenants extra. Is that so?
L, yes of course.
The slumlord can either agree to keep the DSS tenant and reduce his rent (assuming it was above the new caps in the first place); or he can let it out for the same low rent to a truly private tenant; or he can tart it up nicely and try and get more - but this last course of action means that there is ever so slightly more supply of 'nice' flats, so rents must go down a bit.
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