Bob Crow: Man of Principle

I see that the Homeys have got it in for Bob Crow. From The Metro:

The militant head of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) is believed to pay half the market rate for his taxpayer-subsidised house (1) despite being paid £145,000 a year. (2)

Mr Crow rents the three-bedroom home for an estimated £150 a week while estate agents say it would cost £300 a week in the private sector. The union firebrand has benefited from a loophole in housing rules (3) which do not consider an occupant’s income once the family has a tenancy.

Mr Crow and his partner Nicola Hoarau have lived in the north-east London property since 2001 and saved an estimated £78,000 on renting costs. (4)

Housing minister Grant Shapps said: ‘With nearly 5million vulnerable people languishing on housing waiting lists, I would have thought a highly paid union baron would feel somewhat awkward taking advantage of publicly subsidised housing.’ (5)

The RMT said Mr Crow ‘turned down the opportunity to buy his council house at a substantial discount because he believes social housing stock should be available for future generations. (6) Bob Crow makes no apology for living in social housing,’ the union said.

1) It's not taxpayer-subsidised at all. Don't tell me that the cash cost to the council of maintaining that house is anywhere near £7,800 a year. And if you want to argue that rent foregone is a 'cost' to the taxpayer, then so is the fact that owner-occupation is not subject to taxation (Schedule A or Land Value Tax).

2) Yes, he is a militant, what relevant does that have (and no, I like neither his politics nor the strikes he calls once or twice a year), and he appears to be vastly overpaid, but that's up to RMT members - and on that sort of salary, he must be chipping in about £70,000 a year in PAYE, NIC and VAT, so he's more than paying for any subsidies he does get (to the extent he gets any, which he doesn't) and a damn' sight more than most people.

3) It's not a loophole, FFS. Those Are The Rules. If the social rent is set at £150 then it's £150 regardless of income - if you earn very little or nothing, then they don't reduce the rent, what they do is allow you to claim Housing Benefit. Could we arrange this better? Yes of course: to the extent that social housing is undersupplied, we could charge the lower of market rent and (say) twenty per cent of a household's income, that seems more sensible.

4) Sure, he has so far paid £78,000 less than he would have paid had he been renting privately, but what if had bought a similar house privately, which might have cost £100,000 ten years ago? Instead of receiving £78,000, the taxpayer would have received precisely £1,000 Stamp Duty and f- all else. And he's not married? So f- what?

And if our Bob stays there for another ten years, he'll have paid £156,000 to the taxpayer and still own nothing, and he will still have to pay something - to the taxpayer - for the rest of his life. If he'd bought privately, he would easily have paid off his mortgage by then...

... which leads me to the conclusion that a lot of people in social housing have ended up paying more for their housing than owner-occupiers; so it's not social housing that's subsidised at all - if anything, owner-occupied housing is subsidised, because they pay net nothing to the taxpayer (and on the whole, make tax-free capital gains) but social tenants, on average, do pay something (however little).

5) Shappsy has made a fair few quid off the housing bubble (fair play, so did I) so that's a tad hypcritical. And if he's so bothered about the one family whom Bob Crow has displaced, he's free to divert the £7 billion a year currently wasted in Housing Benefit for private tenants (yes, that is a real cost to the taxpayer) into building 200,000 new units of social housing every year. Twat.

6) Like I said, Bob Crow may be vastly overpaid, but he appears to have some principles. If the scoop had been that he owns half a dozen buy-to-lets, then things would be different.