The Tories’ message on social housing is that the state is for losers

Subsidised homes are being rebranded as not for decent people. This will set neighbour against neighbour

High earners will no longer be eligible for “subsidised” social housing, and will instead have to pay “market rates”, the chancellor has announced. George Osborne speaks directly to the nation from the pages of the Sun on Sunday in a column that doesn’t actually use the words “clampdown” or “crackdown”, but those are the terms that crop up in all the reports, so we can assume a briefing note somewhere, in which the jargon of tackling crime is deployed to describe people who have the brass neck to rent social housing and have jobs.

This is the first strand of the narrative: that social housing is for the vulnerable, and anybody not vulnerable has no business with it. It follows that aspirational people, hard-working families, strivers – real people – wouldn’t ever want to be socially housed, because they would know it wasn’t intended for them.

The language is all about support (“In times of economic hardship it is more important than ever that social housing helps the most vulnerable in society,” began the consultation paper in 2012), but the underpinning principle is that the state has no business being a provider of ordinary, decent housing to ordinary, decent people. It should instead be thought of as the houser of last resort.

That’s a pretty standard Thatcherite line, but there’s more: what counts as “high income” is a household wage of £40,000 (in London) or £30,000 (elsewhere). The Joseph Rowntree Foundation last week released their minimum income standard figures for 2015: the MIS is reached in a citizen’s jury style: a sequence of small groups are asked to figure out the least a person would need to live an acceptable life. It’s not intended as a poverty threshold, and it’s not as basic as food, clothes and shelter (it includes the category, “social and cultural participation”), but there’s also no frivolity on it.

The most recent calculation was that a couple with two children would need to be earning £20,024 each in order to reach the minimum. In other words, what Osborne calls a high-earning household is actually, in London, one that is only just managing to get by – and outside London, £10,000 per annum shy of an acceptable life. This is a pretty extraordinary manoeuvre, an apparently serious attempt to persuade the nation that a little money is actually a lot of money.

A rather pompous idea in the consultation document is that servicemen and women should take priority on social housing lists; but anybody above the rank of level-three private would, if married to someone on the same salary, immediately be “clamped down upon” and required to pay “market rent”.

The third element of Osborne’s story is this “market” of his: social housing is subsidised, while the price of private rental stock is the true price, the natural one, reached by the irresistible logic of the market. Of course, social housing is only subsidised in the cost of its creation: it then pays for itself in two or three decades of rents. It only looks cheap in comparison with private rents, which themselves aren’t arrived at by market imperatives at all, but are the result of three decades of governments subsidising landlords with housing benefit.

The chancellor’s tableaux, in which high-earning chancers, who shouldn’t be in social housing in the first place, must have their rents brought into line with the private rents around them – otherwise, and this is the best bit, it is not fair on those hardworking private tenants – is wrong, in all the usual, useful ways. The message is to forget the state (unless you are a loser); resent your neighbour (he is probably a high earner masquerading as a low earner, to get that social flat you’re subsidising with your taxes); and trust the market (where prices are created elegantly, neutrally, perfectly, like physics).

Like so many of these measures – the closure of the independent living fund, even the bedroom tax – I sincerely doubt that this will save the money they claim it will, and sometimes doubt that it will save any money at all. Rather, it’s about changing the atmosphere, the commonly held assumptions: life is hard and you’re on your own.

I spent the entire coalition complaining about things on practical and/or human terms: whatever they say they’ll save, they won’t, and this hits the wrong people, and that is inhumane, and what are we punishing disabled people for anyway, and how much is this parsimony going to cost when it explodes down the line? All of that served, by some strange jiu jitsu, to reinforce the Conservatives’ opening proposition, that the country had been mired in a project of human kindness for far too long, which the state could no longer afford.

So while it is useful to critique the bones of this plan, in the way a crossword is useful to pass the time, the vital bit is to refute the underlying principles: the state isn’t over; your neighbour isn’t a crook; the market isn’t magic; life doesn’t have to be hard; we’re not on our own.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/05/tories-social-tenant-council-housing

Fuck Osborne, Fuck Cameron, Fuck all of the over indulged, vile cretins that 24% voted for. I expect Osborne spends more than that for the cocaine he stuffs up his nose.

So what's the complaint here? That high earners should get cheap housing or what?

Was it a bit complicated for you?

£30,000 outside London is NOT high earning (especially if it's a couple)

£40,000 inside London is a bloody pittance to try and get housing.

He's trying the 'them and us' situation again, 'them' in social housing have obviously got something wrong with them and should earn more etc etc etc etc. and his fat cat mates are landlords and making a fortune out of inflated rents and obviously don't want social housing to take the money away from them.

What we should be doing is providing 100s of 1000s of more social housing, then private rents would go down, that are only inflated by us not having enough housing.

sassy wrote:Was it a bit complicated for you?  

£30,000 outside London is NOT high earning (especially if it's a couple)

£40,000 inside London is a bloody pittance to try and get housing.

He's trying the 'them and us' situation again, 'them' in social housing have obviously got something wrong with them and should earn more etc etc etc etc. and his fat cat mates are landlords and making a fortune out of inflated rents and obviously don't want social housing to take the money away from them.

What we should be doing is providing 100s of 1000s of more social housing, then private rents would go down, that are only inflated by us not having enough housing.

£30,000 isn't exactly peanuts though.

I always think it's best not to rely on the State anyway - if it can be avoided.

I agree that rent should be lower though.

Let's not forget that labour were happy to hand out benefits of up to £100,000 a year to unemployed...

Rags, for a couple, £30,00 is only £15,000 each, and with rents in private sector in Colchester for example for a 2 bed (if they have a child) at £700 - £800 a month, that nearly 1/3rd of their earnings. And social housing isn't relying on the state, it's something we should do to make sure everyone has the right to a decent home.

Tommy, yet again you are talking tripe, entirely irrelevant and there were only a couple of cases for particular circumstances in London.

Osborne should be put up against a wall and shot, along with the rest of his motley crew who don't give a damn about ordinary people. All this talk of 'hard working families' and first chance they get, that's what they do to them, but I bet they take the highest rate of tax down, gotta look after their mates after all.

Cap doffer, carry on grovelling.

sassy wrote:Rags, for a couple, £30,00 is only £15,000 each, and with rents in private sector in Colchester for example for a 2 bed (if they have a child) at £700 - £800 a month, that nearly 1/3rd of their earnings.  And social housing isn't relying on the state, it's something we should do to make sure everyone has the right to a decent home.

Tommy, yet again you are talking tripe, entirely irrelevant and there were only a couple of cases for particular circumstances in London.

Osborne should be put up against a wall and shot, along with the rest of his motley crew who don't give a damn about ordinary people.  All this talk of 'hard working families' and first chance they get, that's what they do to them, but I bet they take the highest rate of tax down, gotta look after their mates after all.

Cap doffer, carry on grovelling.

I just checked rentals in Colchester, and you can get a two bedroom place for £550 upwards.

I hate that phrase, "hard-working families".

Raggamuffin wrote:

sassy wrote:Rags, for a couple, £30,00 is only £15,000 each, and with rents in private sector in Colchester for example for a 2 bed (if they have a child) at £700 - £800 a month, that nearly 1/3rd of their earnings.  And social housing isn't relying on the state, it's something we should do to make sure everyone has the right to a decent home.

Tommy, yet again you are talking tripe, entirely irrelevant and there were only a couple of cases for particular circumstances in London.

Osborne should be put up against a wall and shot, along with the rest of his motley crew who don't give a damn about ordinary people.  All this talk of 'hard working families' and first chance they get, that's what they do to them, but I bet they take the highest rate of tax down, gotta look after their mates after all.

Cap doffer, carry on grovelling.

I just checked rentals in Colchester, and you can get a two bedroom place for £550 upwards.

I hate that phrase, "hard-working families".

There's 1 at £550, I know it, it's a 'quarter' house, after that couple at £600, then it goes up.  Even at £600 that is £7,200 a year without council tax, which I happen to know is roughly £1300 a year.

Work hard and you will be rewarded Cameron says. What a load of crap that is

Isn't it just.

Labour fucked the countries economy with mass immigration which pushed up costs of living, mostly housing costs, while driving down wages.


Chickens coming home to roost!


YOu can't support social housing for everyone while also supporting mass immigration.


Although lefties have quantum thinking which allows both and neither at the same time depending on which bit of bullshit they are trying to argue at any given time...

Tommy, stop talking rubbish do. All we need to house people is the political will. We are not a poor country, no matter what the Tories tell you.

sassy wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

I just checked rentals in Colchester, and you can get a two bedroom place for £550 upwards.

I hate that phrase, "hard-working families".

There's 1 at £550, I know it, it's a 'quarter' house, after that couple at £600, then it goes up.  Even at £600 that is £7,200 a year without council tax, which I happen to know is roughly £1300 a year.

I found quite a few for £570-£600.

People have lived in these homes all their lives. They like living within the community beside their family and friends and now Cameron and Osborne tell them take out a morgage and buy a house or we'll cripple you with a rent increase.

I think it would be lovely to have cheaper rent for everyone, but I also think that people spend silly amounts of money on silly things, and they expect everything to be perfect all the time. They want space for all their "stuff", and all the latest gadgets, etc.

Raggamuffin wrote:

sassy wrote:

There's 1 at £550, I know it, it's a 'quarter' house, after that couple at £600, then it goes up.  Even at £600 that is £7,200 a year without council tax, which I happen to know is roughly £1300 a year.

I found quite a few for £570-£600.

Well, I went on Right Move, which is the biggest, and my daughter has been trying to get one at that price in Colchester for 2 years, so do tell what site.

sassy wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

I found quite a few for £570-£600.

Well, I went on Right Move, which is the biggest, and my daughter has been trying to get one at that price in Colchester for 2 years, so do tell what site.

I also looked on Right Move.

Why should only some people earning good and above good wages be allowed to benefit from cheaper rents that are subsidised by everyone else...!?



I thought you lefties were in favour of 'equality'...!?

Well, I've just looked again and there is 1 at £550, a 'quarter house', next one at £600 and one at £625, all the rest are £650 and above.

Tommy Monk wrote:Why should only some people earning good and above good wages be allowed to benefit from cheaper rents that are subsidised by everyone else...!?



I thought you lefties were in favour of 'equality'...!?

So £15,00 a years is good money in your book Tommy. Bloody Hell.

£1500 a year...!?


You are talking absolute bollocks!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:Why should only some people earning good and above good wages be allowed to benefit from cheaper rents that are subsidised by everyone else...!?



I thought you lefties were in favour of 'equality'...!?

THey'll be the one's that Cameron said should work hard and they will be rewarded. They put their shoulder to the wheel and did just that and for that they will be hammered with a rent increase just because they want to stay in the house that they have lived in all their lives maintaining it and looking after it even when they ewren't earning good money.

Buy a house or pay the price for your success is the message.

sassy wrote:Well, I've just looked again and there is 1 at £550, a 'quarter house', next one at £600 and one at £625, all the rest are £650 and above.

That's strange. That's for a two-bedroom property? I found more than that under £600.

THere was nothing about this in their manifesto or the messages thet were giving out to the electorate prior to the election.

I wonder how many votes they captured from those who are in social housing and believed all the crap they were spouting.

It's all coming out now what they are all about isn't it just.

Raggamuffin wrote:

sassy wrote:Well, I've just looked again and there is 1 at £550, a 'quarter house', next one at £600 and one at £625, all the rest are £650 and above.

That's strange. That's for a two-bedroom property? I found more than that under £600.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION^347&sortType=1&maxPrice=800&minBedrooms=2&maxBedrooms=2&displayPropertyType=houses&oldDisplayPropertyType=houses&googleAnalyticsChannel=renting

You didn't answer the question Irn...



Tommy Monk wrote:

Why should only some people earning good and above good wages be allowed to benefit from cheaper rents that are subsidised by everyone else...!?



I thought you lefties were in favour of 'equality'...!?

sassy wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

That's strange. That's for a two-bedroom property? I found more than that under £600.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION^347&sortType=1&maxPrice=800&minBedrooms=2&maxBedrooms=2&displayPropertyType=houses&oldDisplayPropertyType=houses&googleAnalyticsChannel=renting

OK. I was including flats as well.

And why shouldn't flats be included too...!?

Raggamuffin wrote:

sassy wrote:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION^347&sortType=1&maxPrice=800&minBedrooms=2&maxBedrooms=2&displayPropertyType=houses&oldDisplayPropertyType=houses&googleAnalyticsChannel=renting

OK. I was including flats as well.

Talking about a young couple with children, because this is who it is going to effect. A flat is not really suitable, and a private landlord probably would not rent a flat to a couple with children.

Tommy Monk wrote:You didn't answer the question Irn...



Tommy Monk wrote:

Why should only some people earning good and above good wages be allowed to benefit from cheaper rents that are subsidised by everyone else...!?



I thought you lefties were in favour of 'equality'...!?

I gave you an answer why they shouldn't.

sassy wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

OK. I was including flats as well.

Talking about a young couple with children, because this is who it is going to effect.  A flat is not really suitable, and a private landlord probably would not rent a flat to a couple with children.

Why is a flat not suitable? I see no reason why a private landlord wouldn't rent to a couple with children. They don't seem to like pets much though.

I know working people with children in flats.

And I know unemployed with children in flats too.

Tommy Monk wrote:I know working people with children in flats.

I'm sure you do, but more private landlords will not rent flats to couples with young children because of the noise factor with no garden for them to let off steam, and spills on carpets etc.

sassy wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:I know working people with children in flats.

I'm sure you do, but more private landlords will not rent flats to couples with young children because of the noise factor with no garden for them to let off steam, and spills on carpets etc.

Houses have carpets as well you know.

It's best they don't let off too much steam in the garden - all the neighbours will complain.

It doesn't say those flats can't be rented to people with children.

Anyway - a house can be rented for £650 - which is a lot less than £800.

Plenty of communal gardens normally around, parks, shops and endless other activities... no reason why a family with children can't live in flats otherwise there wouldn't be any as the council/govt would have already moved them all into nice houses with gardens for the health and safety reasons...

Tommy Monk wrote:Plenty of communal gardens normally around, parks, shops and endless other activities... no reason why a family with children can't live in flats otherwise there wouldn't be any as the council/govt would have already moved them all into nice houses with gardens for the health and safety reasons...

DOH, try telling that to the landlords who won't let flats to families with young children.

Tommy Monk wrote:Plenty of communal gardens normally around, parks, shops and endless other activities... no reason why a family with children can't live in flats otherwise there wouldn't be any as the council/govt would have already moved them all into nice houses with gardens for the health and safety reasons...

Top floor flat in Tower Hamlets ok for you Tommy?

Irn Bru wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:Plenty of communal gardens normally around, parks, shops and endless other activities... no reason why a family with children can't live in flats otherwise there wouldn't be any as the council/govt would have already moved them all into nice houses with gardens for the health and safety reasons...

Top floor flat in Tower Hamlets ok for you Tommy?

In Colchester? Did it move?

People always knock Tower Hamlets, but I lived there for a while. Mind you, we did get burgled.

Raggamuffin wrote:

Irn Bru wrote:

Top floor flat in Tower Hamlets ok for you Tommy?

In Colchester? Did it move?

Colchester was just an example because I happen to know it.

Raggamuffin wrote:

Irn Bru wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:Plenty of communal gardens normally around, parks, shops and endless other activities... no reason why a family with children can't live in flats otherwise there wouldn't be any as the council/govt would have already moved them all into nice houses with gardens for the health and safety reasons...

Top floor flat in Tower Hamlets ok for you Tommy?

In Colchester? Did it move?

A flat is a flat wherever it is Raggs. They're just not that good if you are bringing up children.

Firstly sassy, many/most will plus you are assuming that all who may be affected are With young children which is not the case.


Secondly Irn, why not...!?

Irn Bru wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

In Colchester? Did it move?

A flat is a flat wherever it is Raggs. They're just not that good if you are bringing up children.

They're not all at the top of high rise buildings you know. There's no reason why a flat wouldn't do. That's what I mean when I say that people want everything to be perfect all the time - usually at someone else's expense.

Thirdly, did the bastards have it in their manifesto? This is something they kept quiet about so as not to lose votes.

Raggamuffin wrote:

Irn Bru wrote:

A flat is a flat wherever it is Raggs. They're just not that good if you are bringing up children.

They're not all at the top of high rise buildings you know. There's no reason why a flat wouldn't do. That's what I mean when I say that people want everything to be perfect all the time - usually at someone else's expense.

How many more times - very few private landlords will rent flats to young families because they will make a noise and disturb the people below.

And the point is, it was not in the manifesto, because they know it would have lost them votes, the same as other things he will do on Friday.  People were stupid enough to vote for them when they wouldn't say what they were going to do. It's called lying by omission.

If someone can get a house for £650 per month, they'll still be able to live perfectly well if they earn £30,000.

sassy wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

They're not all at the top of high rise buildings you know. There's no reason why a flat wouldn't do. That's what I mean when I say that people want everything to be perfect all the time - usually at someone else's expense.

How many more times - very few private landlords will rent flats to young families because they will make a noise and disturb the people below.

And the point is, it was not in the manifesto, because they know it would have lost them votes, they same as other things he will do on Friday.  People were stupid enough to vote for them when they wouldn't say what they were going to do.

So you keep saying, but where on that site does it say - "no young children"?

Young children will make a noise in a house too and disturb the neighbours - even more so if they're out screaming in the garden.

What wasn't in the manifesto? I doubt people vote on the basis of whether they can get social housing or not.

Irn Bru wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

In Colchester? Did it move?

A flat is a flat wherever it is Raggs. They're just not that good if you are bringing up children.

Plenty of working people with children as well as unemployed with children live in flats!!!



Are you saying that all people with children in flats should be immediatly moved into houses...!!!???



What about people with children who live on boats...!?


Then also what about maisonettes without direct gardens...!?


...farms, caravans etc...!?

Stop being disingenuous, the point is it is another way to take money from people who are not well off, and £30,000 between a couple cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as well off, it's below average earning, and giving it to their mates.  It's also a way of dismantling social housing and getting more money in the pockets of private landlords, and guess who those private landlords are mates with.