Could you live on £7.50 a day?

[KentPhilip]

Yes of course, removing a 75 year old woman who spent the war making munitions and then disposing of them afterward, with the scars to prove it, from the home she had lived in for 40 odd years to a hostel would be perfectly humane. I sincerely hope you are taking the p!ss. My grandfather was a chief toolmaker and they paid rent for those 40 years, raised three children who became hard working responsible citizens and paid their taxes too. Of course the mistake they made was not to buy it, rent it out and sell it on at a profit. I suppose you cannot remember but it used to be no shame to live in a council house, plenty of perfectly decent people lived in them and still do.

There are very few second world war heroes still alive left, so I don't think consideration of them should any more determine housing policy (those there are could be treated as a special case). In the example you give of a 75-year old woman, she would have been aged 7 in 1945, so I doubt she was making very many war munitions. Are you sure you're correct with your story, or are you, like most socialists, making it up as you go along?

You say plenty of "perfectly decent" people live in council houses. Maybe so. But they need to remember that they are taking money from taxpayers, so should consider it right for that support to be changed at any time to a form that provides for their basic needs, be that a different house, shared accommodation, or (my favourite) a 21st century workhouse.

[SueEllen]

There are very few second world war heroes still alive left, so I don't think consideration of them should any more determine housing policy (those there are could be treated as a special case). In the example you give of a 75-year old woman, she would have been aged 7 in 1945, so I doubt she was making very many war munitions. Are you sure you're correct with your story, or are you, like most socialists, making it up as you go along?

You say plenty of "perfectly decent" people live in council houses. Maybe so. But they need to remember that they are taking money from taxpayers, so should consider it right for that support to be changed at any time to a form that provides for their basic needs, be that a different house, shared accommodation, or (my favourite) a 21st century workhouse.

I actually know a 90-something year old man who lives in a 2 bedroom council house.

The house is to big for him and ideally he would be moved to smaller council accommodation on one floor with a lift if it isn't on the ground floor.

Unfortunately in the part of London he lives they have a shortage of one-bedroom council flats so he would have to get accommodation from a Housing Association.

However if he was to move he would:
1. Have to pay more rent than he is paying on the house,
2. Move to a different area.

The first means taxpayers would lose out by having to subsidise him more. The second mean tax payers would lose out as they would have to pay more money towards his care and as that type of care is generally substandard he would end up being a bigger burden on the NHS. He currently relies on different neighbours to look after and look out for him because he is frail, which is the only reason the local hospital is happy to discharge him.

I forgot to add Council Housing stock is all over 25 years old. This means the housing stock has all been paid for in full. Especially as in London there is plenty of council housing that was built before the 1960s.

Modern Housing Association stock i.e. anything built after 1988 may not have been paid for in full.

[socialworker]

Replying to KP: Your post is barely worth dignifying with a reply but to make it easy for you to understand I am using my grandmother, born c 1900 and died around 1992, as an example so clearly she was of an age to do war work but that isnt the point. My point, which clearly wont impress you as someone who thinks 75 year olds should be put in hostels, is that housing is more than purely a warehousing process, people have homes, usually nearby to relatives, friends and neighbours who provide vital support networks when life's difficulties such as illness and disability, hit. When in my job we get people in hospital who do not have any of these supports, who are without family or friends, it takes a stonking amount of my time paid for by the public purse at £50 hour to do basic things so they wont occupy an acute hospital bed at £1000 a day any longer than necessary. As you are clearly such a wonderful human being and immune from illness and old age, I am sure that wont happen to you.

[SueEllen]

Socialworker there are a lot of people on this site who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Funny thing is even old Tory party members and MPs aren't this dense but then again they have made an effort to meet, talk with and understand people from different walks of life.

[vetran]

unfortunately there is a disparity between the outcome of a private renter and a council assisted.

Possibly the following paragraphs are somewhat brutal but it is an alternative view.

Despite paying probably 20-30% of the rent to live in council funded property they failed to save for a deposit or move on from their cushy number for 40 years. The fact single mothers and families have been struggling to pay their private rent they pay extra tax because your Granny won the council house lottery and lived on reduced rent that most of us would love to pay for 40 years.

At no time during her subsidised stay there was it HER home, it was rented accommodation and that was it. If you think that is unfair how can you defend Bob Crowe on £150,000 + expenses living in a house paid for by taxpayers on £18K? or for that matter a number of MP's in council houses?

Yes its brutal to move old people into a hostel, but if we had cut the subsidy to higher rate tax paying council tenants and kept the old people's homes open then we would be moving them to a place of safety. I would have no problem paying a reasonable amount for that.

Make council & housing association houses require market rents and discount accordingly. If the rent is £1000 a month and you have a low income & 3 kids you pay say £600 and a £400 credit based on need, when your 3 children leave or your household income passes say £40K you have to pay the full £1000 (in fact I would make the council house more expensive to encourage people to move on), that's what this benefit reduction clumsily tries to achieve. Its not a tax that is money paid on EARNT INCOME.

"A council house is for need not for life!"

As we see from the developing story the person who made the original accusation was not disclosing other income and appears to be running a cash based market stall with a laughable turnover. It's been my experience many people in council funded properties are earning significant undeclared sums in cash.

We were quite happy forcing little old ladies out of their privately owned homes to pay for their nursing care. Why should those in council housing get different treatment after living years in subsidised accommodation and failing to save for their future?

[KentPhilip]

Replying to KP: Your post is barely worth dignifying with a reply but to make it easy for you to understand I am using my grandmother, born c 1900 and died around 1992, as an example so clearly she was of an age to do war work but that isnt the point. My point, which clearly wont impress you as someone who thinks 75 year olds should be put in hostels, is that housing is more than purely a warehousing process, people have homes, usually nearby to relatives, friends and neighbours who provide vital support networks when life's difficulties such as illness and disability, hit. When in my job we get people in hospital who do not have any of these supports, who are without family or friends, it takes a stonking amount of my time paid for by the public purse at £50 hour to do basic things so they wont occupy an acute hospital bed at £1000 a day any longer than necessary. As you are clearly such a wonderful human being and immune from illness and old age, I am sure that wont happen to you.

This is another problem with socialists - while they do not agree with the views of right-wingers (which is fair enough), they also do not respect those views. This is not a healthy attitude for debate.

The only 75 year olds who should be put in hostels are those who are unable to support themselves in any other way. It is the state provision of the basics of life (heat, food, healthcare). That is all that a civilised society should provide.
If you start providing any more, where is the motivation for anybody to work hard, coincidently providing the tax base to support these cases. Everyone starts to fall down then.

Beyond that it is the role of charity, to allow people to voluntarily increase support for those who are deserving cases, such as war heroes.

You appear to be making a financial argument that by allowing the state to pay more and keep 75 year olds in their existing homes, that they will save the money they would otherwise have to spend on services currently provided by friends. While I think there is some truth to this I don't agree. Most hostels are fairly local to where residents come from, and the huge financial savings engendered by economies of scale in their provision would outweigh it.

And just because you've moved a couple of miles doesn't mean your friends and families are going to abandon you - they would not be very good friends if they did.

I don't regard myself as a wonderful human being. I am, though, happy to stick up for hard working individuals and families whose income is increasingly being pilfered by the state. They have rights every bit as important as that downtrodden 75-year old.