Could you live on £7.50 a day?

[Peoplesoft bloke]

I think that's the crux of the matter. The whole debate is a lot of bollocks, polarised and politicised and what we actually need is some smart people to take a step back, look at the situation and think "how can we sort this out". Unfortunately the nature of modern Britain means that the necessary smart people are either busy thinking "how can we make money out of this" or busy making money out of something else.

Oh dear, we really are proper ****ed aren't we.

WHS

[formant]

From the sound of it, it's more like people were allocated a house big enough for them and their children, and then the children moved out. If the parent was being completely honest, and only accepting what they needed from the state, they should have gone back and asked for a smaller place. But why would you when the state will pay for you to have a spare room, no questions asked?

I can't imagine there are that many single people who were allocated 4 bedroom houses, for example. And if they were, then that system clearly needs a radical overhaul too.

Oh, I'm sure that's one scenario, but the other one certainly exists, too. When I lived in Aberdeen during my student days, a number of my non-student friends got 3-bed council flats because nothing else was available. Those flats were all located in the most deprived and awful part of town (hence there were few competing applications). I'm sure that sort of thing went on everywhere.

Regarding tenants asking for a smaller place - yeah, I sort of agree. But if there generally aren't enough smaller properties now, I doubt there would have been many alternatives then. I'd presume they would have been told to just keep the place, because from the council's perspective that's easier. It's different when people have been offered a smaller place and refused. We briefly privately rented a former council house before buying our current property. Our elderly neighbours were renting a 4-bed from the council at £200/month and had been there since the estate was built. Over the years they'd raised a ton of kids and grandkids in that place, but by now they've been on their own for a few years. They regularly get asked to move and continue to fight it. They're the sort of people for whom the spare bedroom tax is completely justified (especially when you see the massively expensive campervan parked on their drive, making you question how on earth they qualified for a council house in the first place, when they're clearly not all that poor).

Overall, social housing definitely needs an overhaul. Each local authority handles these matters differently, so implementing a blanket policy like the spare bedroom tax on a national level is bound to be a mess and unfair to many. :-/

[socialworker]

The government wants people to fall back on family resources now, far better that the daughter who ends up unemployed at 25 has a room to go back to while she can look for a job than feel her only option is to get pregnant or move in with some unsuitable bloke. I now find men in their 50s sleeping on their mothers' sofas because once unemployed they have no chance whatever of a job, retraining for a job, or accommodation. Elderly frail people can be supported and kept out of care by a succession of family sleeping over, but take any spare resource away from people and they will have no resilience to cope with bad luck and disability within the family, a very false economy. Dont forget these are peoples' homes they may have had for 40 years, my grandmother lived in her very nice council house alone until her 90s once my grandfather died 20 years before her, my aunt lived around the corner and was her carer. To have forced her out of her home she had lived in since the 1930s into some block surrounded by strangers would have been exceptionally cruel. Just because you are in receipt of a state resource - not forgetting people do pay rent! does not make you in my view a legitimate target to be treated as less than fully human.

[VectraMan]

Overall, social housing definitely needs an overhaul. Each local authority handles these matters differently, so implementing a blanket policy like the spare bedroom tax on a national level is bound to be a mess and unfair to many. :-/

At least it's decisive action. We're well used to governments promising to reform things, from the NHS to education to benefits but it never seems to make much difference. Can you imagine how long it would take if it was left up to councils to implement cuts in a way that satisfied everybody's ideas of what was fair?

[VectraMan]

Just because you are in receipt of a state resource - not forgetting people do pay rent! does not make you in my view a legitimate target to be treated as less than fully human.

Who pays rent? This is a discussion about housing benefit. Nobody who pays rent is affected.

[KentPhilip]

Dont forget these are peoples' homes they may have had for 40 years, my grandmother lived in her very nice council house alone until her 90s once my grandfather died 20 years before her, my aunt lived around the corner and was her carer. To have forced her out of her home she had lived in since the 1930s into some block surrounded by strangers would have been exceptionally cruel. Just because you are in receipt of a state resource - not forgetting people do pay rent! does not make you in my view a legitimate target to be treated as less than fully human.

Council accommodation rents have always been subsidised by the taxpayer. So it was never "her" home, and indeed would not have been even if she paid full market rent.

Why shouldn't she move to shared accommodation if she no longer needs a large house?

And as for your accusation that such a move would be inhumane, well according to the far-left politician Nye Bevan who set up the welfare state, the latter should provide: "to each according to need", and I am sure he was not advocating inhumane treatment of people.

She does not need anything more than a hostel to stay in. Therefore according to him she would not be being treated inhumanely.

[Sysman]

Here's an MP who's actually tried feeding herself on £18/week, that being the amount some of her constituents have to feed themselves with, and how it turned out: House of Commons Hansard Debates for 27 Feb 2013 (pt 0003)

Of course some individuals or couples have properties that are larger than they need, but the so-called under-occupancy is in one part of the country and the overcrowding is in another. It simply is not credible to suggest that all the large, over-occupying families in London will move up to Durham, particularly given that the unemployment rate there is more than 9%. What would they be moving to? What would they be moving for?

And that is another problem, which we saw with the beginning of IR35*. The government all too often look at conditions in London and assume that the whole country is like that.

* for those who don't recall this, the first draft of IR35 wasn't going to allow any accommodation or subsistence expenses, which would have hit those of us living outside the SE particularly hard.

[socialworker]

Council accommodation rents have always been subsidised by the taxpayer. So it was never "her" home, and indeed would not have been even if she paid full market rent.

Why shouldn't she move to shared accommodation if she no longer needs a large house?

And as for your accusation that such a move would be inhumane, well according to the far-left politician Nye Bevan who set up the welfare state, the latter should provide: "to each according to need", and I am sure he was not advocating inhumane treatment of people.

She does not need anything more than a hostel to stay in. Therefore according to him she would not be being treated inhumanely.

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.

[socialworker]

Who pays rent? This is a discussion about housing benefit. Nobody who pays rent is affected.

when she was of pensionable age I am pretty sure she would have had some HB.

[formant]

Maybe we'd have more/enough available social housing if Maggie hadn't allowed/encouraged people to buy their council properties far below market value (which they subsequently went to sell on or rent out privately at a considerable profit).

You know, just to balance out some of the anti-Labour-whining in this thread...

Just sayin'.