Reply to: Could you live on £7.50 a day?

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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'.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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. :-/