Council's paying thousands per month in rent for substandard accommodation in London - is this fair to the tax payer and the fmaily?

[mids2019]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly21w7qewvo

Noticed this story in the news but what struck me as well as the ghastly toilet was the fact the council was paying 2,500 Linda in rent for the property. I love outside of London and a 1K mortgage seems on the high end of things in my local town. It seems bizarre that councils are paying such money to private landlords given their already squeezed finances but I guess there is no other option in London.

Could it be that is a fairer solution to offer accommodation outside the capital of rents are so high or should local councils try and minimise local emergency housing costs but be at the mercy of slum landlords?

Poor as in not rich?
What other definition of poor is there?
Except of course, poor understanding and empathy from a few

Banning no fault decisions may be part of the solution but it will makenprospective land lords wary as effectively they have an asset that becomes a lot less liquid and they may need to sell for their own personal reasons. I can understand councils being obliged not to evict tenants in a whim but if we are relying on the private sector then there will be those advocating a property owner has the right to sell their own property at the time of their choosing; it is after all their property with low social housing stock the private rental sector kicks in but we want private landlords to shoulder the social responsibility that is better managed in the public sector? Maybe an argument for more social housing and the removal of right to buy.

Health and wellbeing should come first surely, how can one live in a horrid situation just to hold down a low paid job?

Respectfully, that’s a question coming from a certain level of privilege (I also have privilege). Living hand to mouth leaves little energy or money for remote job hunting and scouring council websites for rules on social housing in different areas, no cash leftover to travel to interviews for other jobs etc.

I think the people doing well out of this are the doughnut sellers. The doughnut chain are paying the fit to deliver doughnuts and yet his housing bill currently is 30K per year. Isn't the public effectively subsiding the city doughnut chain so that they can minimise the salary to the worker? Is this quite right?

I don’t get why uk taxpayers countrywide pay to support London - if you complain you are told London produces the most tax revenue -no you mean our legal and financials business is here and that small minority fund taxes - the rest of us fund the astoundingly good travel in London. The randoms needing extortionately high rents paid for them erc
etc London grows and modernises and the rest get nothing.
Huge electricity pylons are being built to take power to London - let Londoners pay.for it, the underground cables that don’t destroy the rest of the countryside. It means the rest of the country is funding extortionate costs for Londoners and the rest get nothing.

Anyone in any doubt needs to listen to Dan Hewitts podcast trapped about the unbelievable conditions of London centric council / housing association housing . It's a hard listen and they shouldn't be paid a penny in tax payer funded rent until those properties are brought up to habitable status . Because it's London rents will be high but that doesn't mean people should be forced to live away from family and friends .
I've more got the rage against those awful social landlords than rents paid . There is so much legislative pressure on private landlords yet the government are complicit in some of the worst housing conditions I've ever heard of .

Surely the solution is better housing in London. Moving on a low wage isn't easy. The moving process itself is expensive. If you are lucky enough to get a housing association property, you then need to pay for all of the flooring, as previous carpets, laminate etc will have been removed. People with specific location jobs would lose their jobs as too far to commute. Anyone who previously used family for cheap or free childcare would lose that, so probably have to claim more in benefits. All just sounds like a massive extra expense for the taxpayers, when having more council owned property would increase the local authority assets.

No, it bloody well isn't fair to the taxpayer or the family! How the landlord can get away with charging that much rent for a property that isn't fit for human habitation is beyond me.

The legacy of Thatcher's Right to Buy still poisoning people 40 years later.

And then landlords will sell up and there will be fewer rental properties

If ever there was a case of flogging off the family silver rtb was it.
It was a shortsighted stupid policy.

Thankfully they have now reduced the discount being handed out, wish it had gone further and been abolished though.

If they can't afford to rent out their properties at a reasonable amount (and in properly well maintained condition), then they shouldn't be a landlord. This constant threat of "you would have nowhere to live if it wasn't for us" is part of the problem.

It has been in Scotland since 2015.
I'm still council my neighbour bought his one bedroom flat for £12500.and we are in a decent area.

Rents are going up because there is demand and because the state/tax payers foot the bill.

Those saying let’s build hundreds of thousands of new housing units, how do we do that?There were some proposals recently that in order to build 500,000 homes we need to import 350,000 builders, or similar numbers. Who of course come with their own family and need of housing.

The councils are also required to provide accommodation to families with No Recourse To Public Funding and no Leave To Remain, because no child can live on the street. This is exploited by thousands of families who are here illegally. So rents go even higher and landlords get away with disgusting conditions.

In this case, the husband is a doughnut delivery driver. Is this really an essential job so he needs to stay in London with his family and the council need to support a family of four because society’s need of doughnuts delivered to your home is so great?

I totally blame right to buy for this. So many properties have now ended up in private landlords hands, so that now benefits pay them for costlier accommodation costs, rather than going straight back to the council for their cheaper accommodation costs. All that's happened is the council looses much more money this way.

The only way to bring down private rental costs is to have much more council properties so that they are competing with them for tennants and having to lower their prices, rather than each other where they can keep raising it.

I don't object to high density housing, but I do object to streets of high rise flats with no green space, no gaps between the blocks and face directly onto narrow streets. It's very suffocating.

No the problem is that people have no alternative than to pay outrageous amounts for rental property because there's not enough of it. Do you also think people should be forced to sell their London houses for a "reasonable " amount? If not, why?

We do need more affordable housing everywhere but London will always be more expensive and many people such as the family in the story may not be able to afford to live there. Of course we need appropriate housing for key workers but those not reliant on benefits often have to commute in so there's no reason that shouldn't apply to everyone.

Renting out is totally different to selling don't try to pretend they are the same. Landlords that try to hold renters to ransom by saying "we can charge whatever we want" are most definitely a problem, and if you read my post properly I said "part of the problem", so no not the whole problem but definitely contributing to the issue!

Governments of all parties have known for years that the only solution to the housing crisis is a massive house building programme. Easier said than delivered though, given the lack of builders.

London does need key workers. We should prioritise them. But there are many families in London in temporary accommodation where one or both parents are unemployed. Often, the one worker will be in a job we could do without. We do not NEED Deliveroo or Uber drivers even though there may be a demand for them.

I take the point about local support networks. But there are thousands of families who are in work and paying taxes who do not qualify for public housing. They all have to move out of London and either get a job somewhere else or commute back in for jobs. What about their need for a support network?

Indeed the family in the story- the dad is a delivery driver and the mum doesn't work. I wouldn't say they qualify as key workers- not everyone has the right to live in central London

Having access to council housing is now like winning the lottery in London.

The reality is that to afford £2.5k in rent you need to be earning a lot of money.

£50k after tax is £3k a month.

A family where each parent earned £50k, one nursery fee, £2.5k rent… that would he 75% of their income gone.

It makes sense that there is some housing provision for low income people - it doesn’t make sense that someone in receipt of housing benefit can afford better housing than someone working.

It’s absurd that one group of working adults are constantly told to ‘cut their cloth’, have less kids, move out of London etc etc - meanwhile a delivery driver with a stay-at-home wife are supported to live in a house most would have no hope of affording unless in the top couple of % of earners.

It would be good for a laugh if "the poor" moved out of London. I'd like to see the hedge fund managers, judges and magic circle lawyers run the street cleaning machines, work in A&E and supermarkets in their spare time.

1. The mum doesn't work because she has to spend hours every day driving her children miles across London to their schools - which is a better alternative to their schooling being further disrupted every time they have to move, which could be frequently as they're in temporary accomodation.
2. I wouldn't call Enfield "central London"

It isn’t a threat. That’s the wrong way to look at it. It’s a sensible decision to sell an asset if its income isn’t covering costs, and increased interest rates make that more likely to be true.

It’s appalling for landlords not to fix toilets etc - but many if not most are neither demons nor angels and will cease to be landlords if it’s not economically sensible to do so.

„I'd like to see the hedge fund managers, judges and magic circle lawyers run the street cleaning machines, work in A&E and supermarkets in their spare time“.

I do not think the argument is this clear cut. There are many people in Central London who are already housed in public housing, shared accommodation, with parents, student housing, key worker housing etc who can do these jobs.

For me the question is does it make sense for the taxpayer to pay £2500 per month (this alone a net salary of around £38000) for a supermarket worker to live in the capital when the job could be done by a student or a machine?