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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think it won't be long before we have workhouses again?

333 replies

MrsTawdry · 02/02/2015 22:11

I really know very little about politics but I know that there's a proportion of people who love benefits bashing and love abusing those who receive housing benefit etc.

It occurred to me recently that one "answer" to the housing crisis might be a sort of "Housing Centre" ....basic blocks of flats sort of thing...where occupants lose a portion of their JSA in return for a roof...and from there it's a step to being given food vouchers as part of benefits and working on a voluntary basis....litter picking etc.

Could this happen? Could a government legislate and make this happen?

OP posts:
bettyboop1970 · 03/02/2015 15:32

Actually, JSA claimants have to provide evidence that they are job searching for 35 hours a week or they have their benefits 'sanctioned' resulting in having to live on £30 a week. JSA claimants even have to job search on Christmas day.

RandomNPC · 03/02/2015 15:42

Hmm goady fucker

EatShitDerek · 03/02/2015 15:43

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

morethanpotatoprints · 03/02/2015 15:43

madame

You sound like part of the society that doesn't understand at all.
Have you any idea how the system works? do you know the hoops people have to jump through already to receive benefit.

MadderPink · 03/02/2015 15:48

Hmm you can't have it both ways. Either it's an idea that works when done properly and I'm stupid to mention it, or it's guaranteed to go wrong and I'm stupid to suggest it.

The hostel a previous poster mentioned was for women. So that's not in itself a stupid idea. MN seems to approve of women's refuges etc. Just because a single-sex institution may exist and be helpful for some people who use it, isn't to imply that gender segregation is something that should be imposed on everyone and is an answer to all ills, and I didn't say that.

This thread is touchy mctouchyville!

SunnyBaudelaire · 03/02/2015 15:48

"Can you imagine if they were actually asked to work for what they get!"

The thing is, Castafiore, they are, round here anyway. My son's friend had to work at the bus garage full time for about two months to continue to receive his JSA.

Now, as he hoped, he has been taken on as a proper employee. At four pounds an hour, and they will 'see how it goes'....

morethanpotatoprints · 03/02/2015 15:52

Madder

I don't think anybody does know whether it could be done properly it does sound doubtful and unnecessary.
Building enough houses and providing welfare where you don't have so much bureaucracy would go along way to solving most problems.
Going by society and gov policies of the past it certainly didn't work.
Would a gov stoop so low now? Well they are doing if people would just open their eyes.

bettyboop1970 · 03/02/2015 15:54

My friend has to attend a maths and literacy course to receive her JSA, despite having 4 A'levels and a degree, or she will get sanctioned.
What mad world has IDS created, the stupid twat.
At the end of there is not enough jobs for everyone.

caroldecker · 03/02/2015 16:03

Is there any other solution than pay more in benefits and expect less obligations from those in receipt of benefits

bettyboop1970 · 03/02/2015 16:07

The biggest benefit bill is state pensions 64%.
Every pensioner in receipt of state pension is effectively on benefits.

Theoretician · 03/02/2015 16:11

Many accounts of older people in 20s/30s/40s and beyond being terrified of the hospital. I was reading some recently. Someone posted here last year saying they remembered their gran having that fear (that if they went in, they wouldn't get out).

Wasn't this because before the invention of antibiotics, people who went into hospital tended to die there?

ConferencePear · 03/02/2015 16:17

Many accounts of older people in 20s/30s/40s and beyond being terrified of the hospital. I was reading some recently. Someone posted here last year saying they remembered their gran having that fear (that if they went in, they wouldn't get out).

Their fear was the stigma of dying in extreme poverty when they had worked hard all their lives.

ConferencePear · 03/02/2015 16:18

Pressed post too soon.
This would have meant them having a pauper's funeral and being buried in an unmarked and sometimes communal grave. They didn't want to die in disgrace.

Theoretician · 03/02/2015 16:19

I do think social housing should now only go to working people on minimum wage or close to it, having seen the arseholes my local council is now rushing to the top of the waiting list. But that's as close to Scrooge as I intend to get.

I think social housing should go to whoever (credibly) offers to pay the highest rent, with anyone allowed to bid. This would drive rents up, and housing benefit would have to go up correspondingly so that people who claim it could still afford rent. This would mean housing would only be subsidised according to the degree people were eligible for housing benefit, there wouldn't also be a backdoor subsidy of below-market rents for people who don't necessarily need or deserve it.

bettyboop1970 · 03/02/2015 16:20

I think they feared being institutionalised. The workhouse was the very last resort for the poor. It was viewed with trepidation and fear as once admitted you lost your autonomy and would never get out. Many older people viewed hospitals with the same fear, especially as many subsequent hospitals were former workhouses.

Original poster
MrsTawdry · 03/02/2015 16:29

Theoretician that simply wouldn't work! What does "credibly" mean? When would HB go up in response? Once those unable to bid high enough were homeless? Confused

OP posts:
JumpRope · 03/02/2015 16:34

The problem with ideas like this is all the work that was done to ensure a minimum wage was a legal requirement would basically be shunted out of the window. Unless they are the be paid minimum wage, in which case.... They are no longer job seekers, they'd have a job....

bettyboop1970 · 03/02/2015 16:40

The whole point of social housing is that it is affordable to those who can't afford to buy (like me).
One of the biggest contributory factor to a shortage was letting people buy them!

Arsenic · 03/02/2015 18:27

Wasn't this because before the invention of antibiotics, people who went into hospital tended to die there?

No it was harking back to the days when, once you became a union pauper (w/house inmate) it was almost impossible to re-establish yourself in the community again. Once you were past middle age and had to admit yourself, that was often it.

There was a lot of overlap between hospital and workhouse provision in the early C20th and people of that generation and class didn't distinguish much between the two.

Arsenic · 03/02/2015 18:34

Then if it works, and is helpful, more of it might be a solution for various other groups. I think one thing that prevents there being enough of exactly that sort of thing is the cries of "workhouse"! (and nimbyism) But whether or not what you describe in your OP equates to a workhouse, depends on social policy.

It is all social policy Madder. You have outlined something that has many of the key features of union poorhouse provision, only with better architecture and self-preofessed good/leftist intentions. But we are in a climate of sanctions, blame, scrounger-rhetoric and wafer-thin budgets.

So, if you were contracted to design your scheme for government tomorrow, they would take your plans and mould them to their agenda. Your expensive architecture and nebulous 'intent' would become casualties before it was off the table.

Penny pinching, 'incentivising' the poor and inciting the tax payers are what the welfare system are all about ATM.

Arsenic · 03/02/2015 18:38

Theoretician what would the point be? Social housing is often not well appointed or well maintained. Who would want to secure it at a pushed-up price?

The USP of social housing is (was) affordable rent and security of tenure.

Most social LLs are now offering fixed term tenancies to new tenants, so that is one half of the USP undermined. Inflating the rents would render the whole thing pointless.

SolidGoldBrass · 03/02/2015 21:05

It's another of those stupidity indicators when people bang on about how important it is that everyone should be made to 'work'. If someone is forced to provide free labour for a greedy corporation that not only wants to get out of paying wages but whose practices also impoverish others and pollute the environment, why is that seen as more desirable than letting the person do other things with his/her time, such as keeping an eye on elderly or lonely friends and family/walking the neighbours' dogs/painting pictures? An awful lot of unskilled/semi-skilled jobs are actually a complete fucking waste of time (being cooped up in a call centre trying to sell people rip-off energy deals, for example) yet there is this wierd idea that choosing not to do that sort of thing is morally wrong.
At present, nearly all 'good' jobs (well paid, pleasant or interesting to do, having opportunities for promotion) are not available to the poor, because to get such a job you have to accept long periods of not being paid while you 'intern' or 'train on the job.' So only those with wealthy families can get them.

SolidGoldBrass · 03/02/2015 21:10

Mind you, I wonder at what point they are going to bring back some form of domestic slavery - if you are poor and unemployed, and can't afford a house, why not take on a 'live-in' job somewhere? It is, of course, perfectly reasonable to get a job cooking/cleaning in a private house rather than in a restaurant or office block, as long as you're treated well and paid properly: I'm not knocking that type of work. But I can sort of see it becoming a Good Thing for the rich, encouraged by further tax breaks, to take on 'domestic staff', and for the rights of those domestic staff to be further eroded, and the idea that, once you have begun to do that kind of work you might plan to move on to other things becoming less and less plausible.

woodhill · 03/02/2015 21:15

people used to lodge more and were paying guests. for example Miss Milliment in the Cazalet chronicles was a lodger and it wasn't very nice.

JoffreyBaratheon · 03/02/2015 22:20

I wonder where this fantasy that council housing is "subsidised", comes from? My council house was built in the 1940s probably at the cost of about £100. Which was paid back by tenants within a few years. We are Council Tax Band C. Council tenants aren't mysteriously opted out of all that or automatically the cheapest band. The millionaires 3 doors down are also Council Tax Band C.

Aren't I subsidising all of those homeowners by paying rent for a house that was bought and paid for decades ago? Then paying the same council tax as the fabulously wealthy a few doors down? (Who are lovely people, btw and deserve their success and lovely 18thC farmhouse).

My house costs the council nothing to maintain. I have been a tenant here for years and the only major job ever was paid for 100% by the EU. So I pay not only council tax but rent on a house that costs the council and the taxpayer... zero.

As I say, utter fantasy that any bugger is 'subsidising' me. I'd go so far as to say - I'm subsidising them.

BTW it's rural so we have no street lighting. The school in our village was shut down in the early 1960s. No pavements. No gas mains can ever be run in here. So I assume my rent (all of it) and council tax subsidise homeowners. Let's set the story straight.