to think it is fair enough that High earners, earning £30000 pa have to pay market rates for social housing.

[NoahVale]

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/04/david-cameron-ally-rohan-silva-firms-must-be-forced-raise-low-pay

I spose there has to be a cut off somewhere, and I spose it helps that I dont earn £30,000,
no doubt if it was just in the bracket I might feel a bit peeved.

[Happydappy99]

£30k a year is not a high income for a couple. Also, private rents are way to high. In the area I live in privately renting an ex social housing 3 bed house costs three times as much as renting a house over the road which is still HA. How are people suddenly supposed to make up the short fall?

[hollyisalovelyname]

I wouldn't have thought 30 grand is the salary of a high earner. I suppose it's all relative.
£300,000 would be a high earner imo.

[StrawberryTeaLeaf]

Is it actually being implemented? Does anyone know?

It's potentially a big part of the push to socially cleanse the cities.

[northernsoul78]

You meaning op.

[northernsoul78]

That is important. flumpet . Although I actually think yabu either way. 30k wouldn't do far especially for a lone parent paying for childcare and high commuting costs. In emy limited experience most high earners on 30k have high commuting costs. It another ill thought out means testing policy.

[Flumplet]

Is it £30k per individual or per couple? If per individual yanbu, if it's for a couple then it should be £40k cut off I think.

[TriJo]

Agreed Lollipop - in north London here, household income of around 75k and taking any unpaid leave at the end of my maternity leave is nowhere near possible. 30k is somewhere in the region of fuck all around here.

[gamerchick]

The government doesn't even have to start building more houses, there are a lot of properties lying empty and starting to fall to bits. There are entire streets boarded up in this country.

Leaving them to rot doesn't make any sense, but then little the government does makes sense to the minions.

[BoxingMum2015]

So what happens if you get a pay rise which takes you over the threshold but only slightly? In Central London, difference between council rents and market rents is around £1200 pcm. If you earn 41k, you would have to pay 20-24k of that for rent. If we're talking gross earnings, that leaves about 6k for everything else. If two adults are earning 25k pa each, this hardly equates to high earners. Also, if you pay market rent as a high earner then lose your job, what happens then? Council would probably be trying to evict you before they got around to answering their phones so that you could explain the situation.

[MrsCorbyn]

30k is nowhere near a high income

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

I strongly disagree that building more and more housing is the way forwards. I personally do not want the country to turn into a total concrete jungle, destroying all our wildlife, because we couldn't control population numbers, or sort out a workable solution to housing.

So how do we control our population numbers, then? Cull the old people or sterilise women after 2 babies? There is no answer to that question that isn't highly questionable. So we have to sort out housing. Here's a radical suggestion: invest in the north of England, Scotland and Wales, where the countryside is ample and you could easily build new houses without ending up with a concrete jungle or destroying all the wildlife. You would have to ensure the investment was there to also build new schools/roads/public transport links etc etc, and encourage businesses to start up in the area, but it's not impossible. But you'll never get a London-based government to invest in Scotland in case they one day, 20 or 40 years in the future, vote for independence - even if a bit of investment now might stop them wanting that! But the Northern Powerhouse idea would be a start.

[MsJamieFraser]

And community.

[MsJamieFraser]

HelanaDove

"Council housing dosent actually exist anymore and HAs are private companies not charities"

This is incorrect, some HA are Registered charities, however they are private companies however are non profit, basically all monies made goes back into the houses.

[LagunaBubbles]

Council housing dosent actually exist anymore

That will be news to my local authority then as thats who I pay my rent to!

[AllThePrettySeahorses]

Absolute joke. Market rent is, frankly, bollocks. I'd go completely the other way and reintroduce rent controls - housing is a bloody essential commodity so perhaps landlords should be restricted to fair rent instead.

I'd like to be more articulate but I am so effing angry about this and it doesn't even affect me. Ideological crap again to cripple social housing which should be available to everyone at a fair rent.

[Lollipopgirl8]

In London 30k is nothing in my book a high income household is 50k minimum in London I would have to earn about 100k to be comfortable

[gamerchick]

That didn't answer my question... How is it subsidised, who is subsidising it - you?

You are aware that the south doesn't represent the whole country don't you? There are no shortage of CH here, they even give them to working families.

[goodnessgraciousgoudaoriginal]

gamer - subsidised in so much as they are a finite number of homes provided to those in need outside of the private renting market, with significantly lower rates than would be charged otherwise.

[StrawberryTeaLeaf]

I'm equally boggled that people are willing to pay nearly £3k rent pcm to live in a very ordinary ex-LA house in a not particularly lovely part of London.

[StrawberryTeaLeaf]

I did this calculation on the closest council housing to me (a mixture of 2 bed maisonettes and 4 bed houses) back in the summer.

The 4 bed houses that have been bought under RTB and are now advertised for rent seem to command rentals in the range £2500-2800 pcm, which is roughly what the net of a £40kpa gross income would work out at, depending how it was split between two people.

So the WHOLE of a couple's earnings would then go on rent!? Madness.

I am nosey to know what the council rents for those houses are. Soon only people who bought some time ago or very poor social tenants will be able to afford the city. It boggles my brain.

[hilsyou]

Council housing dosent actually exist anymore
That would be a surprise to my landlord (my council) who still own 13,000 homes (including mine!). Some areas don't have any council housing as it was transferred to HAs, but that's certainly not true of every council in the UK.

[gamerchick]

Yup it does here as well.

[StrawberryTeaLeaf]

Council housing dosent actually exist anymore

It does in many areas Helena, including many London boroughs.

[gamerchick]

In what way are CHs subsidised goodness or what way do you think they are?

[goodnessgraciousgoudaoriginal]

I guess the message to most people on here would be "welcome to the middle class"?

I especially like the double standards about deliberately shunting down work hours, or one person giving up work so that couples can still afford subsidised housing and keep their nicer home locations/lifestyles, whilst in the same breath decrying those who evade tax. It's pretty much the same mentality on both sides "I do enough already, I work my arse off and deserve some benefits to that", but one is acceptable and one isn't apparently.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who can't afford market rent in the area they would need to live - so they have to commute from an area that they CAN afford, even if it means scraping by. Why is this okay for them but not for others?

I strongly disagree that building more and more housing is the way forwards. I personally do not want the country to turn into a total concrete jungle, destroying all our wildlife, because we couldn't control population numbers, or sort out a workable solution to housing.

Market rents should be controlled within reason. Long term rentals should be given strong incentives but with decent get out clauses to protect landlords against truly nightmare tenants. People should have to pay fees on second homes which are empty for more than X months in a year (sometimes they might need to be empty for works or whilst finding other tenants obviously). It should be illegal for companies to build new apartments and keep them empty.