to think its a disgrace that Cameron is going to stop lifetime council tenancies

[sparklesandglitterxx]

and think that that is NOT the solution to the housing crisis?

the solution as far as i can see it is, lots and lots more council houses need to be built, regulation in private renting needs to be improved, and GENUINELY affordable houses to buy for those on low wages that wish to or are able to buy

fed up of seeing the great things about Britain being chipped away. Why punish renters? The whole Tory attitude towards council housing being a last resort for the destitute disgusts me. council housing needs to be brought back to what it was originally meant for...which is a decent secure home for anyone who wants one. i live on a council estate which is a mix of council, HA and bought. People stay here, they build lives here, generally it is a lovely community. i have never been happier or more settled anywhere i have lived, I have done well in my life and been able to have a big family. my children are happy and thriving at school and have lots of friends. My point is if these changes go through, they will end up DESTROYING communities like ours and so many others. The Tories just seem to want everyone either paying their landlord mates every penny they earn or pushing up house prices by buying. But not everyone wants to buy, and more importantly not everyone CAN buy, (I have friends on good money who are still priced out the market) and hardly anyone would actually CHOOSE to be in insecure, expensive private rented !! I also think that if more people are in secure housing, it will help peoples mental health (hence cutting costs in mental health services), it will improve childrens chances in life, as they wont have to keep moving schools and away from friends etc, it will encourage people to better themselves, it will cut the HB bill, and also with people spending less on their rent they will have more to spend in the economy, thus boosting it!

I also suspect it wont end here....while it will be for new tenants only to start with, i would imagine it will end up being everyone in council / HA

yy BetaDad. It's the kind of short-termist thinking that has plagued housing policy over the past 35 years and led us into the mess we're in now. 'Ooh look, there's a group of people whose unearned assets are pushing them into paying tax. Can't have that - let's just raise the threshold instead of dealing with the complex interplay of factors that has led to these assets being so over-valued'.

Quite apart from anything else, IHT is fundamentally a tax on the stupid - those who can't be arsed to think about trusts and other financial mechanisms; it's one of the easiest taxes to avoid. So, given that it's essentially a tax on rich thickos, kind of goes against the grain to lift even more people out of it.

betadad yes, we have an economy based on buying and holding an artificially scarce asset instead of making anything or starting an innovative business. What could possibly go wrong?

Bit late coming back to this, but subsidies that home owners and private landlords get include:

• housing benefit to private landlords (cost: £12 billion per year)
• LA guaranteed leasing agreements with private landlords (eg guaranteeing that rent will be covered for a fixed period - typically five years - including during void periods)
• income support for mortgage interest for home-owners during period of unemployment
• low-cost home ownership schemes eg Help To Buy (cost: £3 billion so far)

- renovation and maintenance grants for landlords and home owners - tax relief on mortgages for private landlords - tax relief on maintenance for private landlords - tax relief on capital gains tax for home owners

Most of this is the same as Business owners. Letting property is seen as a business so they get the same allowances. Guaranteed leasing agreements would possibly be for difficult tenants. If you don't bribe the landlords they would be homeless.
The gov are just changing the tax relief on mortgage interest and maintenance allowances are being restricted. There is no CGT on your own home. Why should there be it is a home not a business. Do tenants pay CGT on car purchase or whatever?
IME REnovation and maintenance grants are thin on the ground. And you have to pay up front then claim what you are due, which will usually be disputed.

[shrug]

It's still money that could be going to the govt that isn't. According to many on this thread, that represents a subsidy. A £25 billion (and counting) per year subsidy, just the same as the £36 a week subsidy that council tenants get.

And as for 'it's just because landlords are businesses', I don't know of a single other business whose customers get £12 billion off the govt in order to enable them to buy that which otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford. Could you imagine someone walking into Sports Direct, having a look at some trainers and the assistant says 'I know you've only got £80, but the govt will give you another £40, which we will then pocket and you get the trainers'?

Sea almost none of that, except for capital gains relief (which only applies to principle residence) is widely used, whereas upwards of 30% of Londoners get relief with rent.

As for help to buy, my guess is most homeowners are against it (or should be).

Surely the 12 billion is because tenants can't pay their rent from income so depend on benefits.

Are you suggesting that those tenants are refused tenancies?

Is the 12 billion only paid to private landlords? Why don't the housing associations get any of it?

youmust there are masses of businesses out there which get billions and billions from government which enables them to buy what they would otherwise not be able to afford - just about every single business that provides a service to government or public sevices. So we are talking GP practices, drugs companies, stationary suppliers, Group 4, builders, private nursing agencies, text book publishers... I could go on and on and on and on....

Bit late coming back to this, but subsidies that home owners and private landlords get include:

- housing benefit to private landlords (cost: £12 billion per year)
No - housing benefit is a subsidy to the tenant, not the landlord. If the landlord is being paid the going rate for what they provide, they are not being subsidised. The government buying something does not constitute a subsidy unless they pay a above-market price, and the fact that the market-price is altered by the level of government buying is not relevant either. In short: a government paying amount M for X does not constitute a subsidy of any sort, unless they could have paid less than M. It's irrelevant what X is, the same applies to private rented housing as would apply to aircraft carriers or paper clips.
- LA guaranteed leasing agreements with private landlords (eg guaranteeing that rent will be covered for a fixed period - typically five years - including during void periods)
No, not a subsidy, unless they are over-paying, and then only a subsidy by the difference between the inflated price and what they could have paid.
- income support for mortgage interest for home-owners during period of unemployment
This falls into exactly the same category as housing benefit, it pays the housing costs of people on benefits, with the difference that it's a much less generous benefit.
- low-cost home ownership schemes eg Help To Buy (cost: £3 billion so far)
I agree those are a subsidy to owners, would be happy to see abolished
- renovation and maintenance grants for landlords and home owners
Know nothing about that
- tax relief on mortgages for private landlords
Not a subsidy, simply a consequence of the fairly fundamental rule that we tax profit, not turnover. (Though once I got past the illogicality of it, I supported the recent restriction.)
- tax relief on maintenance for private landlords
Not a subsidy, a business expense.
- tax relief on capital gains tax for home owners
Don't think failure to tax counts as a subsidy, but I'm not opposed to taxing housing gains.
- schedule A tax scrapped for home owners some time ago (we are one of the few countries in the developed world to have done this - even the USA, bastion of the free economy, charges an annual tax to home-owners based on the capital value of their assets)
Absence of a proper property tax may be a bad thing, but it's is not a subsidy to home-owners. (Also, if such a tax were introduced, it would hit renters just as hard, as the cost of paying it would have to be built into rents.)

No - housing benefit is a subsidy to the tenant, not the landlord.

I agree that the tenant is being subsidised. but private LLs are massively benefiting. The sports direct example above is apt. If your product is being subsidised at the purchase point, that's a boon for your business.

Housing Benefit ends up creating a demand for a dwelling a ta price point on the demand curve that would not exist otherwise. If housing benefit did not exist the total demand for dwellings would be the same but the price level of the demand curve would shift down by an amount equal to housing benefit.

Landlords would be forced to either sell their properties (so lowering overall property prices) or agree to rent their properties for a lower rent (so lowering overall rental prices) to tenants who no longer received housing benefit.

Same with the schemes that subsidised first time buyers so they could buy a home. The money actually went straight to developers who were in dire straights after the financial crisis. Some were close to bankruptcy and these schemes were designed solely to allow distressed housebuilders to sell houses that they could not otherwise sell. Indeed that money eventually flowed to the banks as the housebuilders were able to pay interest and principle on loans from the banks they would otherwise have defaulted on.

House prices moved up at the bottom end by an amount almost equal to the first time buyer subsidy by creating artificial demand at higher price points that otherwise would not have existed.

Try replacing 'sports direct' with 'dentist' and 'trainers' with 'filling'

Yep. A few pages back we had some delightful folk declare that those who need housing benefit/ social housing are people who made poor choices in life! Lovely.....

Try replacing 'sports direct' with 'dentist' and 'trainers' with 'filling'

medical insurance and care are not the same as consumer goods.

why should I choose a career just for the money side of things so I can afford a house?

because not all careers pay the same. why should someone else support you in the career you love?

That being said, you are correct that you are doing what society asks (entering a field that is important, useful and in high demand), and I agree you should be able to afford your own home.

the problem is that there aren't enough homes. we need to build so many homes so that the price of homes halve.

Nor are consumer goods the same as housing and social insurance. That is my point.

Why should I choose a career just for the money side?

Perhaps so you can support yourself and your family and stop sponging from other people. Labour will never get in again as long as we have this entitlement attitude.

So a trainee nurse, in work, is a sponger, Viviennemary! The fact that a nurse's salary is not sufficient to survive on is a problem of poor pay and high housing costs, rather than an entitlement attitude! If this your attitude to poorly nurses, you've no business using the NHS!

Vivienne if everyone did what you advised there would be no one to do low paid jobs like care work meaning YOU would have to be the one to take the time off work to wipe your elderly relatives arse or would you think she was too entitled and leave her sitting in her own shit.

I can't see any mention of trainee nurses. If a person doesn't see it as their responsibility to provide for themselves and their families why should it be mine or anybody else's. It's the attitude that annoys me.

I see this thread is still bubbling along.

I agree with Vivienne and others, if you want to choose a career for something you love rather than self sustainability then you shouldn't expect the state to support this, yes we need carers/trainee nurses and if we obviously ignore the problems of globalisation/inflation and a many other myriad of contributing factors, a common symptom is the cost of putting a roof over your head and the systematic problems (across all the political spectrum) that prevents this.

Throwing money at the problem is just another short term can kicking excersise in the hope that our children can sort the issue out

Housing is a basic need, not a commodity. And prices are falsely inflated. Which only benefits those who got on the ladder then pulled it up behind them.

Flood the market with cheap housing (like postWar prefabs) and watch housing prices fall. My brother bought his house (3 bed, basement, attic, 2 living rooms) in 1980 for £10,000. In 1980 you could buy a pint for 50p. (I use that as an example as it is the first thing that comes to mind - maybe because I was a student in 1980....) Now you'd pay £200,000 for a similar house. How much has that house price inflated? 20 times? So that means my pint of beer should cost a tenner. (North of England here where it doesn't).

Landlords should not be allowed to charge 'what the market can stand'. That is not the fault of Housing Benefit or the people claiming it. Curbs should be put on rent for everyone - not just those with Housing Ben but everyone. Not just those in 'social housing' (divisive, lying phrase that is) bt those who rent privately. The old Fair Rents Commission was no doubt killed off by Thatcher.

How many tory MPs have property portfolios? How many have it in their interests for rents not to be capped? Get them out of power, then - like slaveowners propped up slavery politically for thirty years due to self-interest - now we're seeing it with landlords. Cap the shit out of their rents whether they like it or not, simultaneously flood the market with cheap housing available for all and make the bottom fall out of the housing market. Then bleat about 'what the market can stand'. Not interested, now, eh?

Landords should not be allowed to charge 'what the market can stand' ....

Shows you are woefully ignorant in the globalised economy whilst using your laptop/tablet whatever or your trying to score political points....

Oh look a mention of thatcher and get 'them' out of power, yup whitewashing 13 years of labour is the way to go.

You are part of the problem, until the fundamentals can be challenged nothing is going to change, no political party is going to address these fundamentals, as it will be political suicide.

Also

How many tory MPs have property portfolios?

Many, and it is a problem, this isn't isolated to a particular party though.