Grenfell ex-residents should get a 3-bed house with a garden if that's what they want

[pingodolcepo]

Daily mail outrage that some of the residents are asking for a 3-bed house with a garden. But honestly, they have been through a living hell that was caused by someone else's very bad choices.

There are plenty of people in London that have a 3 bed council house, why can't these people that have dealt with horrors get one also?

I know someone that got a council house in Highgate in the 80s, was a cabbie with a good wage, bought it when offered and sold it a few years ago for over a million and now lives in a fab place with loads of land and a pool in the south of France. If plenty of normal people got houses why can't these poor residents get one? They won't ever be able to afford to buy it due to the high cost of london houses now.

Oops don't know how I turned the bold on for the paragraph in the middle. Please ignore.

I know that that was the ethos of council housing when it began way back a hundred years ago

Maybe we need a new Beveridge Report.

I also wanted to say that I do not think that any of us can over estimate the level of trauma associated with being in that inferno. That of course people need to be rehoused. My reason for joining the debate was to point out - that from experience in the job I do - and the knowledge gained within the social housing field. That it isn't just as easy as providing homes for those in the disaster. Once all the 'straightforward' tenants are sorted out (those with a council tenancy living in the property at the time of the fire.) and rehoused as they should be..
The questions still remain,
You are severely traumatised by the fire. BUT ;
You were in the property illegally and had no tenancy with the council.

You weren't actually living in the property (the council have discovered this following investigations/neighbours telling them) but you were the legal tenant.

You aren't even in the UK legally. But have now been given a '12 month amnesty' also subletting.

Who gets rehoused from those groups. ? So it's fair on the general population.

Maybe we need a new Beveridge Report.
.. without a doubt. The current allocation /demand/supply is no longer fit for purpose and has been severely abused for such a long time - The result being that people like me, who have always believed passionately in social housing- end up advocating its abolition.

Let's volunteer ourselves for the commission. I can see it now.
'The Mumsnet Social Housing Enquiry.' bet we couldn't do a worse job than the usual suspects. !

I think the 12 month amnesties were all upgraded to ILR or citizenship or similar.

That's been very much the mood. Which is meant as compassion and on one level it IS. But you're correct that it obscures some useful lessons.

I'm not sure about this.

Why is one Kensington tragedy victim worth 200 times the life of a Manchester tragedy victim?

I sympathise with people who were victims of that fire, but surely it's getting harder to resolve their problems now that their plight has been 'weaponised' by people who desperately need to exploit this tragedy for their own political ends.

Yes here;

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41586892

I suppose the sensible rationale was to secure full cooperation from everyone who might otherwise be frightened of deportation. I don't even have much faith in the enquiry process, yet, though.

If thats what they want...

I would like a four bedroomed detached home in a Cotswold village but it isnt going to happen. Instead, like everyone else, i go out day after day and work for everything i have. No one ever gave me jack shite. I earned it. If i suffered some tragedy in my life, no one is going to wipe my backside. They are only entitle to what the regulations and law allows and fuck all else. Simples.

Nothing ever works overall if the main driver is yielding to pressure and misplaced compassion. Something else goes ping somewhere else in the system. Unintended consequences.
How can people think that giving illegal subletters everything they want (if that were even possible) would not cause ill-feeling from people who will never be able to afford such things?

cathf - I think those people are staggeringly lacking in empathy. Or do they really feel they would happily have lost all their possessions, and potentially friend and family as well, while going through a horrific experience, and view that as fair trade for a council flat? Because I just don't believe it.

In that case Violet, I will refer you back to a question I asked another poster on this thread who did not reply.
Imagine you were living in a studio flat with twins and your husband and had been on the council list for a bigger flat or house for 10 years.
You are just getting further up the list when suddenly the list is closed and you find yourself behind people who should not have been housed in K&C at all, being offered very nice homes and turning them down. You can not bid for the homes they are rejecting.
I think anyone - no matter what they say or how they imagine they would feel - would be completely justified at being annoyed
In those circumstances, if you really honestly feel people who complain are showing a staggering lack of empathy, I think you are either a (ill-judged) saint or showing a staggering lack of empathy yourself.

That's exactly the point Cathf. Well said. There is of course sympathy for those who have been through a terrible trauma such as Grenfell - no one with a shred of humanity could fail to want those affected to be looked after and helped back on their feet. The question is, how far should that help go. ?

I certainly don't believe that just because you were caught up in a great tragedy BECAUSE you were illegally resident. Does NOT mean that that somehow nullifies the illegality and affords you a home to which you were not previously entitled.

As someone has already said further back on the thread , Bertram Russell's quote ' of the misguided belief in the superior virtue of the oppressed' is never as true as in these circumstances. People are people, with good and bad in all stratas of society. Virtue is not limited by social status, race or circumstance. Being poor, unemployed, Black, purple white or pink doesn't in itself make someone automatically deserving.

Fairness should be the overwhelming aim when sorting out this horror. Above both perceived political correctness, or political expediency.

Thanks kitten someone had to say it so it might as well be me.
Some of the replies on here remind me of the 1980s Culture Club song War is Stupid! Of course it is - but how did Boy George propose an end to war? He didn't of course, just sang about how stupid it was.
The trouble with the Isn't It Awful groupthink is that unfortunately, nothing exists in a void, so everything must be considered alongside everything else, or there will inevitably be unintended consequences. There always is
So Violet - can you answer my question? Would you be happy in an overcrowded bedsit while a (hypothetical scenario) Maltese family who had only been in the UK since the beginning of the year turned down homes you could only dream of?

Makes me so fed up. Totally agree Kath

People are people, with good and bad in all stratas of society. Virtue is not limited by social status, race or circumstance. Being poor, unemployed, black, purple white or pink doesn't in itself make someone automatically deserving

We could do with this printed at the top of every contentious MN thread ...

cathf - would I be happy in said bedsit? Well, I have lived in a hideously overcrowded flat in London for financial reasons, and it wasn't fun. I've also been homeless, lived in a hostel, and sofa surfed and slept in my car and it was incredibly grim.

But yes, I would still prefer that the more vulnerable than me were protected. And I still would think that the council should fulfil its obligations to those who are homeless directly because of local authority action or inaction. Not because they are more virtuous than me, but because they are owed a specific duty of care, and because their need would be greater than mine.

Violet, how can the council owe illegal subletters a duty of care when the council did not even know they were there?
Hand wringing over the 'vulnerable' assumes that only those caught up in Grenfell - even if they should not have been there - are 'vulnerable'.
What about those fleeing domestic violence, or crime or thrown out of their homes? Are they not vulnerable too? Because pp on this thread think illegal subletters should be prioritized over those group.
The trouble with being empathetic, caring and lovely as at some point, you have to make a decision over who is more deserving. Who would you choose (and you're not allowed to say more homes should be built for everyone! 😂)

The council owed every single person in that building a duty of care to not get burned in their beds. They failed in that duty. Therefore they have a responsibility.

And I choose to say that the council should accept this responsibility which is what they are doing.

I guess, to put it another way, if you have the capacity to help 10 out of 100 people who are hungry, maybe you should help the 10 people who's hunger you directly caused first. Or if you can bandage the wounds of 10 out of 100 people, you look at the people that you cut first.

So you do think people who were living illegally in Grenfell should be prioritized over law-abiding people who have been waiting their turn for years?
That's your view, which is fine.
But can you not see that this might be a controversial view and those who do not agree with you might have a point?
I don't think people waiting for something for years are showing a staggering lack of empathy to be pissed off when the queue is closed to make way for illegal tenants.

Yes. Violet a duty of care. What does that mean. ? What care do they have a duty to provide , in your opinion, to people who should never of been there and that the council didn't even know where there. ?
Hospital and medical care ? Without a doubt.
Compensation for lost belongings? as a generous charitable country I would hope so .
Rehousing from a place They shouldn't have been ? No ! Absolutely not.

Surely those tenants that were illegally subletting a property in Grenfell should bear some legal responsibility towards the deaths of the people they were housing as overcrowding would have been one of the reasons why people could not get out. It just rewards criminal behaviour.

Also there would be fellow residents who would be able to recognise that the illegal subletter was not actually in the property and should be able to identify the actual people who died or have been left without homes if the subletting tenant claims they were caught up in the fire.

Someone has already been prosecuted for claiming their wife and child died in the fire when they were not a tenant or in any way related to the block.

I had no idea illegal subletting was so rife in London. I assume there are articles and that K+C council have a statement out somewhere.......

How about all the people who were cut and bleeding before this happened and were patiently standing in the queue waiting for bandages (to use your analogy). Or do these people have bigger and better wounds than those in the legal orderly queue.
This argument makes no sense. Your in a car crash and your spleen ruptured. You need a surgeon to remove it. Your on the trolley and waiting for theatre when a plane falls out the sky. It's a mass disaster. Big fat disaster plan springs into action. Someone else with a ruptured spleen is sped to surgery in front of you.
Is that fair ?
Add to that the fact that you have paid NI contributions all your working life towards the cost of the surgeon.. and the plane is full of people from abroad who had never paid a penny.

Once again. It's not about immigration, race or any of that crap. When all other points are equal and 'need ' is the same.. then it boils down to fairness . This is not fair.

Exactly Kitten and it's been going on for a while.