To expect people to pay their own mortgages..?

[RaspberryCheese]

www.theguardian.com/money/2018/feb/05/state-benefit-support-mortgage-interest-loan

Why the outcry? We have a system whereby people can own a hime and if they fall on hard times, they can switch to an interest free mortgage and the state i.e the rest of us, pays the interest presumably ad infinitum.

Why should the state do that?

No..as the article suggests, it should switch to a loan based system whereby payments the state makes acquire equity in the property which can be recouped at a later date.

[ArcheryAnnie]

The argument that housing benefit subsidises landlords is nonsense. It subsidises the housing benefit recipient. The landlord gets exactly the same rent regardless of whether or not their tenant gets housing benefit.

I don't have any problem with landlords in general at all, but I don't think this is true. There's an awful lot of good landlords, but there's an awful lot of dodgy landlords, too (as in every industry) whose ability to let their substandard accommodation is substantially boosted by the fact that they accept tenants on HB, which not every landlord does. It's not a completely open market.