To wonder WHY parents can't afford to feed their kids isn't being addressed?

[BearPomBear]

Just that really....

Social housing is subsidised by local authorities, through a variety of ways. It's why its lower than market value.

In the past (what the poster I was responding to talked about) all council housing subsidised by the state from its construction, maintenance and lower rates of rent and far securer than private rent if you got into arrears.

Most people on benefits are in work , you have a funny idea of what benefits are

@TomMRiddle
No I haven’t got a funny idea, I’m just sick of the MN attitude that council housing is full of unemployed layabouts.

@chickenyhead

Some will be in private rentals where housing benefit is significantly insufficient to pay the rental charges. So the money needed for living expenses instead has to be used to pay that shortfall first and keep a roof over their heads.

Only after that expense do bills, food and everything else need to be budgeted out of what remains.

Whereas, exactly the same family in a property with rent covered by the LHA rate housing benefit, will be able to use the entire sum to meet their living expenses.

Every year my private rent increases, LHA rates take time to catch up. There is usually a £3/400 shortfall of housing benefit where I live. That is a lot of money taken from the other benefits actually needed to live.

Absolutely

well apparently its because feckless women (notice the no men in this image) are spending their childrens money leaving them barefoot and starving ......

I didn't imply that at all.

The point was to a poster who claimed she had grown up in relative poverty but her family had never had any benefits, that council housing is one, as its subsidised.

I know full well social housing is not full of lay abouts.

Nope. Some were print outs, probably from email and others were phone vouchers with a bar code.

House prices and rents taking up to much of everybody's pay, lower house prices and rent then people will have more disposable income

Or, there is a pandemic and the cheap food you have had to rely on suddenly becomes scarce. (We went for weeks with pasta, sometimes with cheese, but really that's a luxury item)

I've been shocked at the way food is shooting up in price, and we haven't even seen Brexit-related increases yet. I've also noticed shrinkflation, sometimes accompanied by price increases, on some items. The sort of deals that were virtually permanent (eg 2 x Lurpak butter, 500g, for £5.50) don't seem to be happening.

And some things have stayed the same price and size, but with a noticeable reduction in quality. We rarely buy ready meals, but the other day Tesco had a special on their boxes of curries and sides, so we got one.

There was nowhere near as much meat in the curries as they used to have, and the sauces were thin and watery compared to how they used to be. Ok, it was £5 instead of £7.50, but it was only worth £3, and that's being generous!

@WizWoz

a huge amount of kids going hungry wasn’t an issue 20 years ago I disagree. In the 80s huge swathes of northern England had hungry children whose parents were striking from the coal mines or had lost their jobs in heavy industry. This is not a new problem.

It was awful, but there was a massive amount going on to support the miners.

My Labour party branch used to collect money in buckets at all the Croydon railway stations in the rush hours. We collected a 5-figure sum during the strike. We used to get all the change changed into notes, and every week someone would drive up to one of the mining areas to deliver it in person, because the union's funds were sequestered and it couldn't go through their bank account.

I got a personally signed letter from Arthur Scargill and a beautiful enamel badge once the strike was over.

Low wages.
High cost of living compared to min wage.
Benefit cap.
Delays on benefits being received (ie waiting 6 weeks for UC application).
Single parents trying to live on one wage where two wages are needed to survive.
Insecure jobs/0 hours.
Emergency situations that haven't been budgeted for ie broken oven, washing machine etc taking money from monthly pot.

@SBTLove

Find a better landlord???

Ridiculous thing to say. You don't get your deposit back until a month after you move house and I don't have £2k sitting in a bank account to pay a new one. Plus costs of moving, changing 3 schools etc.

Just move , to another unknown landlord who will show their true colours just the same.

I would gladly pay £400 rent and have everything fixed for that. Whilst everyone else pays £1600 plus rent.

Honestly, I don't know what planet you live on.

The point was to a poster who claimed she had grown up in relative poverty but her family had never had any benefits, that council housing is one, as its subsidised

Council housing hasn't been subsidised since the 1980s @TomMRiddle. Thatcher put a stop to that. Housing revenue accounts have to break even. In the long term, it makes a profit. After a period of time, the rent received has covered the capital costs and the rent more than covers the cost of maintenance. The balance of the rent after maintenance costs is a bonus.

Council housing is still subsidised, rents are lower than market value, repairs and modernisation are not at a cost to the Tennant and their rents don't increase in order to pay for them. They are still subsidised.

The poster claimed they never recieved any benefits and had grown up poor. If you lived in council house that was a benefit.

Also a poster claiming that others should be able to save more like they did and their family when their family was in council housing on less than market rents is very hypocritical.

@TomMRiddle

I didn't imply that at all.

The point was to a poster who claimed she had grown up in relative poverty but her family had never had any benefits, that council housing is one, as its subsidised.

I know full well social housing is not full of lay abouts.

Cheaper than temporary accommodation. Taxpayers spend huge amounts on what's often little better than slum housing. Far better to have mass council housing. Better financially (for individuals and tax money) AND better for social cohesion, intact communities, support networks. So a financially and morally better option.

@TomMRiddle

Council housing is still subsidised, rents are lower than market value, repairs and modernisation are not at a cost to the Tennant and their rents don't increase in order to pay for them. They are still subsidised.

The poster claimed they never recieved any benefits and had grown up poor. If you lived in council house that was a benefit.

The taxpayer has also massively subsidised new build home ownership through Help To Buy (primarily benefiting house builders, who build poor quality housing at high prices). We - the taxpayers are paying to sustain the problem of increased (unaffordable for too many) housing costs. That's everybody btw, because people pay VAT if not income tax.

@TableFlowerss
Re your suggestion of social cleansing.
It's not so simple as making everybody move somewhere cheaper.

The impact on mental health can and does cost money. People being forced away from everything they know, their jobs, their families (often the childcare that lets them work), their support networks.

Most people on benefits are working full-time. So you think they should give up their jobs to move to a cheaper area (which is often cheaper because of limited work opportunities)? If they get a new job in a new area, what do they do about childcare now that they've been moved away from their families?

You think it's acceptable to move on mass disabled people away from their home and support networks. Uproot disabled (or indeed any) children from their schools, friends, families.

Moving people away from their settled communities and the ensuing isolation is one of the reasons why we see so much demand for mental health and social care. Societies are fractured.

The answer is not social cleansing. It's mass council housing (no right to buy).

@grenlei

Plenty of businesses and individuals haven't received any bailout and have had to rely on their own resources.

It's not victim blaming, it's about a sense of personal responsibility. Life is about preparing for all eventualities. And again, not everyone can do that but many people can and should but they don't, and then when the worst happens they never consider how they could have avoided that situation.

But like I say, choose to believe it's all because benefits and salaries are too low, not that it's at least in part because of poor choices.

Only people with unlimited wealth can prepare for all eventualities. Savings soon disappear when someone (adult or child) has a long-term illness or permanent disability, for example.

Because wages have stagnated and house prices have shot up

That's very true. And it doesn't just apply to the private sector, public sector wages were frozen for years and haven't caught up.

I work in the third sector, and all the projects staff work on are commissioned by local government or health. When I started (2005), the pay scale for the job I was doing then was 2.5 times minimum wage.

Once austerity hit, commissioners had to make cuts and as our services are non-statutory, they were among the first to be cut. Rather than make huge cuts in the service, the pay scales were reduced for new staff, and they have been unable to increase pay in line with inflation.

The rate of pay for that job is now 1.2 x min wage, so what was a relatively well paid job 15 years ago is now just a tad over min wage. In real terms, the pay has shrunk by almost 50%. As a consequence, we now give benefit advice to staff, as well as to clients.

There is a real irony that the staff are supporting families in poverty while they're precious little better off themselves.

I've been shocked at the way food is shooting up in price, and we haven't even seen Brexit-related increases yet.

Our food shop was £100 this week. Its always hovered around the £70 mark. The most expensive bits were fruit.

@windturbines

Affordable childcare would help immensely, to be honest. If people could have subsidised nursery places (more than the 30 free hours when the child is older), they'd be more inclined to go back to work full time. Therefore, earning more and needing less benefits.

By the time the children are in school, parents wouldn't be out of work 5 or so years and could progress up the career ladder. Even if it was 'just' a retail job, there would be nothing stopping them working towards retail management, for example.

If children were also in a good nursery full time, they'd also reap rewards, too. And their family could probably afford to do nicer things on the weekend. It all adds up.

I agree with this. Childcare should be seen as early education. Optional yes, but I think we'd all benefit from it being subsidised from 6 months. Women can work, and vulnerable children are visible. Yes, it costs, but we all benefit, and plenty of places do this.

Oh the cuts to wages over the last decade have been awful.

Public sector pay rises are below inflation over this time, well paid jobs in the private sector.

The LSE did a study and found that it was down to the anemic recovery to 2008 financial crisis, austerity strangled any growth and the country took far longer to recover than any other major OECD country. Real wages only started growing from about 2015, even then thats becuase inflation was so low, not because of anything else. We still haven't reached a point where the average wage is worth what it was in 2007 .

A new car on PPC when you need it for work, kids, family stuff is a lot more relaible than an older cheaper one that you had to save to buy outright in cash and then have to pay to repair, MOT etc

Unless you buy an old Audi, with the B5 engine. They are indestructible. DP had one for 8 years, with next to nothing going wrong with it (he was most indignant after one MOT, when it had to have a new bulb that cost 60p!), and mine has had one repair costing just over £300 in 5 years (disregarding "consumables" like brake pads, that have to be replaced from time to time on any car).

Mine has actually appreciated in value, too, as it's quite a rare model. I paid £1,200 for it and whenever we see one advertised, they're over £2k. They now have "future classic" status.

I really recommend them for cheap motoring.

@Georgeoftheinternet

Because people live in expensive cities when they can move to much cheaper towns, pay less in rent and have more money to live of?

It’s one solution, but of course it’s not as straight forward as that.

Then have to rent a whole house rather than a flat because there aren't many flats in the country. Then have to buy a car and pay for maintaining it. Then be far away from relatives who help. Then be stuck with only one option of supermarket many miles away. Not sure it's an easy option for everyone. There is rural poverty too.

"Now yes, partly I'm lucky to have got to that position. But I'm only there because I haven't ever had a new or even nearly new car, or spent loads on furnishing and decorating my house, or bought expensive clothes or jewellery. "

No, that's not true. I don't do any of those expensive things you mention either. My last smart phone was 10 pounds so I beat you there, but I haven't saved loads like you have because I haven't earned as much. People on low and modest incomes just don't have as much, if anything, to save.

I suspect you earn at least the average income and I also know you have a DH so have someone to share costs with. Don't make out it's all about not buying a fancy car.