Preparation for mass exodus of poor from London

[SkippyjonJones]

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/24/exodus-poor-families-from-london

"I can't afford to live in Chelsea or Notting Hill, but somehow I am expected to pay for someone on benefits to do so.
Yes, people living off the State in ridiculously expensive houses will have to move. So what? The same thing happens all the time to those not on housing benefit."

This is about you you morons, not "benefit scroungers".

The benefit system is there to help you, if you need it. Supposing there's another recession (which will happen eventually - sooner or later) and you loose your job.

Under the current rules, your rent will be paid while you get yourself back on your feet (or the interest on your mortgage, if you don't find another job within 13 weeks I think it is).

But if HB is capped, and you loose your job, if you don't find another job which covers your rent (not easy in a recession) before your savings run out, then you're out on your arse. You will have to move to an area with cheaper rents - and probably worse job prospects and worse schools. Your children will very possibly have to move schools and leave their friends behind.

This is how it will work. And this is unfair IMO. If you have paid money into the system, why shouldn't you be able to draw on it in a time of need? That's what National Insurance and the taxes we pay are for!

In a time of recession, people (including the well-paid!) will loose their jobs, and many will become homeless.

The tories are making sure that more families will suffer homelessness. How is that fair or a good idea?

And anyway, if the councils still have to house homeless families then it'll cost a fortune as homeless families often get housed in very expensive emergency accommodation e.g. B&Bs! Of course they could get rid of that expense by removing the council's duty to house homeless families, but I really wouldn't want to live in a country that refuses to help a family on the street - would you?

Well said, lowrib

This is the selection of properties available within a 3 mile radius of NW6.
NW London is pretty expensive and there are 65 two bedroom flats to rent in the area for that price. If I were living in a really fucking expensive flat and lost my job (and was stupid enough not to have redundancy protection) then I wouldn't expect the State to pay my very expensive rent . Seriously - isn't it about cutting your cloth to fit your means? That's what most people do.

The interest on my mortgage is nowhere near the cap lowrib.

I've had a good laugh twice on MN this weekend. Mainly over the patronizing attitudes of middle-class MNers who assure us that working class people aren't up to commuting by train or cycling.

My working class grandmother cycled/bussed an hour to her job in the twenties. She lived to 84, which was a good age in the eighties. Never heard her complain about the journey.

FrrrightAttendent - I know exactly what you mean.

We lived in London last year in Maida Vale, which is supposed to be a nice area I think? Our tiny 2 bed flat was £320 per week and it was also grotty and filthy when we moved in. The oven didn't work (I had to buy a table top oven for the year), it had a washer dryer and the dryer bit didn't work. After a bit the washing machine part also broke and it took months before the landlord arranged fixing it. It was rented furnished (we only planned to stay in London for 1 year) and half the furniture was broken (the 'dining table' collapsed on my mum - the legs were broken and the top not even fixed on the legs). I could go on.

It's amazing what people are apparently happy to rent out for a huge amount of money in London.

this is what i find offensive about that line...

it is that you have said 'scroungers' will be in for a shock. yes, being potentially homeless or homeless is a shock [and worse]and it isn't a pleasant place to be. i wonder if you have tried it?? we all know a life can change in an instant and suddenly find you have no job, scroungers is a hateful word imo.

About the cycling - I've cycled since I was a child, and have spent most of the last decade living in a 'cycle to commute' city (where rush hour cycling traffic is often 3 or 4 cyclists abreast on the cycle path in the city centre). I wouldn't dare cycle in London - there are some cycle paths, but you need cycle paths everywhere if you want to encourage that (not going to happen in this financial climate).

My grandad moved his family from S Wales to London because there was no work there (actually both my grandads did that). My maternal grandfather only had enough money for the train tickets for his wife and two children and he cycled to West London. They all lodged with an elderly lady who was widowed and whose son had gone to fight. They had two bedrooms between them, no living room and had access to the kitchen and bathroom at fixed times. Thousands and thousands of families lived like that. My parents were lodging with a different old lady until they had been married nearly 10 years and could afford the deposit on a flat.

I live in Tooting, zone 3, only half an hour on the tube to the centre of London where I work. I rent a lovely 3 bed, 2 bath house with a garden, for under the 3 bed cap.

I'm a lefty, a Guardian reader and a Labour voter but frankly I resent the implication in the article that living in my house and my area is equivalent to the highland clearances!

Yes, in the past there were poorhouses and children sent up chimneys and people cycled because they couldn't afford busses (my granddad too - from Muswell Hill to Charing Cross or Kings Cross every morning). Does that mean we should all go back to the conditions of the 1920s, prior to the welfare state. Guess so - the Con-Dems certainly seem to think so.

Was that aimed at my comment earlier about Ian Duncan-smith lego as I didn't say Scroungers, also neither did Ian in his comments. Or am I loosing the plot here?

Trying to keep up with the thread but I'm obviously missing something here

Telsa - agree.

When I was growing up I often walked more than 3 miles to school, and saved the bus fare for extra pocket money. It didn't do me any harm - actually, in the summer, I rather enjoyed it.

If I could do that as a teenager, then someone looking for work can get on their bike and cycle a few miles. Comparing that to forcing children up chimneys is laughable.

No of course not telsa - but there is a point that what people were prepared to do only 50 years ago (which weren't enormous hardships really) are things that not many people would be prepared to do today. And like bigkidsmademe says - you can get a very nice house in a very nice part of London for the cap.

I'm cross because I think this is deflecting from the real cuts issues which are absolutely legion.

no teaandcakeplease. I was answering LFN.

Headless - and you want to go back to those days? You think a civilised country should be encouraging overcrowded housing without sufficient lavatories and bathrooms?

By your logic, we should cut the electricity supply to all social housing, because our ancestors had to manage with candles, so why can't people today...

Do you lefties have any idea how ridiculous you sound?

Living in Camden instead of St Johns Wood really, really isn't the end of the world, you know. They have electricity there and everything!

I'm glad other people are pointing out that cycling isn't actually a hardship - my DH does 11 miles each way every day to save us the cost of another car (he could bus but it's £7 a day too and we're cheap and he likes biking). I do a combination of driving part way and biking the rest to avoid a £8 parking cost. So yes, I would suggest it as a reasonable way of saving cash (compared to driving).

And we're comfortably off but did move out of the city we work in to afford our home too. I'm not sure how I feel about the changes because I don't live anywhere near London so I've no real clue what this would mean but I'm a bit surprised to hear our life choices described as hardship!

No edam, I really, really don't. But two things:

1. I will always (and always have) done anything rather than be unemployed - I've cleaned toilets/cleaned offices/done all sorts of shit. And I always will do that - because I was brought up to think that being on social was only something you did if you were absolutely desperate. I am appalled when I read threads like that 'I choose to get 35k on benefits rather than work' and think there is something really fucking rotten at the core of our society that so many people think that's a reasonable decision to make.

2. I also don't buy the 'this is going to force families to leave London' line either. I have not seen any reasonable evidence to support that POV - it's rhetoric as far as I can see.

Like I said earlier - I'm a left winger who would rather die than vote Tory and I am absolutely horrified by this cuts programme. But that doesn't mean that everything Labour did was right.

and going back a bit here but the family in the mail...they are not asylum seekers. they were asylum seekers. he used to work on the buses. that story imo, stirs up trouble.

for example, why say they are asylum seekers [in present tense] when they are not anymore? why in the headline did they mention the families ethnicity/background? why these things in the same sentence as using 'scrounger'.

in other similar stories that they like to write about, they don't say "White familly get huge house". Or, "English scroungers get big house". Just as when it is a LP in their story, it is always " has big house AND is a single mum". why not just, "big family has big house partly paid for by HB".

why is it that people are quick to blame the tennants and the HB system but never the landlord for accepting the cash? Is it ok if ''it's business?'' are the tories doing anything about private landlords? by the way?

just a thought. guess its typical of the mail, but i am 'wooley-headed' so what do i know

Headless, your Rightmove link showed 60 properties within a 3 mile radius of NW6 that were within the capped price range. The number of people expected to be affected is 200,000. This is not about being moved from St Johns Wood to Camden.

I fully realise that the Somali asylum seeker is atypical - though not as atypical as left-wingers would like!

Even if Camden and Shoreditch are too much, Brent, Balham, and Ilford certainly aren't. London is a big, big place.

Zepherine - the point is that this is an expensive part of London. If you can afford to live here, you can afford to live pretty much anywhere in London except for Mayfair, Notting Hill, Marylebone etc. London's a big city with brilliant transport links. The exodus is not based on fact which is why I object to this being touted as truth. There are some horrible, horrible cuts being proposed - I think this is diversionary and that we should be talking about the real issues.

Quite lego. I am constantly surprised that the tenants are seen as somehow worthy of contempt for being housed in overpriced properties, while it is the apparently blameless landlords that are actually profitting from the situation.