Preparation for mass exodus of poor from London

[SkippyjonJones]

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

This is NOT just a "central London issue" involving asylum seekers in £2 million houses!

I posted this on a similar thread in August:

"After checking on Rightmove, I see there is only one 2-bed flat currently available for rent in Bath for less than the proposed HB cap of £155 per week. There are three 3-bed properties available to rent for less than the £172 per week cap, one of which is specified as a student let."

Houses prices are around 10 X the average local salary and we are about to lose 1,000s of central and local govt. jobs.

"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 ."

Headlessladybiscuit ...

Firstly, to paraphrase edam, who put it so well - you don't seem quite on top of the population density v. available housing stock in London - there are eight million-odd people in London, 65 two bedroom properties available to rent within a in NW London really doesn't represent a viable rental market for people on HB.

Secondly your flat doesn't have to be really expensive (compared to other similar ones locally) on in an expensive area in London to go over the cap. My 1 bed in London would easily fetch about £250 a week and it's in a run down part of London (Clapton) with crack dealers openly selling drugs on the corner! Try finding a similar flat down the road to trendy Shoreditch (which you suggest it cheap ) and landlords would laugh you out of town. And Camden? Forget it! Personally, I didn't move into an "expensive" area - I was brought up in an area actually considered to be pretty dodgy, and house prices rose dramatically around me.

Lastly, you display a shocking lack of imagination. Even people with redundancy protection can find themselves needing help form the state (this could be you!). What about if you had to leave your job to look after a sick family member - but the redundancy protection didn't cover this? Or if your house burnt down but your insurance didn't cover it (perhaps a guest was smoking, but your policy stated it was a non-smoking house) so you are left with a mortgage, no house and needing to pay rent on a new place too. Then the recession hits and you loose your job? Or you get sick, and your best chance of survival is a drug that's not available on the NHS, and so you sell your house to pay for it. Or any one of many other scenarios.

You can't plan for everything. Really fucking bad things happen to people all the time. We all hope it won't be us, but it could be. The safety net (i.e. benefits) are there to help all of us - that's you too.

lowrib: I may be lacking in imagination but I'm not stupid.

• there are close on 1000 2 bedroom flats in London available right now under the cap. That isn't all the available stock obviously (unless you're too dim to work that one out).

• I don't know why you're talking about shoreditch - I never said anything about east London and don't think it's cheap at all

• finally, my point about mortgage/redundancy protection was that all people with reasonable incomes need to insure themselves against shit happening. It really isn't acceptable to rent/buy a flat which is worth 1/2 a million and not pay decent insurance. It's dim. And a no smoking clause on contents insurance? Give over

Oh and even more importantly - there are landlords who are taking the absolute piss in their rents as 'insurance' as renting to people on HB. They are the Rachmans dressed up in acceptable clothing and it's crap that they are making an absolute killing on slack HB policies.

Again I have no issue with claimants, only the landlords

I was thinking of building insurance - I know my one certainly asked if I was a smoker. Contents insurance will not build you a new house or pay off your mortgage if yours burns down!

Sorry about Shoreditch - that was indeed another poster.

However, you still don't get it. There may be 1000 2 bed flats available but I would hazard a guess that the amount who accept housing benefit is very small indeed - I would be surprised if it's more than 10%. It's really hard to find a landlord who will.

My point was, you can't always protect yourself against everything by buying insurance. You can nit pick at my examples, but can't you see the more general point that insurance won't cover everything for all people, in all situations? Do you not think it's a good thing to have a safety net to help you if the worst happens?

Paying into a central pot, to help you if the worst happens seems like a very sensible idea to me!

I do totally take your point lowrib and you were the first person to actually make some proper arguments :)

But if we had rent control, wouldn't it solve all this? And why is that such a bad idea?

Shoreditch, Camden and even Chelsea all have social housing. There are more council/HA flats in central London than private rentals and most of the tenants in them have lived there for at least a decade. There definitely won't be a lack of poorer families in inner London - the average wage of a family in council/HA housing is much lower than those in private rented flats.

Incidentally, please can we get away form this idea that's it;s just really posh areas which will be over the cap.

For those of you unfamiliar with the London housing market, here are a list of average rents for 1 bed flats some London boroughs - all over the cap:

N1 Islington £346 pw
N2 East Finchley £215 pw
N3 Finchley £254 pw
N5 Highbury £321 pw
N6 Highgate £269 pw
N7 Holloway £269 pw
N8 Hornsey £259 pw
E1 Wapping £298 pw
E2 Bethnal Green £284 pw
E9 Homerton £250 pw
E14 Poplar £350 pw
E16 Canning Town £254 pw
SE1 Bermondsey £314 pw
SE10 Greenwich £266 pw
SE11 Lambeth £270 pw
SE16 Rotherhithe £259 pw
WC1 Bloomsbury £293 pw
WC2 Covent Garden £411 pw
EC1 City of London £382 pw
W1 Central London £567 pw
W2 Paddington £430 pw
W4 Chiswick £289 pw
W5 Ealing £270 pw
W6 Hammersmith £293 pw
W8 Kensington £798 pw
W9 Maida Vale £357 pw
W10 North Kensington £384 pw
W11 Notting Hill £514 pw
W12 Shepherd's Bush £281 pw
W14 West Kensington £314 pw
NW1 Camden £345 pw
NW2 Cricklewood £263 pw
NW3 Hampstead £392 pw
NW5 Kentish Town £269 pw
NW6 Kilburn £330 pw
NW7 Mill Hill £253 pw
NW8 St Johns Wood £407 pw
NW10 Willesden £272 pw
NW11 Golders Green £272 pw
SW1 Westminster £452 pw
SW3 Chelsea £579 pw
SW4 Clapham £286 pw
SW5 Earls Court £449 pw
SW6 Fulham £321 pw
SW7 South Kensington £668 pw
SW8 South Lambeth £285 pw
SW9 Stockwell £269 pw
SW10 West Brompton £481 pw
SW11 Battersea £302 pw
SW12 Balham £280 pw
SW13 Barnes £452 pw
SW15 Putney £261 pw
SW17 Tooting £244 pw
SW18 Wandsworth £268 pw
SW19 Wimbledon £246 pw
SW20 West Wimbledon £205 pw
TW10 Richmond £285 pw
TW8 Brentford £295 pw
TW9 Richmond £285 pw

So that's most of London then.

I got this from this page.
Strangely not all the London boroughs seem to be on it - for example E8 and E5 seem to be missing form the list completely, which is annoying because that's the bit of London I know best.

headless, rent control might well be a good thing (particularly if you think house prices are too high), but this isn't rent control.

Oh I know zeph - but wouldn't that be a better system? #####################################

Well I would think so, but unless we get Ken back as mayor it's never going to happen.

Rent control? That's a great idea! How about we actually invent in some housing stock and rent it to people at a reasonable rate?

Not likely the tories will go for that though.

Or do you mean cap the rent that private landlords charge? The tories will never go for that either.

They really don't care, this isn't about fairness at all - these cuts are ideological.

Telsa wrote, p2: 'In my part of Central London no-one can rent a flat with the caps proposed by government. I happen not to agree with 'social cleansing'. I don't think that there should be ghettos of the rich. I want a mixed community. Council housing was once upon a time built in Bloomsbury, Soho, Regent's Park and the like. Why be resentful now if some people have the luck to have it - like some people have the 'luck' to inherit loads of money. And soon the rents in crappy council flats will be 80% of market rents - a joke round here, for sure. And don't be so complacent about it not affecting existing tenants so it doesn't matter. There is a lot of turn over in the housing sector and pretty soon a lot of people will be affected.'

Hits the nail on the head, imo, so reposted it.

Also edam re people thinking it's alright to scream 'Benefit scroungers' all the time.

This government is not on our side. It works for its wealthy backers. It doesn't represent us or respect us. We had a massive deficit at the end of the Second World War - I think it was bigger than the present one - and yet that is when the NHS and Welfare State were born. They had the money then. They have it now, but they're not giving it to us.

lowrib Why should someone on housing benefit get average rent? What is so sacrosanct about the 50th percentile?

The 30th percentile seems very fair to me. Why is it a travesty if 70% of the houses are better, instead of 50% of houses being better?

or who doesn't remember them from last time round.

Worth a watch

It's a fucked up world when a footballer is getting paid in a week what most people save in a lifetime to pay for the roof over their head.

Thank you all for making me see that it isn't as simple as I thought - and giving me arguments which I didn't have before :)

These cats are ideological, as lowrib says.

average rent means less of a chance being made homeless. less than average means more likely being made homeless. not that that needed answering-it's obvious.

legostuckinmyhoover If a street has 100 houses on, number 1 the worst and number 100 the worst.

At the moment those on housing benefit can live in number 50. Now they will have to live in number 30.

I probably live somewhere between number 25 and number 35.

My heart bleeds.

Sorry. in my example, number 100 is the best, obviously.

longfingernails - you are really not getting this. That "someone on housing benefit" could be you.

Lets assume you have a good job, and are in the higher tax bracket. You have worked hard and paid a lot of tax, and National Insurance for many years. You have lived in a reasonably nice house in the area you were brought up in. You live in inner London, and your rent is over the cap. A deep recession happens. You loose your job, and spend your savings on rent. When they run out, which of the following do you think is fairer?

1. You receive HB - yes it's a lot, but you've paid in a lot over the years. It helps you weather the storm until the recession is over and you manage to get back on your feet. Your family don't have to move, your children stay at their schools, life continues as normal.

or

1. You don;t receive enough HB to cover the rent. The only area you can afford is miles from where you live now, in an area with few jobs. Your children are uprooted, having to change their schools and loose contact with many of their friends. There seem to be lots of nice flats available, but in reality very few of the landlords will take housing benefit. There are lots of other people in the same situation and the only flats you can find are really shoddy, you don't think they are a decent environment for your children. You ask the council for help but they say until you are actually homeless they can't help. Once you are on the street, they will be able to put you in a hostel in Hastings (see Observer article today if this sounds far fetched).

Which would you prefer?

You have paid into the pot all your life through your taxes - why shouldn't you be helped when you need it?

Yes the HB will be high, but your contributions have been high too! Doesn't it make more sense to help you get back on your feet and earning - and paying back into the pot - a.s.a.p. rather than making it more difficult for you and your family?

oh dear LFN. so it isnt the money then?

its just the idea. it's just that the unemployed/unfortunate/poor have to live in a worse house than someone else-or less than number 25? is that what are meaning?

A truly valiant effort to explain this, lowrib.

And even if it's not you, LFN, would you really begrudge it to someone else in that position?

i mean is that what you mean?

But lowrib, that's the brilliant thing about the Coalition cuts. They are tough but fair. We have nothing to fear as they only affect the feckless, the workshy and generally undeserving types like public sector workers (who as we all know don't really do anything anyway). You obviously haven't been paying attention.