Fucking Fucking Tories want to make me homeless

[BeingFluffy]

Just watching some Tory cunt on Newsnight. I live in a London Borough (and have done all my life) which has a lot of ordinary people in social housing, but is very fashionable among the rich. Apparently the Housing Trust (which was set up to house local people like me in the 1960s) should stop "indulging" people like me and be forced sell off my home. Where the fuck are we supposed to go? They are born with silver spoons in their mouths and don't have the faintest fucking idea about ordinary people.

"Then you haven't seen the amazing conditions created in Eastern Europe by the alternative. "

Council housing provided affordable homes until it so many were sold off and not replaced. I wasn't suggesting 'the alternative'

"Apart from interesting examples like Cadbury and the other philanthropists? Apart from the Almshouses built to house the poor and paid for by benefactors, which you can find in every village and town in the country?"

Bloody hell! Are you suggesting that, in this day and age, they would be an acceptable solution to the housing crisis? And if provision was so comprehensive, why did people end up living in slum conditions?

I think you should all move to lovely lovely northumberland. We have jobs up here you know. And lots of friendly neighbours. And you could rent a fucking huge house for £1000 per month. We even have museums and art galleries!

"
That's because you've got heaps of space and nobody will build on it. Councils should open up your green space to development."

this is right. you can't build anything in the South. typical planning applications take 5 years for a larger development - those that are successful (i believe this to be 25% - given they wouldn't even start unless they thought they had a good chance, those aren't good odds). just getting planning costs developers £££s.

one wonders why councils don't actively seek out, purchase, and approve sites, then sell them to developers at a profit...

the difference in value between land with and without planning permission is vast.

Surely housing ten families for the price of one family is common sense.

What about compassion for those who are homeless? What about those who need an address to get a job and cannot get a job without an address. I feel sorry for those who have no clue where they are going to sleep tonight because they have fled domestic violence. Being in a B and B is truely grim beyond belief if you are disabled.

Making a non working relocate would be tough for the person involved. I don't think the suffering involved would be as immerse as some posters make out. People move all the time and we are not talking about massive distances. If someone lived in zone 6 then they would still be able to see family and friends on a regular basis. It is worth a bit of hardship to one family to dramatically improve the lives of nine other families. Sometimes its worth sacrificing the wishes of the individual for the greater common good.

I agree that the money needs to be ring fenced.

they could just stop wasting money on shit. but no!

FrothyOM

Council housing provided affordable homes until it so many were sold off and not replaced. I wasn't suggesting 'the alternative'

I remain to be convinced that the late 1940s model of council housing was sustainable over the long term. Like everything Labour touched in its post-war command economy binge, council housing was ruined by central planning. The railways, the motor industry, the coal and steel industries were all ruined by bureaucrats. Council housing was the same - expensive for the rate payer and not good value.

That doesn't even look, of course, at the ideological issue of why people think government should be giving them a house.

Bloody hell! Are you suggesting that, in this day and age, they would be an acceptable solution to the housing crisis?

No, I'm saying that people thinking that Only Government Can Save Us All is bollocks. You're keen on looking at the good old days, so why not look at local provision of almshouses and corporate-sponsored housing?

And if provision was so comprehensive, why did people end up living in slum conditions?

They ended up living in slum conditions with comprehensive, centrally-planned council housing. Look at the 1960s tower blocks. Big Government, Saving Us All - and fifty years later they're being torn down because they were a stupid idea that only government could have thought was a good idea.

Incidentally, people lived in slum conditions because those slum conditions offered a better life. They offered a chance of non-seasonal, non-backbreaking work where you got a regular wage. Look at the slums around the world. People move from the country to the city because manual agricultural work is so hard. Miserable though your life is in a slum, it's better than working on a farm.

What reallytired said in the last post

Provided the money is ring fenced then its basic common sense

Nobody is being asked to leave their precious community the proposal is to sell as properties become vacant

Yellow raincoat- in reply to your earlier post about the £600pcm 3bed in Glasgow- it very much is 'in the city'- 7 miles/15min drive to centre

I wasn't going to join this thread but some of the comments are ridiculous!

To those posters who mentioned Dave Cam and the rich living in London, erm they live there because they BOUGHT those homes. They are PRIVATELY owned homes. If they can afford to buy a home in the expensive areas, if they were born into money or worked hard for it, its a non argument really. Good for them the lucky bastards IMO.

You cannot compare social housing and privately owned homes.

By the way, I think Dave Cam is a tosser so I'm in no way sticking up for him. I'm just pointing out the obvious!

hmm but social housing was also BOUGHT, as social housing.

Of course the Tories want to sell off anything that's provided for the non-rich.

Why do they want to sell off housing in a housing slump, and when housing association and government borrowing costs are some of the cheapest they have ever been.
AND there is still a massive shortage of social housing.

If anything we should be investing in social housing not divesting.

Its like selling off gold when gold prices are at their lowest.

Sparrowp Sat 25-Aug-12 15:25:36

Why do they want to sell off housing in a housing slump, and when housing association and government borrowing costs are some of the cheapest they have ever been.

There isn't a housing slump in London. Prices are stable.

Government borrowing costs are low because the people lending to the government think they're going to pay it back. Low borrowing costs aren't a reason for more debt, they're a reason to renegotiate old debt at a lower rate.

If anything we should be investing in social housing not divesting.

Expenditure =/= Investment.

i am glad there is still greenbelt. I live in the south east and it would look like a concrete jungle if this wasn't enforced. the last government have partly caused this problem by who they have allocated housing too.

they are still selling of some council housing, im on the waiting list and when i bid on some propertys some still have a right to buy. although not many. and they 'seem' to be in the not so nice area's

i suppose there was more availability of social housing. i am sure alot of people could move on and there are some very financially comfortable people in la houses.

Fucking Tory scumlords want to kick all the poor out of London, it's gonna be like France if they get there way.

Thanks to stupidity more and more poor areas are catching the eyes of the rich and once they get there hooks in thats the end of it, I'm only 33, I remember when Notting Hill/Ladbroke Grove was a shit hole, then those fuckers noticed that it's close to central London and you can get a nice Victorian house for cheap and now it's a rich area, same applies to Hammersmith, Camden, Brixton, Croydon and Acton are heading that way too (they knocked down the Tram Depot that was a listed building to make way for the horror that is "Luxury Apartments" and who the hell is buying them?).

I see loads of modern build flats that still have for sale signs outside 5+ years later, meanwhile council estates are being knocked down and replaced by "affordable housing" affordable for who? I've looked at loads of them and can't afford any and they are tiny, cheap looking shitty things, with barely enough room to swing a rat.

It's all just one scam after another and trying to sweep the poor out of sight and out of mind.

No they are not.

Oh yes they are.

Oh and I'd like to point out the state of the South Acton estate it's being slowly "renovated", 80% of the properties are privately owned now from the right to buy thing and what they seem to be up to is kicking everyone out, building new smaller places for the current residents who are still renting from the council and building loads of this bullshit "affordable housing" crap it's not affordable, over a grand a month for a tiny 1 bed flat and what happens in years to come when you have finally paid it all off (except the service charges of course they last forever) will they be buying them back and kicking all the residents out so they can "renovate" the area again?.

It's all a scam someones getting rich off all this crap.

SunWukong

Thanks to stupidity more and more poor areas are catching the eyes of the rich and once they get there hooks in thats the end of it, I'm only 33, I remember when Notting Hill/Ladbroke Grove was a shit hole, then those fuckers noticed that it's close to central London and you can get a nice Victorian house for cheap and now it's a rich area, same applies to Hammersmith, Camden, Brixton, Croydon and Acton are heading that way too (they knocked down the Tram Depot that was a listed building to make way for the horror that is "Luxury Apartments" and who the hell is buying them?).

Oh, no, shitty parts of London being made less shitty. Those fiends, ruining the shittiness. No wonder you're angry.

you can make parts of london less horrible but there are still problems whatever you do.

Define shitty?

what does that word mean to you?, poor?, filled with scroungers and immigrants?, full of ethnic shops?.

You may consider them "shitty" but I consider them home, full of people from all walks of life (well almost frankly if you look down at us and say our area is shitty and needs renovating then you can fuck off). they may not be full of shops but the majority that are there are independent Halal butchers, green grocers, ethnic hair dressers corner shops etc.

Who are you to call an area full of affordable housing shitty? who are you to say that a Victorian 3 story house that once was split into flats housing many should be bought up on the cheap by a rich person who will hog the whole house to themselves?.

All this redevelopment means is throwing out the poor and all the character and culture along with em, filing an area with less people who take up more space and turning the high streets into carbon copies of each other Starbucks, Costa, Pret etc. Demonisation and destruction of communities leads to rage and an ever increasing divide that will overflow into violence. (as it does in France).

Every area needs a shit hole estate, it helps keep the prices down, no one wants to live near one of those concrete nightmares, thus they ensure at least in a small way that a tiny number of affordable rents are present in every area that has them.