Social 'cleansing'? What are the implications?

[Solopower1]

Camden Council wants to move 750 poor families north to places like Bradford and Leicester. They say that because of the new benefit caps (which limit total welfare payments to £500 a week for families, no matter how many children they have or how much they have to pay for rent), some families are not going to be able to afford to live in London. So they're shunting them all up north.

I don't think this is a new idea, btw, but I still find it shocking.

When the govt were discussing these benefit cap plans, they must have worked out the implications for the families that would no longer be able to afford to live in their houses. And they will have realised that this would happen more in the poorer, Labour-run (?) councils. It's inspired, it's so clever. In one fell swoop they free up all the lovely expensive properties being wasted on poor families, and the Labour councils get the blame for it. It's absolute genius, don't you think?

So what sort of place will London be, when the heart is ripped out of it, and all the children go? Perhaps a tad melodramatic, but the Pied Piper springs to mind - not that I am blaming the Mayor and Corporation of Camden, particularly (don't know enough about it, tbh).

money.aol.co.uk/2013/02/14/council-to-export-poor-familes-to-north/

And I still couldn't buy a house in Camden.

Not a house no - but you might have been able to but an ex LA flat in a tower block on a run down estate - you would probably choose not to but many choose to do that rather than move away where they have no hope of getting a job.

I work 3 jobs I couldn't do that if I didn't have people around me to call upon to pick my children up from school or look after them on a Sunday afternoon so I can work. Also most of those claiming HB do actually work.

No, the real question is why should somebody have something I can't for free.

Because they are disabled
because they have a disabled child
Because they have mental health problems
Because they have left a worn torn country where their entire family have been murdered.
Because they are gay and could be killed if they remain in their country.
Because they are speaking out against the inhumane treatment their Government dole out and could be tortured if they remain

I could go on all night but to get any kind of help or social housing your situation has to be absolutely desperate before a council will house you.

Please put down your copy of the DM or The Sun and open your eyes to some people's reality.

They don't care about the reality though.

To them they are not even real people,with real lives.

And all these reasons mean they need to live in a very expensive area?
Give me a break

Rhiannon.....go to London, say you've left an abusive relationship maybe....they'll stick you in a refuge or hostel.....a year or so down the line you might be housed by the council(if you get lucky)........but you won't have any say where. It night be a des res in a naice area or a crappy moldy flat on tbe the top floor of a tower block.

They wouldn't entertain her anyway Jake - you have to prove you have lived in the Borough for 5 years before they help you - unless she's an refugee.

Give you their houses you mean.

All of London is expensive - doesn't mean it's nice.

Hardly their fault that the mighty London is so expensive,because Camden is oh so trendy now.

Anyway, would you like to answer my question as to why my LA should take on the burden of extra families?

Thank you Frustrated - can you rub my head though it really hurts from banging against this brick wall :)

The problem is that so many former council properties are now in the hands of private landlords who can charge what they like even after they have let the properties become shitholes.

This whole issue is about predominantly about private rents, not the controlled rents of social housing providers.

Why does the government not legislate for rent control ffs?

clearly because your pissy little LA doesn't matter usual no one gives a shit really, so long as a) the nice people don't have to live next to, god forbid, poor people and b) no one, ever anywhere gets anything more than the nice people work so hard for. No one cares about your borough because it is out of sight of the nice genteel folk in london.

Linerunner Ken Livingstone wanted to introduce rent controls - unfortunately some idiot people voted for Boris Johnson instead so we have no hope now!

No one gives a fuck do they about Leicester or Bradford.

Not one person who is in favour of this has answered me.

Says it all really.

Just been talking to my DP, it was less than ten years ago that my MILs neighbours house was sold to the neighbour (a woman in her 80s who was given the money to buy it by her kids - as in, her kids bought it as an investment) for £24,000 no, i haven't missed off a zero - i think they sold it for 365k to shit landlord, who has since then rented the house out to folk on benefits. My MIL has had a series of really crap neigbours - not that folk on benefits are crap, just that this landlord didnt care who they rented to, so long as they got their rent every month and has let the house run to ruin. I suspect that the borough has paid more to the landlord in HB than what they made from the sale. Am i the only one who recognises that THIS is why we have the situation that we do.

I'm trying to get my head round why the Conservatives' political policy would be against rent controls.

1. Landlords are a powerful lobby
2. The Buy To Let market is a powerful lobby (pressure from banks?)
3. Politicians are often private landlords themselves?
4. All or none of the above.

That's the story all over isn't it Frustrated? One of my neighbours bought her Council flat for £8k - when she died her son sold it back to the council for £340,000 and are now renting it to a family as a council flat again - where is the sense in that? These people are supposed to be intelligent economists ffs :(

Oh Lord, frustrated, I remember when Right To Buy first came in and all the adult children creaming themselves as they bought their elderly parents' houses and flats for less than the price of a car.

And then sold them on to crappy landlords.

Linerunner remember all those 2nd homes we were paying for? MP's are getting around that now by renting their homes to other MP's for inflated prices which we are paying for again!

Do you know what I would like to know?

How many council homes were sold under Right To Buy?

How many of these remain in the family's ownership (the Tories' 'cascade of wealth down the generations'), and how many were sold to other owner-occupiers, and how many were sold back to LAs or HAs, and how many ended up with private landlords?

I personally do not know of a single former council property that still remains in the ownership of the extended family or their descendants.

I know plenty being privately rented, for crazy money - of course topped up by HB because the rents and profits allowed are too high.

Be interesting to know wouldn't it? Bet hardly any are still owned by the original purchasers :(

My mum bought her council house in about 1980 (after living in it for about 25 years) and she stil lives there. All her children have had to move away from where we grew up, as none of us could afford to buy houses in the area.

People don't seem to mind that their 'tax money' buys these houses for the LLs though.

Whe did we develop such a Landlord's Wallet Protection Culture in this country?

I wonder if anyone can guess which Politician abolished rent control? (clue: it was in 1988)