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/

Thatcher!

Although the 'wealth cascading down the generations' bollocks was Major.

It's all Thatchers fault. All of it

Top Marks well done!

Apparently at the time Thatcher wanted us to 'aspire' to home ownership so we became slaves to our mortgages. Council home dwellers could easily go on strike.

Have a mortgage though and it was less likely workers would go on strike. All part of a master plan.

"Oh you are better than everyone else I forgot. That's what its all about isn't it. Work and money and more work and more money. I think the poor people are probably a lot happier than you on your boring old treadmill.
You know this and you are so envy. Why should somebody have something you can't. "

I don't think one should feel smug/morally superior for not working hard, actually.

There was a time when council house tenants were pitied, now they are envied.

When did that happen?

Tbh I work hard and I do also resent lazy feckarses.

I just think this policy is wrong and that rent controls would be fairer and more effective.

I also think that too many people confuse the nice and decent working low paid people in social housing or in private hosuing with a necessary top up with the few lazy feckarses that we all resent.

That's why the DM, Sun et al printed those stories about the families placed in expensive large homes at the tax payers expense as though it was the norm and that everyone in Social Housing was living it up in luxury mansions in Central London!

And they sucked it up. It could not be further from the truth. But it was all part of the right wing agenda to have the public believe that everyone in SH was a scrounger and wasting their taxes while they were all struggling to pay their mortgages.

It's working - I don't know anyone who lives in SH luxury - everyone I know in SH are living in basic homes, sometimes overcrowded, and not desirable areas at all. In fact I wouldn't put it past these councils to have deliberately put those families in luxury houses, tell the DM where they are so they could report it, in a deliberate ploy to stigmatise those on benefits and divide and rule the workers and working poor.

So while we are bickering and arguing the rich are creaming away millions of tax payers money while we are not looking.

"......and when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me."

Apart from the BBC, and the Guardian, and Twitter, and every whinging trot with a Facebook page...

Page after page of "wah wah, the govt should be doing this....not this."

The real question and the source of all these cuts are not because of what we should be doing or not. But what we can afford to do or not.

In an ideal world everyone should be given a house. Perfect, saves squabbling. But the reality is that we cannot do this.

The Housing benefit was rising at an unaffordable level. The reasons for this are complex, especially in London. But the main reasons are high demand, low supply and a volatile market. I don't think HB tenants are automatically scroungers, nor do I think landlords are raking it in and sat at home counting wads of cash.

It's so easy to sit there moaning about what the govt should do. But the maths don't support what we should do in an ideal world.

I am absolutely disgusted by the number of people on here in support of this policy, how can you think it's right to uproot families from their lives and stick them in another town hundreds of miles away?

And to have no consideration for LAs who will be under pressure to accommodate the extra bodies in their city.

As a landlord myself (though not in London and student accommodation), I would rather see rent caps introduced rather than move families away from the life they know just because an area has gentrified over the years.

Vile vile people on here.

Niceguy - I'm sure there are other ways for the government to make the maths 'work'. Clamp down on tax avoidance and fair taxation on the super rich for starters.

Oh yes, those bad old tories with their council house sales.

Didn't see Labour rebuild a single house in 13 years of power, though, eh?

( And yes, I agree, selling SH was an obscenity, BTW but no subsequent Govt has tried to put it right)

Solo you can be sure that the govt and their advisers have thought through all the consequences.
I very much doubt that they've thought through much farther ahead than 5 years or so and even then only the financial ones.

My first thought, honestly, was that the wages of cleaners, carers and gardeners would rise. Which would be a good thing for those left behind in those professions.

There's a large estate of ex-London council-housed people living behind me. Almost all elderly so no social problems. The irony is that the incomers are up-in-arms about a new batch of 60 residences being built on adjacent fields, proper social housing for the locals. Might ruin the character of the neighbourhood, you see.

Oh God. Not tax the rich again.

Do you not think if it was really as simple as raising taxes on the rich to balance our books, they'd have done it?

Our deficit is so large that no tax rise will come close to sorting it.

That's why not one of the main parties are saying they won't make cuts. Because anyone who has looked at the scale
of our debts will understand that we cannot keep spending money we simply haven't got.

The crash made markets realise that even sovereign governments can run out of money. Now it's time for the left wingers to smell the coffee too.

You can rent for less than £400 in London? I find it hard to believe rents are less in the north. I am in the north and dh and I paid almost £600 a month whilst saving for a house too.

There are some rubbish landlords that have houses full of black mould. I fear for the families forced to live there. I think these will be the only places available. (Worked in a post that involved advising these families on landlords responsibilities once. It was really depressing.)

Niceguy, I'm not suggesting that by taxing the super rich further or clamping down on tax avoidance will come close to paying off the deficit but that it would raise as much money as this policy would save and to my mind that is fairer.

And can no one answer AF on how it is workable for the LA authorities taking in these families?

just reading about the selling off of council houses which are now being rented by private landlords to tenants on HB.
Total and utter madness. How the fuck was this allow to happen?
While Housing Benefit isnt the largest chunk of the welfare bill (pensions are), the cost of subsidising rents for both working and non working families is ridiculous. Its housing costs that are the problem. We need rent caps. (and a time machine to stop the selling off of the national housing stock)

No one on this thread has mentioned the biggest family home of all, paid for by the tax payers - they get to keep their pack of corgis there too! Maybe they should go and live up north too!

I am grateful to have had it mansplained to be that my reasoned debate as a female poster is heard simply as 'wingeing' and 'wah wah'.

to me

Can't type for all all that darning...

"The government think things through properly".
" If it was a case of taxing the super rich, they would".

What bloody planet are some of you on.

Absolutely Morethan