Albert Square ... How Do They Afford Their Houses?

PasturesNew

dmg24 wrote: »

LHA/ HB rates in London are very high. Someone could be earning £20,000 and still qualify for a fair amount of assistance.

If I were earning £20k it'd never occur to me that anything could be claimed. I only recently learnt (from MSE) that single people could claim if they were over 25, lived alone in a self-contained place and worked more than 30 hours/week. I bet most singles don't know there's anything, so wouldn't claim. Mind you, mostly, if you tried to look it up online it'd tell you that if you earn £13-14k then there's unlikely to be any claim at all, so there'd be another bunch that might have looked and thought at that point there'd be nothing.

I don't claim as I assume there'd be nothing because I'm just above the £13-14k bit and it's almost impossible to say how much I earn at any one point until after the end of the tax year anyway. So, again, single, self-employed people with irregular earnings wouldn't bother.

I guess until I came to MSE and saw the benefits board, I had NO IDEA just how much was available for raking in for some people under some circumstances. No idea whatsoever. I just thought that if you had kids you got £10/week child allowance and everybody actually earnt their own money.

I used to wonder how come so many people seemed to have so much money etc. Now I know.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

I don't really watch it. Did when it started, now I've no idea who half the people are.

I always thought that a cat's brain is too fast to watch our TV. A TV is made up of dots of light moving across the screen at a particular speed - we see it as a picture because of the speed our brain translates the light. I understood that a cat's brain worked faster, so saw the dots.

I've no idea how they see it, but they love it. so does my dog-dog...checks the other side of the tv to see where they go when they walk off screen. :rotfl: Nature programmes are always a big hit too.

http://www.cattv.com/catwebsite.htm the gophers are a big hit on this site, though all entertain for a little while.

dexter_fan

I love this thread!

I would also like to know (just kidding!) how come none of them seem to own a washing machine, as they're always in the laundry.

If you live and work in the Square, you can't go home to make a cuppa at lunch time, but go to the Kaff.

Also, there is always somewhere to park!!

:rotfl::rotfl:

hieveryone

dmg24 wrote: »

Glad to see I am not the only one that thinks about things like this ...

I seem to recall that some of them are council houses - am pretty sure the Slaters house is. However, how they would qualify for social housing with an almost all adult household is beyond me (Zoe was school age when they moved in)!

LHA/ HB rates in London are very high. Someone could be earning £20,000 and still qualify for a fair amount of assistance.

Another example of people living beyond their means is/ was Friends. Few of them had regular work, yet they could afford Manhattan rents, and ridiculously expensive furniture!

I remember the Friends writer defending this once - he said that the reason they could afford that apartment in the storyline was 'rent control' - an old New York law that allowed rents to be capped at a certain level.

lostinrates

hieveryone wrote: »

I remember the Friends writer defending this once - he said that the reason they could afford that apartment in the storyline was 'rent control' - an old New York law that allowed rents to be capped at a certain level.

There are still some few rent control places left in London.

bo_drinker

It's not real !!!!!!.

PasturesNew

hieveryone wrote: »

I remember the Friends writer defending this once - he said that the reason they could afford that apartment in the storyline was 'rent control' - an old New York law that allowed rents to be capped at a certain level.

Yes, they have rent control in NY. My friend has a flat there under rent control and he's always feeling smug at how cheap his flat is compared to if he was moving in now. When you move in, rent increases are fixed/low, so over time you really get behind the market rate.

My friend currently pays $1000 for a 1-bed flat.

Also, he is allowed to move out and sub-let it, which a lot of people do to hold onto their cheap flats. However, he had to recently help somebody evict their sub-letter as they weren't coughing up the rent.

He's also currently on the dole - and gets $1800/month dole money for 99 weeks (single person rate). He has to pay his rent out of that, so he gets rent paid and $800 in his pocket.

Edit: Just checked, market value on it is $1300/month. He gets 23% off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_New_York

Edit2: It's rent stabilized he's in, not rent control.

hieveryone

I'm moving back to New York!

sjaypink

lostinrates wrote: »

my cats LOVE it, the shoutier the better, so when I remember I put it on for them so often watch. They love it more than cats.tv on the net (which they also love.)

:rotfl:that really made me laugh!

lostinrates wrote: »

There are still some few rent control places left in London.

really? sounds interesting.... never heard of anything like this before

lostinrates

sjaypink wrote: »

:rotfl:that really made me laugh!


really? sounds interesting.... never heard of anything like this before

Doesn't make the rest ofmy family laugh, they are horrified. Cats don't care though, and I don't realy mind. Its not like they know when it comes on and can demand it


When I say ''some'' rent control flayts I mean almost as rare as hens' teeth, AFAIK