Rachmanesque landlords targeted?

mvengemvenge

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100008067/osborne-to-target-further-savings-from-housing-benefit/

Currency wars, what to do about US joblessness, even reform of the IMF’s voting structure – it must all seem somewhat irrelevant to George Osborne. The UK chancellor is out here in Washington for his first annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund. I’m not saying he’s not enjoying the hurly burly of meetings with the world’s elite of economic policy making. I’m sure he is. Getting to sit on the top table of global governance is one of the main objects of political ambition. And for him, right now, it’s a learning process – getting to know his international counterparts, who’s important, who isn’t and what levers to pull.

But it’s not what he’s primarily thinking about right now. Weightier, domestic issues – notably the comprehensive spending review in less than two weeks time – are for him still the main gig. He’s only an observer in the currency wars issue, which is largely a US/Chinese dispute, and as for how policy should respond to stubbornly high joblessness, well for the time being that too is more of an American issue than a British one. The UK unemployment rate isn’t nearly as bad, and unlike the US, economic recovery in the UK has been surprisingly employment rich. By day, Mr Osborne plays global policy making; by night he must worry about the nitty gritty of where and how to cut.

So where are we on the comprehensive spending review? Most of the smaller departments are now on board, but some of the biggest spenders – defence, welfare and education – have yet to settle. As we know, the Coalition has been forced to row back on defence. Just tackling Labour’s overspend on commitments is problematic enough. Defense spending was by all accounts totally out of control. Sizeable real terms cuts on top is like squeezing blood from a stone. All the same, the Treasury is nearly there. Over the next week, further spending departments are expected to come on board.

Less severe cuts in defence mean more cuts elsewhere, with welfare the most obvious place to start. A lot more could usefully be done on housing benefit, the cost of which has doubled to more than £20bn annually over the last ten years. The Chancellor has already announced a £400 a week cap on these payments in a move that will save around £1.8bn a year, but he plainly needs to go further.

The problem is not so much that well publicised London phenomenon of benefit recipients living in £1,000 plus a week mansions; iniquitous though these cases are, the numbers are relatively small. Rather it is to do with the way social housing landlords have been able to max out on housing benefit rents. The taxpayer has funded the enrichment of a whole new generation of Rachmanesque landlords with a huge vested interest in the benefit dependent. In any case, some way of slaying this benefit leviathan must be found.

PasturesNew

What an unreadable style of writing.

lynzpower

I really dont think that you can say that just because a LL may recieved housing benefit income that automatically they are "rachmanesque" !!!

Ramping rents, illegal evictions, slum conditions, violence, casual racism?

His policy was to acquire tenanted buildings. He used violence to evict sitting tenants so he could fill squalid properties with immigrant families from the West Indies who, without anywhere else to go, were crammed into tiny flats at extortionate rents because of the colour bar, which prevented them from renting anywhere else.

Rachman’s name is so synonymous with bad housing that is included in English dictionaries: Rachmanism: ’Landlords buying up slums to fill with immigrants at extortionate rents; named after Peter Rachman, a notorious racketeering landlord in Notting Hill in the 1950s and 1960s’.

I hardly think so.

lemonjelly

mvengemvenge wrote: »

and as for how policy should respond to stubbornly high joblessness, well for the time being that too is more of an American issue than a British one. The UK unemployment rate isn’t nearly as bad, and unlike the US, economic recovery in the UK has been surprisingly employment rich.

For now...

BTW, the american spelling of DEFENCE put me off the whole article.

davilown

GHOULES_ARE_BACK_IN_TOWN wrote: »

Unjustified persecution of landlords who are just trying to make an honest dollar for an honest days work.

But I have to say that the use of "Dollar" just adds further to his lack of creditability

nearlynew

GHOULES_ARE_BACK_IN_TOWN wrote: »

Unjustified persecution of landlords who are just trying to make an honest dollar for an honest days work.

On another thread you just said that potential FTBs should buy a house and stop contributing to their landlord's mortgage (renting is dead money and all that)


how come you are now on the landlord's side?

Generali

lynzpower wrote: »

I really dont think that you can say that just because a LL may recieved housing benefit income that automatically they are "rachmanesque" !!!

Ramping rents, illegal evictions, slum conditions, violence, casual racism?

At least one tenant of Rachman came home to find that the roof had been removed from the house they were living in!

Not in quite the same league as taking housing benefit as a BTL LL.