Support for mortgage interest (SMI) extended AGAIN

abaxas

RenovationMan wrote: »

Is your view the same with people in rented accomodation - 12 months rent assistance, then throw them out? If so, where do we throw them?

We throw them out to a small bedsit that costs us very little.

They can therefore exist.

ILW

abaxas wrote: »

I for one are happy to help people when they need my help. But I cannot believe that people need more than 3 months to return to work.We should not subsidise people to find the job they want, I do not wish to pay for people's ego.

I was just talking to a friend on mines daughter who has been out of work for around 6 months now, she has been offered a job paying £16k and just laughed at them as she was earning £25k in her last job and is not prepared to accept less.

abaxas

ILW wrote: »

I was just talking to a friend on mines daughter who has been out of work for around 6 months now, she has been offered a job paying £16k and just laughed at them as she was earning £25k in her last job and is not prepared to accept less.

That is the problem!

FTBFun

Percy1983 wrote: »

If all of the group who can't afford their homes where kicked out it would be another one of the market props gone to which prices could reduce further to which it would help those who can afford a property to get one.

As many people keep pointing out to me life has winners and losers to which I can accept my disadvantage due to being born later. But when I am winning and the losers are proped up to stay ahead of me that does annoy me slightly.

If I have to pay more for a house because I was born later, why should those who bought before me and much lower prices get helped by me?

By all means I am up fine with the idea of helping them, but there has to be a cap, after 12 months if somebody still can't afford to pay the mortgage they signed upto they should be kicked out, harsh buy more than fair.

Still have that chip on your shoulder about being born in the 1980s I see. It sucks to be from a generation that has had substantially more comforts and advantages than those before them, doesn't it?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

In many, perhaps even most, cases it's cheaper to leave someone in their house than rehouse them.

The council up here is paying £39 per person per night to house people in B&B for up to 6 months at a time, up to £100 pppn if it's an emergency case at a weekend or something.

abaxas

RenovationMan wrote: »

Often people cannot get a low apid job because they are overqualified and the employer knows they will leave as soon as something better comes along. I found this when I left Uni and wanted something to tide me over while I found the right job. I was happy to do any sort of work but everyone knew, including me, that I would be off ASAP. Also, it's better for the economy to have the people with the right skills being in the right job, especially if that job is higher paid and therefore garnishes higher taxes.

Then you get into the world of 'waiting for a job'. Ie being subsided for something that doesn't exist or might not exist.

The economy and the jobs that do exist change all the time. Nothing is static and people need to move with the times.

Lots of miners in Wales/NE are sitting there waiting for the pits to re-open.

StevieJ

Graham_Devon wrote: »

:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

WHY is this seen as the alternative.

NO family in this country is thrown onto the streets with the kids put into care. They are homed.

This is simply a case of treating everyone the same. Instead of one family having a taxpayer subsidy on something they own, and can take full advantage of any increases in asset prices.....and another family, same position, yet does not get treated to the advantages of asset prices...infact, it constantly works against them, as they are likely to be confined to rent forever.

What if the asset price collapses as you lot seem to be expecting/praying for? BTW, why would you wish to pay more to rehouse them if you don't want them on the streets, I still can't get my head around that one.

chucky

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

In many, perhaps even most, cases it's cheaper to leave someone in their house than rehouse them.

unfortunately this seems a very difficult and complicated concept for many people on here to grasp.

Graham_Devon

RenovationMan wrote: »

Dont worry Graham, I used that phrase to elicit this sort of reponse. Given that most right-minded people are happy that their tax money is used to home people, would they also prefer their tax money to be used in the most efficient way?

I am happy for people to be kept in their homes, regardless of whether their home is mortgaged or rented as long as that is the most cost effective solution. My point is that more often than not it is cheaper for the tax payer to keep people in their homes than to have the expense of re-housing them either in local authority homes, B&Bs or rented, especially if in the greater number of cases, that assistance is only required for a few months.

What is the value in having a family get reposessed, building up even more financial problems in the process, move them into social housing, have the chief wage earner get a job, pay back his debts and then continue to live in social housing when they no longer require it?

I totally accept that argument. It is completely true, and there is no way to avoid the fact that SMI IS, probably, short term, more cost effective.

However, and this is the big however....if that "cost effective" approach was applied across the benefits system, there would be outcry and absolute outrage.

It's more cost effective to pay one LHA payment across the entire country. However, it does not work that way, as people in Lincolnshire would be raking it in, while people in London don't have a pot to pee in.

It's more cost effective to house restbite services in hospitals. However, it doesn't work that way as people need restbite care locally.

It's more cost effective to give disabled people thos elittle bubble cars, but they can't do that, equality would, quite rightly, have a field day.

Theres all kinds of situations where cost effectiveness isn't the main issue.

It's more cost effective to send a child I heard about on the radio the other day with serious issues to a proper school that is built to cope with these issues, 650 miles from his home, in another country. However, the government can't do that, because it's completely unfair to single out that one child, so thousands and thousands of pounds is spent on this child to bodge the issues, actually holding them back from progressing.

This is the crux of my point. It's preferrencial treatment. Help I'm all for. I've said it over and over. But if we are going to start preferencial treatment on the basis of cost effectiveness....then apply it countrywide. There would be anarchy.

abaxas

StevieJ wrote: »

What if the asset price collapses as you lot seem to be expecting/praying for? BTW, why would you wish to pay more to rehouse them if you don't want them on the streets, I still can't get my head around that one.

Rehousing is cheap if you dont allow people to live where they used to live.