Should 'Social Housing' be re-branded 'Taxpayer-supported Housing?

Rinoa

Grant Shapps believes it should.

Shapps's remarks about terminology came towards the end of the article. He is quoted as saying:

“I think it is worth reminding people two things. First of all, the taxpayer pays a fair whack subsidy to build the house in the first place, and then, secondly, there is an ongoing week by week subsidy against what would be the full market rent.

“There are forever arguments, the housing intelligentsia of The Guardian or whatever, who say there’s no cost, it’s already built. Not true.”

He added that it should be called “taxpayer-supported housing rather than the meaningless phrase social housing”.

Shapps has previously employed the same rhetoric when announcing the coalitions 'Pay to Stay' proposals that would see social tenants earning above £60,000 paying up to market rents, and earlier this year he faced criticism from housing professionals for demonising social tenants and attacking the social housing profession.

Labour's Red Brick blogger Monimbo addressed the question of the relative subsidy levels enjoyed by different housing tenures earlier in the year, using figures from the annual UK Housing Review to argue that everyone in the UK gets subsidised housing - an argument that the minister clearly does not accept.

Mr Shapps certainly likes to stir up debate.

ILW

Why are anti social types all given social housing?

moneyinmypocket

social housing has been abused by lazy !!!!less people

Social housing should be for those on a min wage who can't afford to pay private rent not those who just want to breed misery

the_flying_pig

Rinoa wrote: »

...Mr Shapps certainly likes to stir up debate.

yeah, but I mean, well, he's not exactly a towering intellect.

he says, “There are forever arguments, the housing intelligentsia of The Guardian or whatever, who say there’s no cost, it’s already built. Not true.”

this is apparently "not true" because

"First of all, the taxpayer pays a fair whack subsidy to build the house in the first place, and then, secondly, there is an ongoing week by week subsidy against what would be the full market rent."

This is a fairly bizarre mangling of cost concepts by GS, pretty much double counting the cost of building the house when in fact he should be counting less than one times the cost. It's quite worrying because it shows that there's plenty in basic economics & finance that he doesn't understand.

If the state used taxpayer money to build houses but then leased them out at full market rents then it'd cost the state nothing at all in the end, because the rents would eventually claw back the taxpayer money that had been used to build houses.

What actually happens is that taxpayer money is used to build houses but then rents only claw back some of this cost, because they're subsidised. So the total cost is a little bit less than the cost of building a house.

MacMickster

I take it that he is not so keen to see privately let properties where the taxpayer pays a hefty whack in housing benefit towards the "market" rent branded in quite the same way.

I personally would like to see jobs that exist purely because the low wages are topped up by tax credits advertised as "taxpayer subsidised jobs".

Carl31

moneyinmypocket wrote: »

social housing has been abused by lazy !!!!less people

Social housing should be for those on a min wage who can't afford to pay private rent not those who just want to breed misery

It does annoy me when i see a council tenant with a brand new bmw parked on the drive

ILW

MacMickster wrote: »

I take it that he is not so keen to see privately let properties where the taxpayer pays a hefty whack in housing benefit towards the "market" rent branded in quite the same way.

I personally would like to see jobs that exist purely because the low wages are topped up by tax credits advertised as "taxpayer subsidised jobs".

Fair point, the difference though is that these jobs are open to anyone, whereas "social housing" seems only to be offered to a select few.

leveller2911

the_flying_pig wrote: »

What actually happens is that taxpayer money is used to build houses but then rents only claw back some of this cost, because they're subsidised. So the total cost is a little bit less than the cost of building a house.

Sorry to correct you but thats not the case. We have lived in our house (Social Housing) for 19yrs and 4 months and the total rent we have paid is more than the build cost of the house and that also takes into account all of the maintenance carried out on the property and the landlords buildings insurance.

Our Housing Association can now use the rent we pay to go towards building another property.Everyones a winner especially the taxpayers (which we both are).;)

Graham_Devon

leveller2911 wrote: »

Sorry to correct you but thats not the case. We have lived in our house (Social Housing) for 19yrs and 4 months and the total rent we have paid is more than the build cost of the house and that also takes into account all of the maintenance carried out on the property and the landlords buildings insurance.

Our Housing Association can now use the rent we pay to go towards building another property.Everyones a winner especially the taxpayers (which we both are).;)

Just out of curiosity, how do you know the build cost of the house? Would this include finance costs, labour, land etc?

leveller2911

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, how do you know the build cost of the house? Would this include finance costs, labour, land etc?

I know the builders, know exactly the build cost of the 2 and 3 bedroom properties (19 in total).

In just under 20 years the windows and doors were decorated 3 times ,the first time the decorators quotes were £250-00 per house, they took their time on the first few houses and realised their quote was way too cheap and painted 8 windows and 2 doors in 2 days, terrible job they made of it too.

Boiler services this year cost £60-00, they did replace the original boiler last year at a cost of £1500-00.I had a long chat with the HA Surveyor and housing officer who told me the "mortgages" on our properties were indeed paid off.

The land that the houses were built on was owned by the community and donated to build low cost homes for local people. We were nominated because my wife was born locally, we both worked full time ,were not married and had no children.

We do not have the "Right to buy" at a discount nor the "Right to Aquire" at full market value so hopefully if/when we do buy ,another local family will get the house.

ILW

leveller2911 wrote: »

Sorry to correct you but thats not the case. We have lived in our house (Social Housing) for 19yrs and 4 months and the total rent we have paid is more than the build cost of the house and that also takes into account all of the maintenance carried out on the property and the landlords buildings insurance.

Our Housing Association can now use the rent we pay to go towards building another property.Everyones a winner especially the taxpayers (which we both are).;)

And if you had paid a market rent (when you could afford it), they could have built more.