London Housing applicants sent to coast

Generali

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Porch racing must be an Essex thing.

Here in Scotland we leave them attached to the houses.:D

It reminds me of the joke about the blonde painter who got a job in Essex to paint a porch.

When she was done she knocked on the door and said, "I've got some paint left so I can do your Jag while I'm here if you want".

Loughton_Monkey

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Porch racing must be an Essex thing.

Here in Scotland we leave them attached to the houses.:D

We just spell it different down here!

Round the corner from me, we get the "3 O'Clock rush" of inane parking while mothers pick up Henrietta and Tarquin from the Prep School and take them to the Pony Club. I've noticed things are getting better financially, since the Porsches and BMW X6's are being replaced by chauffeur driven Maybachs.

Last week, when taking the dog for a walk, there was complete chaos - the trouble being caused by 6 National Grid vans.

The fact that it took 6 vans (and presumably 12 men) to dig a hole precisely 1 meter square for most of the day probably educates the children and their parents as to one of the reasons utilities might be going up in price.

John_Pierpoint

PasturesNew wrote: »

Since the Govt came up with the "50% to go to Uni" rule, many houses and whole areas have been bought up by BTL LLs [STRIKE]for HMOs [/STRIKE]for students.

Up where Hamish lives the rules are much stricter; as usual the civil servants respond to the hardware factor not the "software" in the form of the relationships between the students plus their landlord. In Scotland more than 2 unrelated people living together defines multiple occupation (Hamish will correct me if I'm wrong). In England it is usual to sign up a motley crew of 4 to say they are forming a household. If there is no bother, and the rent gets paid, who is counting? [The law seems to say 5 unrelated people AND 3 floors] as in most cases it is possible to jump out of a 1st floor window, without too much damage in an emergency.- presumably there are a lot of local authorities, where they have tenancies occupied by more than two unrelated persons;) ].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_in_multiple_occupation

There was an interesting thread on here a couple of years ago featuring an episode of "Homes Under the Hammer" in which the king of student landlords in Canterbury got a Victorian (semi/end of terrace) and converted the cellar into the community space and the rest of the building into student bedrooms.

(A modest light well was opened up in what was probably the way of delivering the winter fuel for the servant(s) to lay the fires).
He has scored on two counts: (1) The property had changed hands in the last 6 months making it difficult to mortgage and (2) Canterbury was proposing to introduce student control zones (like alcohol control zones ?) together with more enforcement on the part of the Universities and colleges in Canterbury.

Making some Victorian houses comply with all the safety measures required in a HMO, can be seriously expensive and tends to wreck the period feel of the property.


Stop the mickey mouse degrees, or make it so you can only do a mickey mouse if you live at home still ..... freeing up houses.

Some of those are big houses (5-6 students) which could, instead, house single parents under (say) 25, in shared housing, so it's a less attractive career option.

We used to have those in the 1950s called un-married mother an baby homes, in some places some residents dabbled in a bit of private enterprise to ease the burden of their deprivations.

Do something about holiday homes/2nd homes that aren't really being used.

Get planning depts to work with people on planning, so you fancy a bit of land, make an appointment, then go and "pick" a house you'd get PP for from, say, a catalogue - and know you can get that passed - rather than the long-winded bizarre system of submitting, waititng 2 months, getting a knockback, then having to have another go and guess what they'd accept. I'd be happy to sit round a table and pick one out of a catalogue then say "and a porch on the front, window there, take that one out .... and it could all be done/dusted inside 2 hours....

When I bought my shack in the 1970s, my first attempt to bring it into the second half of the 20th century it was much like that and all the planning and building control was FREE. [Knowing what I know now, I would have argued about and/or ignored some of the planner's stipulations]
When I went back in the 1980s for a second bite at the cherry it was a bit more difficult and I had to pay modest fees.
Now the whole process must be a local authority profit centre, judging by the fees and almost everything has to be installed and certified by an "expert". Making small improvements uneconomic.
Depending on where you live the old rule of thumb that building was 33% site value, 33% materials & 33% labour, no longer applies, it can be 75% site value inside the M25 in posher areas.

BigAunty

carefullycautious wrote: »

The news showed a young single parent who had been rehoused into the Hastings area. She stated that by moving her there she had no family support and as there are no jobs she is likely to remain on benefits far longer than if she remained in her home borough.

Was it related to the closure of a single parent's homeless hostel in London?

I have started to hate the term 'lone' or 'single' parents - they are automatically seen as vulnerable and there is no sort of distinction between those that suffer from relationship breakdowns or have never cohabited with their male partner because it was a casual relationship and the small percentage of mothers who have been widowed. There is no 'single' parent unless the father of the child is dead - there are two parents, full stop.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/14/young-single-mothers-focus-e15-newham-rehoused

John_Pierpoint

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and the family support ..whose support does not extend to putting their hands in their pockets.
How many have been offered a "Slough shed".

http://www.slough.gov.uk/moderngov/%28S%28x3rxd3vqggyb5f3d5cumpr45%29%29/documents/s29802/Report%20Sheds%20with%20Beds.pdf

BigAunty

In some European countries, funnily enough with the lowest rates of lone parenthood or much lower than the UK, they don't have housing benefit in the way it operates here. An academic once studied benefits for lone parents in Europe and found a strong correspondance between high rates of lone parent benefit and high rates of lone parenthood, ditto when state benefits are low for lone parents like in Spain and Italy, there are much fewer lone parents.

Some countries don't have HB systems or social housing allocation systems that prioritise lone parents. They pay low sums for the non-working lone parent and a child benefit/credit per child - and from this sum, the lone parent is expected to cover any accommodation costs. There is an expectation there for the non resident father to contribute or the family to support her or the lone parent to work (granted some other countries have cheaper childcare).

In Germany, for example, a poster living in Germany posted on a Daily Mail article that the country currently pays €215 per child in Child allowance and a further €385 for the parent and no housing benefit on top. That would be €1030 in total per month (about £850) and no housing subsidy for a lone parent with 3 children.

Here in the UK, a lone parent with 3 children would get over £300 per week, about £1350 per month and then also get a full allowance of HB, plus full or close to full council tax discount. They could also receive 25% of the non resident parents net income without it affecting their income so might get an extra £50 per week if their ex is on the minimum wage, or much more if their ex earned a decent wage.

Those countries would not have this handwringing that we get in the UK when the expectation of lone parents to remain in expensive areas with their full costs met by the public purse - there is no expectation or belief in a 'right' to having high housing costs met.

Other countries also have much higher employment rates for their lone parents, presumably because child care provision is better, employment opportunities or greater or simply that the safety net for benefits is so low, they are forced into employment and can't be a stay at home mum. Here in the UK, just over half of lone parents are in employment. I've never seen any stats around how many work full time and how many working lone parents are completely free of the benefits system but expect most work part time and remain dependent on benefits until their youngest child becomes an adult.

Here in the UK we tackled child poverty by giving money to the parents, who may have next to no qualifications, skills or experience, rather than getting them into employment. We should tackle parent poverty (part time low paid employment or total worklessness). Because low paid work doesn't make some households better off in employment, and even though benefits may not be high, there is still a big disincentive to get off the sofa because they are high enough for there to be an incentive to get a job.

A lone parent with 3 kids will reap over £300 disposable income and have their major housing costs met when they have only the aptitude or opportunity to get a NMW job where they'd earn £190 per week - they will never, across the whole of their working life, earn enough to remove their family from benefits.

if their rent is another £100-400 on top, plus Council tax of £100 per month, the max they could ever earn would be less than £200 (if they even wanted to work full time, they can just work 16 hours a week for working tax credits) while their weekly benefits would be £300 in their hand and perhaps the same again in rent and council tax - £600 a week income on benefits while they can earn barely a third of this and can never leave the benefits system.

Loughton_Monkey

BigAunty wrote: »

In some European countries, funnily enough with the lowest rates of lone parenthood or much lower than the UK, they don't have housing benefit in the way it operates here. An academic once studied benefits for lone parents in Europe and found a strong correspondance between high rates of lone parent benefit and high rates of lone parenthood, ditto when state benefits are low for lone parents like in Spain and Italy, there are much fewer lone parents.....

Bang on!

The more our society "subsidises" so-called 'poverty' the more we get of it. It's a shame we don't recognise this.

It's the same as standing outside the betting shop, or casino, or bingo hall..... telling everyone who walks in that when they come out, they should say what they have lost. If it's over £100, then we will recompense them for their losses.

Just ask ourselves. Would this make people "less likely" to gamble, or "more likely".

Answers on a postcard.....

BigAunty

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Bang on!

The more our society "subsidises" so-called 'poverty' the more we get of it. It's a shame we don't recognise this.

.....

This article contains a table of benefits paid out in Europe (though it focusses on the fact that there are many more UK citizens claiming benefits in Germany than German citizens in the UK).

It shows there are many countries that don't have additional national housing benefit systems like the UK - the benefits that the recipient get are expected to include the cost of their rent, it's up to them to live in properties they can afford rather than providing some kind of additional maximum separate housing allowance.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2468189/Dont-mention-ze-dole-One-tenth-Britains-expat-population-claiming-23-000-unemployment-payments-Germany-benefits-Europe-revealed.html

Again, this article shows how our in work benefits are very generous compared to other countries which allows lone parents (and even two parent households) to work part time and get significant top ups of up to an extra 80% through HB and tax credits, etc, on their post tax pay.

"When the costs of living are accounted for, low paid workers in the UK are the second richest in the EU15 after Luxembourg"

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org.uk/briefingPaper/document/284

LydiaJ

BigAunty wrote: »

Was it related to the closure of a single parent's homeless hostel in London?

I have started to hate the term 'lone' or 'single' parents - they are automatically seen as vulnerable and there is no sort of distinction between those that suffer from relationship breakdowns or have never cohabited with their male partner because it was a casual relationship and the small percentage of mothers who have been widowed. There is no 'single' parent unless the father of the child is dead - there are two parents, full stop.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/14/young-single-mothers-focus-e15-newham-rehoused

Well, I have experience of being two of the kinds of lone parent that you list - the relationship breakdown one (my husband left me) and the widowed one (he died while still legally married to me). I can assure you that widowed parents (of both sexes - it's not just mothers who get widowed) are a lot better provided for than divorced/separated ones or those who've never been in a settled relationship.

Yes, I got some maintenance from my husband while we were separated, and yes, tax credits enabled me to afford the childcare that allowed me to work. But now he's dead I also get widowed parents' allowance (a contributions based benefit that I get because he paid NI) and widows' pensions from his pension schemes, as well as survivors' pensions from his pension schemes for the children (that will be theirs when they're a bit older but currently come to me to spend on bringing them up). I will also end up owning a house outright reasonably soon, from a combination of the life insurance, the pension death in service lump sum, and the compensation for the preventable accident that killed him.

I find I'm quite comfortable with the terms "lone parent" (I'm parenting alone) and "single parent" (I'm single and a parent) but don't like the term "single mother", which feels to me to have much stronger negative connotations, somehow.

ETA I've rented privately, lived in tied accommodation, rented privately, and owned. I've never lived in social housing, I've never received HB, and I've always had to choose where to live on the basis of where I could afford, so I can't bring any kind of insider perspective to the main topic of the thread.

BigAunty

LydiaJ wrote: »

I find I'm quite comfortable with the terms "lone parent" (I'm parenting alone) and "single parent" (I'm single and a parent) but don't like the term "single mother", which feels to me to have much stronger negative connotations, somehow.

.

I just get exasperated with the terms 'lone parent' and 'single parent' because of its automatic association with some kind of victimhood or vulnerability applies to the status.

Lone parents aren't just being forced away to cheaper areas in the UK because of the housing benefit cap, they are facing home moves because the father of their children isn't contributing towards their basic living expenses. I've read lots of articles about how the HB changes and shortage of social housing has meant lone parents have to uproot and each has a huge hole in it in discussing the father's behaviour impacts this.

I think the term 'lone parents' forces some kind of mind-twist to it, the way that the term completely erases the second parent (in the majority of cases the father). Probably in 99% of the cases of lone parents (mainly female), the other parent is still alive and probably living fairly local to their ex. There is no lone or sole parent in reality. The lone/sole/single bit seems to apply more to their income stream in the majority of the cases, not the parentage of the child...They have two parents in the majority of cases.

I also think tax credits suffers from the same poor terminology as it gives the impression that taxpayers have some kind of tax rebate given to them whereas in many cases, the tax credit recipient pays either low or no income tax. It is a low income benefit so why side step this?