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London Housing applicants sent to coast

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  • ukcarper
    ukcarper Posts: 17,337 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    BigAunty wrote: »
    Last November in England due to the Localism Act, a change was made to ensure that councils no longer had to provide social housing to the homeless - they can now discharge their statutory duties by offering them settled accommodation, which includes the option to offer a 'suitable' 1 year private tenancy. My understanding is that this no longer has to be in the area where they made their homeless application (though possibly this may just apply to their interim accommodation while their application is being processed, not sure).

    This seems a very realistic response to the lack of social housing and the housing benefit caps. Councils were struggling to find social housing for those in priority need, families were ending up in hostels and B&Bs.

    So as far as I'm concerned, housing the homeless in areas further away than they desire isn't punitive but realistic given the claimants low incomes and the lack of available housing in their original areas.

    Those taking up studying and job opportunities, moving in with partners from other areas, often move away from immediate family and friends - its the norm. Somehow, benefit claimants have expectations of being able to live long term within a mile or two of where they prefer to live.

    When I've read articles that involve interviews with lone parents who live in central London who fear being moved south of the river or Romford, they react like they are being sent into space.

    I'm not sure that turning places like Hastings into ghettos for the unemployed is the answer.
  • [QUOTE=BigAunty;63957186
    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?[/QUOTE]

    The "low income" (one day a week?) self employed?
    But at least they are going through the motions and some of it might rub off.
  • ruggedtoast
    ruggedtoast Posts: 9,819 Forumite
    This housing crisis will only get worse. It is clear the government has no clue what it is doing, no strategy for housing and no goals.

    A few decades ago there was a very simple mandate for state housing benefits - to provide affordable safe housing to low income people in the community in which they lived.

    Who knows what its for now? To provide income to buy to let leeches? As a bridge to the private rental market? As a last resort for the otherwise homeless, a starting point for immigrants, a way of selling off what remains of council stock?

    Does anyone know?
  • BigAunty
    BigAunty Posts: 8,310 Forumite
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    ukcarper wrote: »
    I'm not sure that turning places like Hastings into ghettos for the unemployed is the answer.

    It seems that the lone parents were unable to secure employment, or sufficiently paid employment, to afford their rents in London which has higher employment opportunities. I'm not really sure to the degree to which some would be employable anywhere, particularly if they've left school with no or low qualifications and had no or low employment experience before having their children in an environment where the families and fathers can't or won't help them out.

    There has been a trend for many years preceding the HB changes for former holiday areas on the coast to be a magnet for the poor and dispossessed, in part because they have a lot of housing stock and little in the way of holiday visitors to fill it. Hastings decline as a holiday destination probably started over 30 years ago.
  • BigAunty
    BigAunty Posts: 8,310 Forumite
    1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    This housing crisis will only get worse. It is clear the government has no clue what it is doing, no strategy for housing and no goals.

    A few decades ago there was a very simple mandate for state housing benefits - to provide affordable safe housing to low income people in the community in which they lived.


    Indeed, new house building is tiny compared to the huge increases in population and household size, the selling off of millions of social housing units so its only going to get worse. I think one of the reasons why people go into buy to let landlording is because the govt has made private pension provision so risky.

    The bill for housing benefit doubled under labour to around £20 billion per year and most new HB claims (I think around 7 out of 10) are actually awarded to those in employment.

    Partly this is a testament to how low wages are in comparison to ever increasing rents but partly this is, in my opinion, a testament to how successive governments have encouraged part time employment to mask the true extent of unemployment. In work benefits, like housing benefit and tax credits have soared.

    The implementation of tax credits means that lone parents only have to work 16 hours to qualify for working tax credits and this, plus other factors, makes it less likely for them to seek full time work. A couple of years ago, there were over 200,000 2 parent households claiming working tax credits and they only had to work 16 hours, too, then increased to 24 hours between them.

    The steep withdrawal of benefits, the cost of child care and transport to work and the entry into more taxation traps some households into part time employment, incentivised by the live/work balance and top ups from tax credits and HB. Tax credits can even be paid to a single person working 30 hours or more who has no dependents or disabilities and if they rent, there is a likelihood they would also be due HB.

    When the Tory government came to power, they identified that Labour introduced a long-term trend whereby more was paid out in benefits, tax credits and allowance than employees paid in Income tax. Yes, there is VAT and corporation tax as income coming to the govt but that poor balance shows you how unwieldy and imbalanced things have become.

    This is the kind of economic fact that those being moved out of London because their HB exceeds the £250 to £400 per week benefit caps do not understand. It would take around 12 national minimum wage workers to pay just the rent alone on their property costing £250 and take around 20 similar employees to fund a £400 per week property - just the accommodation, not even covering the council tax discount, income support, child tax credits,etc.
  • John_Pierpoint
    John_Pierpoint Posts: 8,401 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts
    edited 3 December 2013 at 5:38PM
    From the day that the steam shovel was invented, economists started pointing out that there was no wage at which a (Irish) navvy could compete.
    I have this feeling that there is no wage, and certainly not minimum wage, at which some members of the "workforce" can compete. So the pressure is on to say these people are not unemployable but to recategorise them as medically unfit.

    Hastings was a rival for Brighton when both were fishing villages.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton

    Now "cumulative causation" has set in, not helped by the housing of those, who cannot compete in booming Brighton,. in Hastings relatively cheap property..


    To a certain extent, I do believe in "architectural determinism" in that if people feel hopeless and living in a slum, a "cycle of deprivation" occurs, where it is just not worth getting out of bed. Even in the book "No Mean City" it was pointed out that having more children improved the income of the (unemployed) parents.
    http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1549150.No_Mean_City
    Presumably Peace Haven does not have quite the same problems as Jaywick, though both developed in much the same way between the wars.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacehaven
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywick
    article-2303489-191036A8000005DC-629_964x637.jpg
  • ukcarper
    ukcarper Posts: 17,337 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    BigAunty wrote: »
    It seems that the lone parents were unable to secure employment, or sufficiently paid employment, to afford their rents in London which has higher employment opportunities. I'm not really sure to the degree to which some would be employable anywhere, particularly if they've left school with no or low qualifications and had no or low employment experience before having their children in an environment where the families and fathers can't or won't help them out.

    There has been a trend for many years preceding the HB changes for former holiday areas on the coast to be a magnet for the poor and dispossessed, in part because they have a lot of housing stock and little in the way of holiday visitors to fill it. Hastings decline as a holiday destination probably started over 30 years ago.

    It's a bad trend having a detrimental effect on the area concerned I'm not so sure you would be so keen if you lived or were trying to run a business in the area.
  • BigAunty
    BigAunty Posts: 8,310 Forumite
    1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    ukcarper wrote: »
    It's a bad trend having a detrimental effect on the area concerned I'm not so sure you would be so keen if you lived or were trying to run a business in the area.

    I dare say this might be the case but when I worked as a professional in London, I could only afford to live in the more deprived outer zones of the city in areas that were not affluent or in surrounding counties away from my immediate family. Like many of my colleagues, we had to travel great distances into work or to visit relatives, it's not seen by us as something out of the ordinary like those on long-term benefits who absorbed an expectation to continue living within a few square miles of where they currently reside.

    The areas I could afford in south and east London generally had high levels of immigration, where some of the BME population generally had higher levels of things that were classed as deprivation - sickness, disability, lone parenthood, unemployment, criminal records and low levels of educational attainment. It was also in the period when there was a great upsurge in EU migrant workers coming to the city in direct competition with the locals.

    I suppose I could have got all UKIP about it but those who complain that new residents are the cause of deprivation in the area are generally shouted down as prejudiced, old fashioned, not getting to grips with reality, craving things to be a certain way instead of accepting how they are.

    I accepted the social mix and churn in residents where I lived as the norm, as I'm sure those in faded seaside resorts must also embrace change (or perhaps not embrace, just appreciate that resistence is futile). The change is caused by structural factors in the economy, pushes and pulls that attract certain types of social groups to certain areas.

    Hastings just has to suck it up and accept that it will house lone parents and the homeless from London, like Londoners have to suck it up and accept white flight and significant legal and illegal immigration there.
  • ukcarper
    ukcarper Posts: 17,337 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    BigAunty wrote: »
    I dare say this might be the case but when I worked as a professional in London, I could only afford to live in the more deprived outer zones of the city in areas that were not affluent or in surrounding counties away from my immediate family. Like many of my colleagues, we had to travel great distances into work or to visit relatives, it's not seen by us as something out of the ordinary like those on long-term benefits who absorbed an expectation to continue living within a few square miles of where they currently reside.

    The areas I could afford in south and east London generally had high levels of immigration, where some of the BME population generally had higher levels of things that were classed as deprivation - sickness, disability, lone parenthood, unemployment, criminal records and low levels of educational attainment. It was also in the period when there was a great upsurge in EU migrant workers coming to the city in direct competition with the locals.

    I suppose I could have got all UKIP about it but those who complain that new residents are the cause of deprivation in the area are generally shouted down as prejudiced, old fashioned, not getting to grips with reality, craving things to be a certain way instead of accepting how they are.

    I accepted the social mix and churn in residents where I lived as the norm, as I'm sure those in faded seaside resorts must also embrace change (or perhaps not embrace, just appreciate that resistence is futile). The change is caused by structural factors in the economy, pushes and pulls that attract certain types of social groups to certain areas.

    Hastings just has to suck it up and accept that it will house lone parents and the homeless from London, like Londoners have to suck it up and accept white flight and significant legal and illegal immigration there.

    Sorry don't see it as the solution and I can only see it causing greater problems in the future.
  • Fortunately being privileged can also have a detrimental effect on individuals as well as being deprived, so if the people of Hastings can stick together, individually, as a family and as a society, they might well impose clogs to clogs in 3 generations on the nearby families in Brighton.
    The Western Isles of Scotland should be "deprived" by most measures, but they achieve some of the best schooling results in the United Kingdom .
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