In work poverty due to overpriced housing costs

lisyloo

Arklight wrote: »

In any case, if we are in a position where a lot of people struggle to afford housing, and professions like teachers and nurses can't afford to live (and therefore work) in places like London, maybe we need to look as a society at whether our economic policy is doing the job we need it to.

Won’t market forces sort this out.
So for example if we couldn’t get nurses in Surrey then we’d either have to pay them more of work out a way or encouraging them to live their e.g. supply accommodation.

The fact that nurses, bin men, bus drivers are willing to work in Surrey/London and we don’t have massive shortages means the pips aren’t really squeaking yet.

If it was so bad then they’d all be seeking work elsewhere and there would be shortages surely?

So where do the nurses/bin men/bus drivers of Surrey live?
Rented?

And crucially it’s either not bad enough for them to move or they have other reasons not to move that are stronger than the desire to own a home?

westernpromise

I am baffled by this persistent and weird idea that the supposed social utility of a job should somehow increase the wages of those who do it. As we live in a capitalist society, people's remuneration is obviously going to be coupled to their value to their employer, which in turn is coupled to the value of whatever their employer provides to customers.

Healthcare is a good example. We have a culture in this country of insisting that healthcare should be "free at the point of use". What "free at the point of use" really means is "used by me and paid for by somebody else". In this country, only 40% of earners are net income tax payers; the top 10% pay 59% of all income tax; and the top 1% pay 25% of it. Most private health care users will come from the 10% or the 1%. Thus it's clear that the majority of users of "free" healthcare are people who pay nothing for it.

Thus it should come as no surprise to find that the wages of healthcare workers are low. Their actual customers for the most part don't consider what they produce to be worth paying anything for, and any that do consider that the paying should be done on their behalf by somebody else.

Private doctors and dentists are well paid because their customers consider their service to be worth paying for. NHS doctors and dentists are, broadly, badly paid, because their customers don't consider their service to be worth paying for. If NHS doctors and dentists were well paid, many of their customers would certainly regard them with sullen envy.

That NHS workers can't afford houses is thus an obvious and direct consequence of socialism.

MobileSaver

Arklight wrote: »

It's easy to blame people for their predicament while knowing nothing about them, ... But it's not necessarily a form of thinking you can't overcome.

I did look for official, impartial stats but couldn't find any; do you have a source for the reasons the majority are homeless?

My own (admittedly brief) search seemed to indicate the main reason for homelessness was ex-cons and so my lack of sympathy (for many although not all) stands. Even the main homeless charity, Crisis, lists criminality as the first reason causing homelessness:

People can become homeless when they leave prison

lisyloo

Arklight wrote: »

It's easy to blame people for their predicament while knowing nothing about them, in fact, psychologists have found it's actually a part of human psychology. But it's not necessarily a form of thinking you can't overcome.

So the responsibility lies with the viewer to change their perception?

I don’t blame people for the cards they are dealt but what they choose to do (including choosing to become a soldier) they need to take responsibility for, no?

bertiewhite

lisyloo wrote: »

I don’t blame people for the cards they are dealt but what they choose to do (including choosing to become a soldier) they need to take responsibility for, no?

Assuming you are talking about the PTSD issue, then you need to include firefighters, police officers etc.

I'm struggling to work out what you're trying to infer by "take responsibility for"? Are you saying "they knew what they were letting themselves in for"? If so, then who will keep you safe at night?

TBagpuss

MobileSaver wrote: »

I did look for official, impartial stats but couldn't find any; do you have a source for the reasons the majority are homeless?

My own (admittedly brief) search seemed to indicate the main reason for homelessness was ex-cons and so my lack of sympathy (for many although not all) stands. Even the main homeless charity, Crisis, lists criminality as the first reason causing homelessness:

And people who end up in prison are, statistically, much more likelythat the general population to have been in care, victims of abuse etc.

Between 1 and 2 % of the population as a whole have spent time in care as children. the figure for prisoners is 25-27%
And of coruse those who were in care are much less likely to have supportive families so their risk of becoming homeless on release is also likely to be higher, particualrly for younger people.
37% of children in YOI in 2015 had ben 'looked after children ' (i.e. in care)

Around 60% of children in care are in care because they have suffered neglect and/or abuse.

Children in children's homes are far more likely than other groups of children to have a criminal record, in part becuase staff will call the police for behaviours which would be highly unlikely to invole the police if they took place in a private home, and becasue provision of appropriate mental health care, and sufficinet, adequately trained and experiences staff are not available.

The Howard LEague carrid out rsearch which was publishd in 2016 which covered a lot of this ground, and the Prison reform Trust and the governments own statistics show similar findings.

Similarly, if you look at the work of the specialist Family Drug and Alcohol Court, which deals with families where children are subject of care proceedings due to drg or alcohol abuse by the parents - the court's approach is different to that of the traditional sytem, in that it coordinates intsive support and monitoring involing health and mental health professionals as well as social workers. It has phenomenally better outcomes - almost 60% of mothers (rather than 25% in standard courts)who manage to stop drinking /using frugs are still abstinent after 5 years, 50% (rather than 20%) have no further involvment with the courts after 5 yeasr, and many more fathers retain contact with children.

People in these scenrios are not people who just chose to make bad decisions, they are people who, in a great many cases, start out battling against enourmous disadvantages, and end up caught in a cycle where those initial disadvantages result in a downward spral.

It is incredibly hard to break out of that. the FDAC results show what a hugedifference it can made if proper, coordinated support and treatment is made available, one heartbreaking problem is that those families have to hit rock bottom becuase that help is made available (and the FDAC is not available eveywhere, and is only still running at all as a result of charitable donations from large law firms, the government isn[t willing to roll outout nationwide despite the fact that it creates huge long term savings by drastically resducing the number of children goinginto long term care, and the number of parents coming back to the systemtime and time again.

Sadly, the kind of thinking which assumes that anyone can succeed if they work hard and those who fail must have failed because they are lazy, stupid or making bad decisions, is a key part of whypeople who need it find it so dificult to get help to overcome their difficultis.

One of the women I worked wuith when I was working with damilies in the care system was a young woman who, when I met her, was pregant with her 3rd child. The first two had ben removed by social services, and she had just ben released from prison.

I was young and I thought as you do, that she must have made a lot of bad ecision and that she was the wuthor of her own mifortunes with no one to blame but her self.

As I started to learn about her history, my attitude changed, and I realised that far from being a failure who had brought all her troubles on herself, she had, in fact, done astonishingly well to have got as far as she had. She had spoent her own childhood in and out of care, resulting in a very patchy anddisrupted education. Amazingly, she has never the less managed to get some qualifications. She had suffered abuse as a child, and then abuse from a partner as a young adult, but despite that, was acknowledged as being a very loving, caring parent. She had no family supprot at all, having been shunted from one foster family to another she didn't even have any support from former carers.
When her baby was born, her solicitors were the only people who cared enough to send her a card or gift.
She did eveything she could to work with social services and try to met their requirements, even though she was initially homeless (and social services can't assist with that, becuase councils no longer run their own housing stock, so the social service team can't liase with the housing eam to ensure a suitable package of support)

I have never in my life met anyone who worked harder that that young woman, abut as she was starting so far down the ladder, and facing such enormous difficulties, that despite that, she was only just barely making it as far up as rock bottom.

Later, she had the courage and strrgth of character to give evidence to the police, and laterm, in court, about a very serious crime she witnessed. She did this despite he death threats made to her

Her story isn't unusual. It made a bog impression on me because working with her was what opened my eyes and changed my attitudes. Later, I found that her situation was pretty common.

Kim_kim

lisyloo wrote: »

I agree with you about homelessness, we need to do better.

But children in rented accommodation go to school like other children.
Traditionally 30% have never owned and those children still (have to) go to school.

Why on earth would they not get schooling just because they don’t own??

Because potentially they may have to move every 6 months. They may have to change schools frequently.

Kim_kim

lisyloo wrote: »

So why can’t they rent? (If they want to live in Surrey).
The lowest paid (approx 30%) of the population have always rented.

Tenancies are different now. Years ago they were longer, more secure. You had fair rents - or something like that.
Rents are as much as or more than mortgages in many places.
So the poor pay the mortgages of landlords.

Kim_kim

westernpromise wrote: »

I don't feel ashamed, but then I'm in that minority who are net payers of income tax, so I do actually make a contribution. The people who should be really ashamed are the 60% who are net takers of income tax and who take out of the pot leaving less for others.

I’m also a contributor, I think it’s about 35k isn’t it, per person to be a contributor rather than a benefiter.

But I think it’s a national shame that we have people sleeping on our streets, we are supposed to be a first world country.

Kim_kim

Arklight wrote: »

Except people's value to society often isn't coupled to their remuneration.

For example there were very well compensated people who are almost completely socially useless at best, and who fulfill the definition of a parasite at worst. Landlords, bankers, estate agents, network marketers, reality TV stars, the new Prime Minister.

Then there are people who are very useful, who we actually need, who aren't paid nearly as much. Nurses. Teachers. Agriculturalists, researchers.

And we need those people in London, in Surrey in the south east.