Thread: English social cleansing Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Tulfes (# 18000) on :
 
Apologies if this has been discussed before.

I watched a Panorama programme last night on You Tube. I think it dated from 2013 (not sure).

It was about the benefits cap. It was a long and thoughtful programme filmed in Brent (London).

The benefits cap means that if a family are receiving in benefits more than the average working family income, their benefits are capped to the level of the average working income. However the cap doesn't apply if a single parent is working at least 16 hours a week or (in the case of a couple) someone is working at least 24 hours a week.

The problem portrayed in the film is that rents and housing benefit in London are so high that non working familiss are caught by the cap and face heart breaking situations of being shipped out of London to eg Birmingham (where rents are cheaper) with consequent problems of getting separated from extended family and friends and children losing their schools and friends etc.
Looks like London wants to rid itself of poorer families.

Just awful.

I detest English right wing social cleansing.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
It has been going on for years. Even back in the seventies the DHSS was moving families out of London to seaside towns that had seen better days and didn't have great communications with London. I can remember this in Bexhill and St Leonards but I'm sure it happened elsewhere too.

It was all entirely voluntary you understand.
 
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :
 
Before that, there were 'new towns' where the people who couldn't afford to live in London, to buy or to rent, would be 'encouraged' to go. Some say there are more East Enders in some towns in Essex than in London.

The idea that people should have a right to remain in a particular place and be provided with accommodation whatever their financial circumstances is recent.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Before that, there were 'new towns' where the people who couldn't afford to live in London, to buy or to rent, would be 'encouraged' to go. Some say there are more East Enders in some towns in Essex than in London.

The idea that people should have a right to remain in a particular place and be provided with accommodation whatever their financial circumstances is recent.
Actually, for many years it was reckoned reasonable for housing to be available where it was needed. The term "Homes fit for heroes to live in" goes back to the 1920's.

It is only since the social housing sell-off that things have changed. Your recent would be better rendered decent.
 
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :
 
The selling off of council houses came much later than the new towns, which were preceded by 'garden cities'. Shipping people out of London by giving them little chance of housing where they were brought up, scattering communities and families, has been going on for a long time.

The homes fit for heroes were not necessarily where they wanted them to be.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
The Garden Cities were not seen as being a way of cleansing anything or anyone; they were seen as being a way of giving people better homes in better surroundings, and often with better employment prospects too.

Welwyn Garden City was built near Hatfield, where there was aircraft production; Letchworth was near Luton with car production. On a smaller scale were the garden suburbs, such as at South Oxhey near Watford, which was deliberately built to take people bombed out of London and who worked in the print industry that relocated to the area at the same time.

In any case, why the uproar when it is people in publicly funded housing that are split up from their extended family but silence when it is owner-occupiers who are priced out of their locale by, for example, second home owners?
 
Posted by Tulfes (# 18000) on :
 
The people in the programme weren't in public housing. They were tenants of greedy private landlords charging high rents because they can.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Tulfes:
The people in the programme weren't in public housing. They were tenants of greedy private landlords charging high rents because they can.
Coincidentally, they were then sent to different places where they again became tenants of greedy private landlords.

[ 13. March 2015, 09:19: Message edited by: Sioni Sais ]
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
Which would be because there is totally inadequate provision for public housing.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Which would be because there is totally inadequate provision for public housing.
Which to an extent has come about because housing stock was sold off (and eventually ended up in the hands of private landlords), and councils were not allowed to use the funds they got that way to build new housing stock.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
....In any case, why the uproar when it is people in publicly funded housing that are split up from their extended family but silence when it is owner-occupiers who are priced out of their locale by, for example, second home owners?
Or overseas investors, for that matter. Why isn't UKIP making a fuss about this, which really is damaaging our socciety? (Rhetorical question: I suspect I know the answer, which is that that would come just a bit too close to attacking free-market capitalism.)
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Speaking as a private landlord can I say here and now that I'm not greedy - I don't up the rent every year and am the despair of my letting agents because I prefer to provide a family home than let out to groups of sharers who would end up paying more rent.

Last time I had a tenant on LHA even the local council told me I could get a lot more!
 
Posted by lowlands_boy (# 12497) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
....In any case, why the uproar when it is people in publicly funded housing that are split up from their extended family but silence when it is owner-occupiers who are priced out of their locale by, for example, second home owners?
Or overseas investors, for that matter. Why isn't UKIP making a fuss about this, which really is damaaging our socciety? (Rhetorical question: I suspect I know the answer, which is that that would come just a bit too close to attacking free-market capitalism.)
Ah well, if they are just overseas investors, chances are they are - well - overseas. So they aren't actually HERE, so that's fine, 'cos their funny looking kids aren't clogging up the local school and the NHS isn't paying for their teeth.

Investment is good.

Of course, the irony is that by driving up house prices they are probably forcing British people to go somewhere else and actually facilitating unskilled immigration as an unskilled immigrant prepared to live four to a room is living in their investment property.

But as you say, free market and all that....
 
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :
 
I think this is specifically a London problem. If the benefits cap is £500 per week, and you spend 30% of your money on rent, then you have about £650 per month. In Manchester that'll get you a 3-bedroom semi-detached house in a decent part of town.

London needs to sort itself out.
 
Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :
 
On the one hand, this negative shift saddens me, and on the other, I wish we had public housing in the US.

Though in Utah, they have actually been experimenting with it and it looks very promising.
 
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :
 
I know Canada and the UK have let you down but you will always have Sweden.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
I think this is specifically a London problem. If the benefits cap is £500 per week, and you spend 30% of your money on rent, then you have about £650 per month. In Manchester that'll get you a 3-bedroom semi-detached house in a decent part of town.

London needs to sort itself out.
If you're hitting the benefits cap then you probably are in an unusual situation. (I.E living in London and disabled or multi-generations in one house).
The people on benefit in Manchester are on less. (It should also be mentioned that most of the recepients are also working-although what proportion ofHB goes to working/non-working I don't know).
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Mostly, I think, to working households, although I don't have the figures to hand.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Tulfes:
The people in the programme weren't in public housing. They were tenants of greedy private landlords charging high rents because they can.
While many private landlords are indeed cunts, not (quite) all of them are.

Rents are high because property prices are high. Property prices are high because of high demand, and because the housing market is heavily subsidised by the benefits system. In a genuinely free housing market (from which may the good Lord deliver us) many landlords would have to choose between dropping their rents enormously or have empty properties earning nothing, and people who could not afford even those rents would freeze in the gutter. Instead the market is artificially inflated by millions of pounds of public money.

I'm not sure what the answer is. There are cogent arguments against rent controls, but the current situation is also far from ideal and may well be unsustainable. Taxing rented property isn't the answer - expenses imposed on landlords get passed on to tenants. I'm pretty sure the answer to London housing prices isn't either more benefits payments or a benefits cap, though.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Mostly, I think, to working households, although I don't have the figures to hand.
I'd definitely heard that most people on housing benefit are in work (enough to believe it).

However I'd expect that (by dint of earning money) the working receivers, receive on average less than than the people who don't have that fortune. So suspect that the proportion of the Monies, will be different from the proportion of the People.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:

I'm not sure what the answer is. There are cogent arguments against rent controls
Allow councils to build houses again, and fund this properly, make it a stipulation that these new houses can't be sold off under RtB for a fixed period (or possibly indefinitely - of course, the spiv tendency in both parties will be tempted to undo this, and bribe people for votes by selling them on at huge discounts).

At the same time raise standards for rented housing via - say - German style regulations - this is needed anyway for other reasons, and it will shake out the ropier end of the market. As prices on some types of housing starts to fall slowly councils could even buy them back - selectively.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:


Rents are high because property prices are high. Property prices are high because of high demand, and because the housing market is heavily subsidised by the benefits system....
...and very importantly because we have an economy built on the idea that residential property, whether you rent it out or live in it yourself, is an investment, so house price inflation is desirable and to be sought after (c.f. Help to Buy, which Osbo sees as a way of maintaining property values as much as anything else). We need to have a long-term aim of a corrective reduction of property prices, both relative to earnings and indeed, I'd say, absolutely.
BTW I believe the Germans- who have of course a rather different housing culture- are capping rents. Does anyone on the Ship have experience of how this is working?
 
Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
It has been going on for years. Even back in the seventies the DHSS was moving families out of London to seaside towns that had seen better days and didn't have great communications with London. I can remember this in Bexhill and St Leonards but I'm sure it happened elsewhere too.

It was all entirely voluntary you understand.
As I recall - Minehead (not exactly ten minutes from London) gained blocks of flats built by the London County Council which it filled with elderly tenants. Since we elderly are often earning less and using more healthcare resources than younger folk the adverse financial effect on lightly populated, mainly rural, North Somerset was considerable.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
As I recall - Minehead (not exactly ten minutes from London) gained blocks of flats built by the London County Council which it filled with elderly tenants.
I've been familiar with Minehead since the 1970s at least. Where are these alleged LCC blocks of flats of which you speak? (Or are you thinking of Butlins chalets?).
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
The primary problem, surely, is simply that you have one city where the demand/price is supremely high compared to anywhere else, such that any single setting you try to apply to this kind of system either won't work properly there, or won't work properly everywhere else.

The only way to solve it within the benefits system is to apply "average working income in London" to people in London. Which is a policy choice.

The other way to solve it is far harder, which is trying to make the difference between 'desirable' London and the rest of the country not so severe.

Large disparities between rich and poor areas is common enough. Canberra does still have richer and poorer areas, but it's noticeable that a conscious effort was made here to dampen this down by ensuring that almost every suburb had a mix of housing types. Public housing and cheaper housing on smaller blocks is, to some extent, scattered everywhere.

Plus this jurisdiction is essentially a city-state, so the possibility of moving people "somewhere else" doesn't really come up. You could only move them about 40km at most.
 
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
Three comments on this debate.

1. Eliab, my understanding is that rent income is taxed, on much the same principles as all other taxation.

2. Chris Styles, the novel feature of your argument about bribing voters is that it has been used by both sides. Labour has accused the Tories of bribing voters by enabling them to buy their council houses. The Tories before that were accusing big Labour controlled local authorities of maintaining themselves in power through the fiefdoms they had with their large council estates, i.e. if you want your windows repaired, make sure you vote the right way.

Selling council houses, of course, did not cause the houses not to exist any more. Nor, under social assumptions as they were then, was it likely to affect the number of units available, since by and large once you had a local authority house, you were usually going to stay there until you died.

3. This problem is bad at the moment, but it's a myth to think it's new. I can remember people saying the same sort of thing as far back as around 1970. And that included expressions of horror at how much worse the situation was in the London area than anywhere else. And in those days you got tax relief on mortgage interest, yet even with that, people were saying how could young couples ever be able to buy.

[ 18. March 2015, 07:44: Message edited by: Enoch ]
 
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Which would be because there is totally inadequate provision for public housing.
Which to an extent has come about because housing stock was sold off (and eventually ended up in the hands of private landlords), and councils were not allowed to use the funds they got that way to build new housing stock.
A point which neither Ken Loach nor John Redwood even touched on in a debate on Channel 4 News last night - yet I believe that this is absolutely fundamental to the current debate.

Has anyone else on the Ship read this book which charts the decline (and even demonization) of public housing in Britain?
 
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
Enoch:
quote:
Selling council houses, of course, did not cause the houses not to exist any more. Nor, under social assumptions as they were then, was it likely to affect the number of units available, since by and large once you had a local authority house, you were usually going to stay there until you died.
Not so. Perhaps in some areas this might be true, but I was brought up in a council house until the age of 16, which is how long it took my parents to save up a deposit for buying a house. They applied to move to a house with a separate living and dining room so that my dad could study for his Open University degree. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the top of the waiting list he'd almost finished his degree - but we did eventually get one. And my grandparents moved from a three-bedroomed semi-detached house into a bungalow. Council housing came in different sizes, although most of it was three-bedroomed semi-detacheds or terraces, and you could ask to be rehoused if the house you were in wasn't suitable for some reason.

The village I live in now still has some council housing, and it's a mixture of two/three bedroom family homes and bungalows for OAPs. You can tell which ones are the council houses; they're the ones that have their roofs replaced all at once, instead of one at a time (or not at all) as you'd get in a street of privately owned houses.

[ 18. March 2015, 09:17: Message edited by: Jane R ]
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

Selling council houses, of course, did not cause the houses not to exist any more. Nor, under social assumptions as they were then, was it likely to affect the number of units available,
This isn't entirely true of course - at least over the timescales that are now relevant. A fairly significant proportion of former council stock in London, is now owned by landlords, rather than owner occupiers. The effects of this is that over the long term the amount councils spend on housing benefit has risen mcuh faster than inflation, as savvy landlords have realised that councils have very little practical bargaining power (or indeed the will to do so).

Secondly, some areas have seen large scale re-development, often significantly changing the mix of housing available and its affordability. Heygate has been repeated on a smaller scale all across London.

quote:

This problem is bad at the moment, but it's a myth to think it's new. I can remember people saying the same sort of thing as far back as around 1970. And that included expressions of horror at how much worse the situation was in the London area than anywhere else. And in those days you got tax relief on mortgage interest, yet even with that, people were saying how could young couples ever be able to buy.
Yes, and to an extent this has been mitigated by people's willingness and ability to take on ever greater levels of debt, and lenders willingness to lend them ever increasing amounts. That is a process with a natural cap though - it can't continue upwards forever. The removal of structural inefficiencies in the mortgage market via the creation of secondary markets for debt, plus the effects of lower interest rates have already been accounted for.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Selling council houses, of course, did not cause the houses not to exist any more.
That's the bit I never understand about the argument that selling them off was a bad thing.

My road is all ex-council housing, with about 200 houses in total. When it was council-owned, about 200 families could live there. Now that it's privately-owned, about 200 families can live there. Net change = 0.
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
My road is all ex-council housing, with about 200 houses in total. When it was council-owned, about 200 families could live there. Now that it's privately-owned, about 200 families can live there. Net change = 0.
Probably more. Private landlords are more likely to convert a house into flats/bedsits/studios/HMOs/whatever-else that allow them to fit more people in and charge more money.

Although they are also more likely to evict tenants they don't like, or who fall behind with rent, or who can't afford to pay when the market rental goes up. So they might have more void periods than the council would have done if it had kept the houses. But yes, overall, selling off homes to private ownership doesn't inherently reduce the amount of housing and may increase it. And it is (IMHO) a generally good and legitimate aspiration for people to own their own homes.

What is irrational about the benefits cap, is that the government is pouring millions into benefits with the effect of keeping property prices and rent levels artificially high, and then blaming the poor for taking the money in benefits that they need to pay those inflated rents. There ought to be a way for the state, as the single biggest player in the property game, to use its financial clout to bring the market down more efficiently than the blunt instrument of a benefits cap will.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
This is where I chip in to point out that there are about 750,000 empty homes in England. Regulations exist to bring these back into use but local authorities are involved, and while these run standing services well (education, rubbish collection, social services) they are pretty bad at projects and decision making.

btw, of the 200 homes in this road I wonder how many are owned outright by the people living in them?
 
Posted by Clint Boggis (# 633) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Selling council houses, of course, did not cause the houses not to exist any more.
That's the bit I never understand about the argument that selling them off was a bad thing.

My road is all ex-council housing, with about 200 houses in total. When it was council-owned, about 200 families could live there. Now that it's privately-owned, about 200 families can live there. Net change = 0.
Some bloke a long time ago said we'd always have poor people among us. As a society with at least some level of social conscience we try to provide homes for poorer people who can't afford them.

Giving the current tenants the right to buy publicly-owned housing (stupidly, at vastly reduced prices) and then preventing the money being used to replace them reduced our capacity to house these poorer people in public housing, so now we hand over more cash to private landlords.

The decision was either incredibly stupid or just spiteful. Probably both.

What was wrong with the system was the long-term tenure and subsidy enjoyed by some tenents beyond their need. The rent subsidy should have been for a limited period with a regular reassessment. Right to buy should have been at the market price with the funds reinvested to maintain the level of housing stock needed.
 
Posted by Tubbs (# 440) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
The Garden Cities were not seen as being a way of cleansing anything or anyone; they were seen as being a way of giving people better homes in better surroundings, and often with better employment prospects too.

Welwyn Garden City was built near Hatfield, where there was aircraft production; Letchworth was near Luton with car production. On a smaller scale were the garden suburbs, such as at South Oxhey near Watford, which was deliberately built to take people bombed out of London and who worked in the print industry that relocated to the area at the same time.

In any case, why the uproar when it is people in publicly funded housing that are split up from their extended family but silence when it is owner-occupiers who are priced out of their locale by, for example, second home owners?
There's been mutterings about this in places like Cornwall. In parts of Wales the locals used to take more direct forms of action!

It really depends. Some of the estates built for soldiers returning from WW2 - the homes for heroes - were extended later as the local council needed somewhere to ... Well, for want of a better way of describing it, dump all the people with social problems that had to go somewhere! Some areas are reaping what the previous generations have sown.

Tubbs

[ 20. March 2015, 14:40: Message edited by: Tubbs ]
 
Posted by Tubbs (# 440) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Selling council houses, of course, did not cause the houses not to exist any more.
That's the bit I never understand about the argument that selling them off was a bad thing.

My road is all ex-council housing, with about 200 houses in total. When it was council-owned, about 200 families could live there. Now that it's privately-owned, about 200 families can live there. Net change = 0.
I'll try. If social housing remains social, it can be re-allocated when people die / move / their circumstances change and they no longer need that kind of accomodation. There is always a stock available for those that need it.

If social housing is purchased, then it is taken out of the pool. The purchaser can do whatever they want with it, but it is no longer available for those in need. It means that more people are pushed into the private sector, which is less regulated and where rents are more expensive. Before, many of them would have ended up in social housing.

That's caused several problems that other posters have touched on - the increase in private rents; the increased cost of housing benefit; the difficulty in providing enough housing for those who truely need it; the lack of social housing has probably created tensions locally.

Tubbs
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
I think- and this is is pretty heretical in the circles in which I used to move as a housing lecturer- that it was a great mistake to link relief of homelessness with access to (essentially lifetime, until very recently, and still in most of the UK) permanent council housing. It meant that council (and later housing association) housing got filled up with a lot of people who were for one reason or another- and this is not passing any personal judgement on them- a bit fucked up. If you go back sixty years and more, for many people moving into a council house or flat was a step up in the world, a source of pride, something to aspire to. We need to relieve homelessness but that should not necessarily lead you straight into permanent social housing and we should keep a portion of social housing, perhaps at higher rents, for people, perhaps ideally working people, who can't get decent private sector accommodation at a reasonable cost (an increasing nuymber nowadays) but who are not otherwise 'vulnerable' or 'in need'
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Bravo, Albertus.

I've been spending some time working on a voluntary basis with a local housing association which is trying to teach some of its tenants what you and I would call basic life skills: simple cooking and housework, for want of a better description.

While most can see the point of the cooking and show some interest, the housework element passes many people by. And why do some people feel the need to reduce the walls of a house to bare plaster within 4 weeks (or less) of moving in?
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Good on you, l'o: that kind of work is crucial. Mind you, I'm not a housework fanatic myself and I am willing to grant people a lot of leeway in that respect; and I do believe that having some kind of reassonably secure accommodation is a good basis for learning to manage a home, with support: there's a chap who comes to our church sometimes who has recently got a flat, with a support worker, after years of being on the streeets, and while I have no idea what the flat is like the change for the better in him is very visible. But the system falls down because too many people are given the really rather substantial responsibilities of maintaining a tenancy before they can really deal with them.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
Over half of Americans with a high school education have moved from their home towns, three-quarters of College graduates have moved at least once.

I'm from West Virginia, not a hot bed of good jobs, the large majority of my high-school class now lives in other states. By the time we were in our twenties I lived in Ohio, one brother in California and one in Maryland, while my parents still lived in WV. The brother who worked for IBM management was expected to move every two years.

I have moved a total of 16 times and lived in four states and two countries. People in the US military typically move every five years. The idea that it's cruel social cleansing to make people move once for benefits seems over the top to me.

[ 21. March 2015, 20:58: Message edited by: Twilight ]
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Over half of Americans with a high school education have moved from their home towns, three-quarters of College graduates have moved at least once.

I'm from West Virginia, not a hot bed of good jobs, the large majority of my high-school class now lives in other states. By the time we were in our twenties I lived in Ohio, one brother in California and one in Maryland, while my parents still lived in WV. The brother who worked for IBM management was expected to move every two years.

I have moved a total of 16 times and lived in four states and two countries. People in the US military typically move every five years. The idea that it's cruel social cleansing to make people move once for benefits seems over the top to me.
Just wait a minute, the examples you give are for people who move to a job or because of a job. Why on the other hand should anyone move from not having a job in one place to not having one in another to which they have no links whatsoever?
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Our own government simultaneously suggested that people had to move where the jobs are at the same time as proposing that people under 30 had to wait 6 months for unemployment benefits, kind of suggesting that they really ought to be at home with their families.

Not only did it strike most people as completely bizarre to not treat people in their 20s as grown independent adults (often with children of their own to look after), but it did seem contradictory to tell people they ought to move to a new job market while taking away the support they would need while finding an actual job.
 
Posted by tomsk (# 15370) on :
 
The rise in rents is a side-effect of the government's economic strategy being sigificantly dependent on rising house prices.

Council housing generally improved people's lot and I think is the answer to housing problems, but the government (including labour) must have a policy of wanting reduced as much as possible over the long term.

I think the ideology is that housing benefit paid to the private sector encourages the economy and is better than tying up money in the state.

As Raptor Eye says, moving people out of London has been a long term thing. The working class population is already much decanted elsehwere, leaving the very rich and the very poor.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Over half of Americans with a high school education have moved from their home towns, three-quarters of College graduates have moved at least once.

I'm from West Virginia, not a hot bed of good jobs, the large majority of my high-school class now lives in other states. By the time we were in our twenties I lived in Ohio, one brother in California and one in Maryland, while my parents still lived in WV. The brother who worked for IBM management was expected to move every two years.

I have moved a total of 16 times and lived in four states and two countries. People in the US military typically move every five years. The idea that it's cruel social cleansing to make people move once for benefits seems over the top to me.
Just wait a minute, the examples you give are for people who move to a job or because of a job. Why on the other hand should anyone move from not having a job in one place to not having one in another to which they have no links whatsoever?
Because in both circumstances people are moving for economic reasons, either to get a job to pay for rent or to get benefits to pay for rent.

The OP says this:
quote:
The problem portrayed in the film is that rents and housing benefit in London are so high that non working familiss are caught by the cap and face heart breaking situations of being shipped out of London to eg Birmingham (where rents are cheaper) with consequent problems of getting separated from extended family and friends and children losing their schools and friends etc.
I'm saying those problems of being separated from extended families and school friends happen to everyone. It seems like excessive hanky squeezing, to me, to call it a heart breaking if the people are on benefit and perfectly normal if they're not.

If they have looked for jobs, and found none, in London, then Birmingham might possibly carry more hope in that direction. As my West Virginia friends found, leaving extended family was sometimes just the cultural move needed to develop confidence and demonstrate possibilities that the parents had been fearful of. America is full of people who left home and family and crossed an ocean to find a better life style, maybe a train ride to Birmingham isn't that horrific.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
But we're not talking about making people move where the jobs are, which might make some sense- we're talking about making them move where rents are cheaper, and very often rents are cheapest in areas which are least in demand because, among other things, there are few jobs there.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
But we're not talking about making people move where the jobs are, which might make some sense- we're talking about making them move where rents are cheaper, and very often rents are cheapest in areas which are least in demand because, among other things, there are few jobs there.
Which is *exactly* what has been the case in moving people out of London and into cheaper places elsewhere, as stated in the opening post on 12 March.
 
Posted by Clint Boggis (# 633) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
But we're not talking about making people move where the jobs are, which might make some sense- we're talking about making them move where rents are cheaper, and very often rents are cheapest in areas which are least in demand because, among other things, there are few jobs there.
Which is *exactly* what has been the case in moving people out of London and into cheaper places elsewhere, as stated in the opening post on 12 March.
Precisely. While 'social cleansing' (from the OP) is overstating it, it's certainly shifting people - not to help give them productive lives - but just to save a few quid. It may feel depressing, like everyone's given up hope that their lives will ever be a success.

L'Organist: "I'm saying those problems of being separated from extended families and school friends happen to everyone."

Well, yes. Successful, ambitious people choosing to move to remain on the ladder of personal advancement may see it as a price worth paying. People whose lives aren't a success will probably see having their chances of work reduced and their social network ripped apart as deeply depressing. Bear in mind the people you spoke of can afford to travel to see their family but those on benefits won't be able to.

[ 22. March 2015, 15:52: Message edited by: Clint Boggis ]
 
Posted by JoannaP (# 4493) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Clint Boggis:
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
But we're not talking about making people move where the jobs are, which might make some sense- we're talking about making them move where rents are cheaper, and very often rents are cheapest in areas which are least in demand because, among other things, there are few jobs there.
Which is *exactly* what has been the case in moving people out of London and into cheaper places elsewhere, as stated in the opening post on 12 March.
Precisely. While 'social cleansing' (from the OP) is overstating it, it's certainly shifting people - not to help give them productive lives - but just to save a few quid. It may feel depressing, like everyone's given up hope that their lives will ever be a success.
I suspect that it will not save that much money in the long run. Not only are people being moved away from their support networks (and free child-care provided by grandparents can be a vital part of that) but the grandparents are also being deprived of their support networks. Without families close enough to provide unpaid care, the council is going to have to pick up the tab sooner or later.
 
Posted by Tulfes (# 18000) on :
 
Exactly, Joanna P. The amount of stress being placed on the families being moved out of Brent to cheaper rental areas, solely to meet the Government's new benefit capping policy, was shown to be phenomenal. This will lead to family breakdown, health issues, possibly crime/anti social behaviour, educational problems and loss of inter generational support structures. All will be costly in monetary terms to the public purse, to say nothing if the human cost paid by those forcibly moved and those reliant on their support left behind.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
There will certainly be additional costs, to social services, housing and health but these are handled by local authorities, so central government can save money in the short term, which is all that seem to matter.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
posted by Clint Boggis
quote:
L'Organist: "I'm saying those problems of being separated from extended families and school friends happen to everyone."

Well, yes. Successful, ambitious people choosing to move to remain on the ladder of personal advancement may see it as a price worth paying. People whose lives aren't a success will probably see having their chances of work reduced and their social network ripped apart as deeply depressing. Bear in mind the people you spoke of can afford to travel to see their family but those on benefits won't be able to.
1. The first paragraph - that is NOT a quote: you may think I implied it or said it but I didn't write those words.

2. I also didn't say it was about 'personal advancement' by 'successful, ambitious people': in fact I specifically said it also referred to people who are priced out of the market in the area where they grow up and have their personal networks (sometimes called friends and relatives).

People like my own children, in fact, who are extremely unlikely to be able to buy in the area where I live.

But we shall look at that as a family and, if necessary, we will all re-locate at the same time.

As for being able to afford to travel to see family: I've had family members move (sometimes for good, sometimes only temporarily) to Australia and the USA and it has been well beyond my means to travel to see them. Frankly, I think twice before going to see a cousin in Scotland.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Clint Boggis:

L'Organist: "I'm saying those problems of being separated from extended families and school friends happen to everyone."

Well, yes. Successful, ambitious people choosing to move to remain on the ladder of personal advancement may see it as a price worth paying. People whose lives aren't a success will probably see having their chances of work reduced and their social network ripped apart as deeply depressing. Bear in mind the people you spoke of can afford to travel to see their family but those on benefits won't be able to.
Since I said your quotes, not L'Organist:

Maybe it's different in England, or maybe there's more of a tendency to see it that way in England, but here in America we don't all fall in one of two categories, the rich ambitions people with glittering careers and the poor helpless ones whose social network would be ripped apart if they had to move a hundred miles because they couldn't figure out how to get on a bus.

I left West Virginia at eighteen with about thirty dollars, went to Columbus, Ohio, got a room in a rooming house and went to a rip-off employment agency that found me a job checking invoices from gas station managers. Then as now, Columbus, Cleveland and Detroit are full of people from Kentucky, West Virginia and all points south who are working in factories and blue collar positions because there was no work at home.

It can be depressing but it also affords people a chance to develop skills, see new opportunities, and move upward economically. The truly depressed, and we know this by the enormous use of drugs and meth labs in Kentucky and West Virginia, are the ones who stayed behind, living life on government benefits, seeing nothing around them but the stagnant lives of their parents and siblings.

I know your scenario is different because they will still be on benefits, but if they have not been able to find jobs in London then, maybe, just maybe, they will be able to find jobs in their new area. One big advantage in separating from the extended family is that they might make contacts with new friends and neighbors with job contacts or their children might experience something beyond a generational attitude of welfare dependence.
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
There is a difference between people making the choice to move - whether to improve job prospects, to get away from relatives (yes, that social network is a two edged sword), go to a college that offers a course they want, to be closer to a friend/relative away from home, etc - and those who are instructed to move without any real choice about where they go, just to cut a few quid from the amount paid by one part of the welfare system.
 
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
Twilight:
quote:
I know your scenario is different because they will still be on benefits, but if they have not been able to find jobs in London then, maybe, just maybe, they will be able to find jobs in their new area.
No, probably they would have a greater chance of finding at least a minimum-wage job if they stayed in London. There are far more jobs in London than there are anywhere else in the country. And 'ripping people away from their support networks' may affect their availability for work, especially if they have children. I am neither poor nor helpless, but I live 120 miles away from my closest family and I struggle sometimes to find childcare.

120 miles probably doesn't seem like much to an American - our American friends are willing to drive that far for an afternoon's entertainment - but it's a long way over here. Too far for my mother to come and babysit.
 
Posted by Clint Boggis (# 633) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Since I said your quotes, not L'Organist:

Maybe it's different in England, or maybe there's more of a tendency to see it that way in England, but here in America we don't all fall in one of two categories, the rich ambitions people with glittering careers and the poor helpless ones whose social network would be ripped apart if they had to move a hundred miles because they couldn't figure out how to get on a bus.
...

Apologies to both you and L'Organist for mis-attributing those words.

I fully accept that it's not such clear-cut distinction between 'successful' and 'failing' but I still object to (probably) reducing people's life chances for a short-term cost-saving for central government while ignoring the negative consequences.

Also "couldn't figure out how to get on a bus" is belittling, and implies those people just can't be bothered, when one significant factor is the cost of travel for people with no money to spare at a time of rising prices and stricter limits on benefits.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
And I wonder if anyone outside the UK has any idea how much a 100 mile journey by public transport would be likely to cost.
 
Posted by The Midge (# 2398) on :
 
Even supposing the jobless got on their bike there is no guarantee that the job they relocate for will still be there in a few years time. That is because our employment strategy is as messed up as our housing strategy.

Are there any strategies?
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The Midge:
Even supposing the jobless got on their bike there is no guarantee that the job they relocate for will still be there in a few years time. That is because our employment strategy is as messed up as our housing strategy.

Are there any strategies?
That's an interesting point, since presumably neo-liberalism is meant to rely on a deregulated market, with many services privatized, and with a small state. There seem to be all sorts of mini-strategies available for politicians, I guess, so that they can stimulate the economy, in order to provide low wages and high bonuses. On the other hand, they can also flatten the economy, producing stagnation. It's exciting!
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by The Midge:
Even supposing the jobless got on their bike there is no guarantee that the job they relocate for will still be there in a few years time. That is because our employment strategy is as messed up as our housing strategy.

Are there any strategies?
They expect them to move again. Which is only annoying if it's just you, and a complete pain in the arse if your partner has a job that isn't moving. So you'll have more families needing in-work benefits or on the poverty line, or both, because of all those people who had to move because of one partner's job who then find the other partner can't find a new one in the new location.

But as long as there's a supply of people desperate enough to work shit hours doing shit for shit money...
 
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :
 
Karl:
quote:
And I wonder if anyone outside the UK has any idea how much a 100 mile journey by public transport would be likely to cost.
It's not just the money, it's the time as well. Going to my mother-in-law's takes about two and a half hours on average, door to door, if we go by car. Going by public transport takes at least four hours even if all the connections work out (there isn't a direct train and neither our house nor hers is within walking distance of a station, so we have to do buses or taxis at either end).
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Never mind 100 miles, try five and-a-half.

For me to get from my home to the church where I play on a Sunday is, for the moment, possible again. However, to get to a service with a 10am start I need to leave home at 8am and the cost will be over £10 - hard to get a precise costing because I never use the bus, it being cheaper to drive!
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
Now you see that's crying out for a quick trip out on the bike; 20-25min and almost free.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Except that I can't ride a bike!

Never had one as a child and have had various surgical procedures that make riding one highly difficult/dangerous.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Clint Boggis:
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Since I said your quotes, not L'Organist:

Maybe it's different in England, or maybe there's more of a tendency to see it that way in England, but here in America we don't all fall in one of two categories, the rich ambitions people with glittering careers and the poor helpless ones whose social network would be ripped apart if they had to move a hundred miles because they couldn't figure out how to get on a bus.
...

Also "couldn't figure out how to get on a bus" is belittling, and implies those people just can't be bothered, when one significant factor is the cost of travel for people with no money to spare at a time of rising prices and stricter limits on benefits.
Of course it's belittling. That's why I don't like the attitude and I see it in statements from the "this is social cleansing!" folk that talk about Birmingham as though it is Siberia and imply that these people will never see their extended families again. Give them a little credit! Entertain the idea that they will figure out how to get back to London from time to time.

Of course it costs money to travel by bus but visiting relatives isn't something that needs to be done every day. I've lived in separate countries from my parents and had to go for as long as three years without seeing them because a seven hour flight was too costly. Bus tickets from Birmingham to London don't seem that impossible to me, but we all aren't entitled to see our extended families on a regular basis.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
The fact remains, though, that someone who is that far away is NOT part of your regular social network. Which was actually the point.

My mother looks after her grandkids fairly frequently, which has been a great help to my sister in working. If they weren't living in the same city, that wouldn't be possible.

It's that kind of thing that was relevant. Not the hyperbolic version you created.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Except that I can't ride a bike!

Never had one as a child and have had various surgical procedures that make riding one highly difficult/dangerous.
Jusst ha one of those moments where you misread something- read this as 'various liturgical procedures that make riding one highly difficult/ dangerous'- and this being the Ship, assumed that must make some sense somehow.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The fact remains, though, that someone who is that far away is NOT part of your regular social network. Which was actually the point.

My mother looks after her grandkids fairly frequently, which has been a great help to my sister in working. If they weren't living in the same city, that wouldn't be possible.

It's that kind of thing that was relevant. Not the hyperbolic version you created.
Well it's great if your mother provides free baby sitting for your sister. How nice for her. I would love to have had my mother around when I was a young mother but it didn't work out that way -- like many if not most of the world I had to go where the jobs were. I guess my question is -- why are those who get their money from the government expected to have an easier time in life than those who get their money from employers? Why is it okay if the working people have to leave their extended families but when those who are on benefit have to do it it's tragic? Why are some people entitled to have a "social network," while others are expected to do without so as to go where the money is?
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The fact remains, though, that someone who is that far away is NOT part of your regular social network. Which was actually the point.

My mother looks after her grandkids fairly frequently, which has been a great help to my sister in working. If they weren't living in the same city, that wouldn't be possible.

It's that kind of thing that was relevant. Not the hyperbolic version you created.
Well it's great if your mother provides free baby sitting for your sister. How nice for her. I would love to have had my mother around when I was a young mother but it didn't work out that way -- like many if not most of the world I had to go where the jobs were. I guess my question is -- why are those who get their money from the government expected to have an easier time in life than those who get their money from employers? Why is it okay if the working people have to leave their extended families but when those who are on benefit have to do it it's tragic? Why are some people entitled to have a "social network," while others are expected to do without so as to go where the money is?
Just in case you haven't picked this up so far, it's primarily because they have a job to go to, which will provide many of the things that only a family network can provide for those who do not have a job. To remove a family against its will from a caring network is bad for everyone in just about every way, especially if there is nothing in it for the family being moved.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
For what it's worth, I think it utterly sucks when people have to leave their extended support networks to find work. But that people do so doesn't make me think that those who are not doing that should suffer more. Why this "I had it bad so you should to"?

I am aware of a man who had been an alcoholic; clean for 12 years with the help of his support network. Did the "right" thing and moved to find work. Away from his support he's back on the sauce and gravely ill as a result.

This sort of thing really does fuck people over.

Twilight - you made a choice. We're talking about people being given no choice but being made to move to a worse life.

[ 27. March 2015, 15:59: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
It's not, "I had it bad, so you should, too." It's, "Leaving home is part of life for most grown-ups in today's world." Not since most of the world was agricultural did you stay home with, or next door to, Mom and Dad after you were grown.

Besides, if you think because there were jobs where I went that I needed a support group less, then you have it backwards. I did not need a babysitter when I was home all the time.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:



Twilight - you made a choice. We're talking about people being given no choice but being made to move to a worse life.
No choice? Really? The police come to the door and force them to move to Birmingham? I doubt that.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
It's not, "I had it bad, so you should, too." It's, "Leaving home is part of life for most grown-ups in today's world." Not since most of the world was agricultural did you stay home with, or next door to, Mom and Dad after you were grown.

Besides, if you think because there were jobs where I went that I needed a support group less, then you have it backwards. I did not need a babysitter when I was home all the time.
Leaving home is one thing. Being uprooted and moved half way across the country against your will for absolutely no benefit for you, but considerable disbenefit, is quite another. Your choice to move, despite the downside, because you could see an upside (otherwise why would you have done it) is not remotely comparable with a forced move that benefits the mover not one iota.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:



Twilight - you made a choice. We're talking about people being given no choice but being made to move to a worse life.
No choice? Really? The police come to the door and force them to move to Birmingham? I doubt that.
No. The council tax stops covering their rent. Therefore they will be evicted. They either move to Birmingham or are made homeless. Since they've been offered a move, if they reject it they'll be classed as intentionally homeless and get nowt. The choice at that point would be to live on the streets (children presumably taken into care) or move. Near enough forced for my money. It's a policy devoid of compassion or empathy, rather like, I have to say, the tone of your posts.

[ 27. March 2015, 16:25: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:



Twilight - you made a choice. We're talking about people being given no choice but being made to move to a worse life.
No choice? Really? The police come to the door and force them to move to Birmingham? I doubt that.
Please, just try reading what has been stated already. It is UK government policy to move families from London (where rents are sky high) to cheaper areas simply to save the government money. Not to a place where there is or even may be a job. Nothing constructive, just deliberately moving people around.

If you think any of that is fair, reasonable or anything other than ghettoization I want a better case than "Something similar happened to me 'cos my husband was in the US Armed Forces". Shit, my dad was in the RAF, but we got moved (all expenses paid too) when he was assigned another post.

(x-p with Karl)

[ 27. March 2015, 16:29: Message edited by: Sioni Sais ]
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
The police won't come at first, but the bailiffs will, if you don't leave, and if you still won't, the police might come.
 
Posted by JoannaP (# 4493) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Please, just try reading what has been stated already. It is UK government policy to move families from London (where rents are sky high) to cheaper areas simply to save the government money. Not to a place where there is or even may be a job. Nothing constructive, just deliberately moving people around.
Surely, as housing is a local issue, it is not a central UK govt policy but the policy of some local councils, most notably Westminster.
 
Posted by Tulfes (# 18000) on :
 
Joanne

No, it is down to central government policy. Central government has placed a cap on the total benefits which a family can receive (£26K per annum or £500 per week). The cap doesn't apply if at least one of the adults (or the only adult if a single parent family) is working at least 15 hours a week. So it only affects workless families. If the cap applies, housing benefit is reduced (not cash benefits received eg child benefit) to meet the cap. This means that in high rent areas the family are unlikely to be able to afford their current rent, unless they psy the difference from their cash benefits and starve.
Housing benefit is administered and paid by local councils on behalf of central government (DWP).
 
Posted by tomsk (# 15370) on :
 
Joanna P said'Surely, as housing is a local issue, it is not a central UK govt policy but the policy of some local councils, most notably Westminster.'

Yes and no. While there is an element of local choice, The fundamentals are driven centrally, in particular the shortage of housing stock is the result of central laws making them available for sale to tenants.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

"Something similar happened to me 'cos my husband was in the US Armed Forces". Shit, my dad was in the RAF, but we got moved (all expenses paid too) when he was assigned another post.

(x-p with Karl)
No. I didn't marry an Air Force man until I was 33. At 18, I left West Virginia, by myself, and went to Ohio to look for a job. I found a minimum wage job and a room in rooming house and occasionally went hungry.

This is all such a first world problem. "We can't have free housing, medical care and food unless we move to a different city," vs people in Africa who have none of those things under any condition. Even the idea of the extended family as a "support system," rather than, quite possibly, a financial and emotional drain sounds like the talk of privileged people to me.
 
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
I always find it bizarre when someone uses the internet to criticise people about 'first world problems'.

We live in the first world. Of course we have first world problems. Why on earth would you expect people to get all the way back to third world issues before they're allowed to start being upset about going backwards?

[ 27. March 2015, 21:51: Message edited by: orfeo ]
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
It's a bit like a Monty Python sketch; you think you had it hard, we had to wear cardboard on our feet.

Cardboard! Jings, we had our feet amputated to save on shoe-leather.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
I think we live on a planet with all these worlds and a finite amount of resources, so that it seems odd to me to be worried, to this extent, about some people's preferences as to exactly where they receive free food and housing, while others are homeless and starving.

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Twilight -- It's a policy devoid of compassion or empathy, rather like, I have to say, the tone of your posts.
Well, I think your tone is patronizing. I think your view sees only two types of people. Highly educated people like yourself who move to other cities to take professional jobs at high pay and those others who aren't capable of ever supporting themselves or functioning without your help. I think there are lots of people in between who might actually do well from this change and find jobs where there were, obviously, none in London.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It's a bit like a Monty Python sketch; you think you had it hard, we had to wear cardboard on our feet.

Cardboard! Jings, we had our feet amputated to save on shoe-leather.
You find stories of my life so comical because what I remember as ordinary and typical of the people I grew up with, sounds like an hilarious Monty Python sketch to you. It is just life to most of us. It's how the large majority of people live. Only a small percentage have the education that you have and the luxury of either laughing at or patronizing the rest of us.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
There are lots of jobs in London. The original subject of this discussion was people being forced to move - often to places with fewer work opportunities- to save money on housing costs. I have no problem with people moving around ffor work or wwith people being encourageed and helped to ovee around for work. Thing is, when you've got fuck all else, your social networks are not things you sacrifice lightly, especially if they'll help you manage childcare and so on. I was walking through Bermondsey in SE London yesterday, a traditionally working class area. Still quite a lot of council housing and, wonder of wonders, some actually being built, but more and more pricey flats going up, 'gentrification' creeping in. The people living there maay well in fact have jobs locally, but where are they going tto go when rents are going up- including in social housing- to levels they can't afford? AIUI most people in Britain who claim Housing Benefit (welfare assistance with rents) are actually in work. It's not the simple case of people needing to bee prepared to light out for the territories that you seem to imagine it is, Twilight.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It's a bit like a Monty Python sketch; you think you had it hard, we had to wear cardboard on our feet.

Cardboard! Jings, we had our feet amputated to save on shoe-leather.
You find stories of my life so comical because what I remember as ordinary and typical of the people I grew up with, sounds like an hilarious Monty Python sketch to you. It is just life to most of us. It's how the large majority of people live. Only a small percentage have the education that you have and the luxury of either laughing at or patronizing the rest of us.
Well, I'm sticking up for the poor and the disabled in the UK, who are getting shafted by the present government. It's possible we are going to get 5 more years of it as well. I think we should say no to a world where the poor are punished, so that the rich can keep their bonuses.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
And that's what's been happening to housing in London and similar areas: the poor and the not so poor but just ordinary get shafted, directly or indirectly, so that the rich can make yet more money in proprty sspeculation.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
And then Twilight says it's a first world problem. Fuck, there are people in London who in winter have to choose between eating and heating. But never mind, there's somebody worse off than you.
 
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
People, you all know the ship quite well. If you want to get personal, you know where that sort of discussion goes. Otherwise, let it go.

Gwai,
Purgatory Host
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
AIUI most people in Britain who claim Housing Benefit (welfare assistance with rents) are actually in work. It's not the simple case of people needing to bee prepared to light out for the territories that you seem to imagine it is, Twilight.
Tulfes said in the OP
quote:
The problem portrayed in the film is that rents and housing benefit in London are so high that non working familiss are caught by the cap and face heart breaking situations of being shipped out of London to eg Birmingham (where rents are cheaper) with consequent problems of getting separated from extended family and friends and children losing their schools and friends etc.

 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
And then Twilight says it's a first world problem. Fuck, there are people in London who in winter have to choose between eating and heating. But never mind, there's somebody worse off than you.
The only thing I've been talking about her is the problem Tulfes stated in the OP. People who do not have jobs, being asked to move to Birmingham so that they can be given free housing.

I don't find that particularly punishing.

How that opinion translated to me not having sympathy for people who don't have food or heat, I don't know.

Do you actually know any poor people? If they told you they had to chose between food and heat would you pull out your tiny violin and tell them they remind you of a Monty Python sketch? Is it just the poor in abstract who spark your compassion?
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
And then Twilight says it's a first world problem. Fuck, there are people in London who in winter have to choose between eating and heating. But never mind, there's somebody worse off than you.
The only thing I've been talking about her is the problem Tulfes stated in the OP. People who do not have jobs, being asked to move to Birmingham so that they can be given free housing.

I don't find that particularly punishing.

How that opinion translated to me not having sympathy for people who don't have food or heat, I don't know.

Do you actually know any poor people? If they told you they had to chose between food and heat would you pull out your tiny violin and tell them they remind you of a Monty Python sketch? Is it just the poor in abstract who spark your compassion?
I give up, I really, really do.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Gordon Bennett.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
You know, Sioni Sais, you're the one that implied all my 15 moves must have been easy ones because I was married to someone in the Air Force, leading me to explain that I was actually not well off at all during my earliest moves, leading Q to imply I was doing a version of "I had it worse than they do," which I certainly was not.

So now you just give up, you really do.

I happen to be a liberal Democrat entirely in favor of free medical care for all, food and housing for the poor, social security, aid to dependent mothers, food stamps, WIC coupons, head start, you name it. I vote and give accordingly.

I simply found the OP a bit over the top in its lament of "social cleansing," and the "heart break" of kids having to change schools, like that never happens.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
It isn't that it ever happens, but that it shouldn't.
This is true in the U.S. as well, ISTM.
The government, to benefit the rich, makes life more difficult for the poor and those in the middle.
It widens the gap between the rich and the poor and pushes the middle towards the bottom.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
And then Twilight says it's a first world problem. Fuck, there are people in London who in winter have to choose between eating and heating. But never mind, there's somebody worse off than you.
The only thing I've been talking about her is the problem Tulfes stated in the OP. People who do not have jobs, being asked to move to Birmingham so that they can be given free housing.

I don't find that particularly punishing.

How that opinion translated to me not having sympathy for people who don't have food or heat, I don't know.

Do you actually know any poor people? If they told you they had to chose between food and heat would you pull out your tiny violin and tell them they remind you of a Monty Python sketch? Is it just the poor in abstract who spark your compassion?
It's not free housing. They have to pay for it but they can claim social assistance to meet the cost. But rents in all sectors have been rising (and the government now thinks that 80% of market rent is an 'affordable' social rent, which in most of the SE it plainly isn't) and assistance is being cut. It's a complex problem but it is having a huge human cost.

[ 28. March 2015, 09:00: Message edited by: Albertus ]
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
(I meant that children often have to change schools, children of well to do families, probably most often.)

So, it's not free housing as I thought. If they are not working at all, how are they paying that?If they are paying 80% of their rent in London, does that mean they can stay where they are if they come up with the other 20%?
 
Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
... (I meant that children often have to change schools, children of well to do families, probably most often.)...
Evidence?

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
So, it's not free housing as I thought. If they are not working at all, how are they paying that?
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
It's not free housing. They have to pay for it but they can claim social assistance to meet the cost.
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
If they are paying 80% of their rent in London, does that mean they can stay where they are if they come up with the other 20%?
( [brick wall] No wonder people are giving up. [Waterworks] )

No, they're paying 100% of their rent, just like anyone else. The 80% figure means that the if the government decides that average market rent is 1,000 clams/month, the housing benefit will pay up to 800 clams/month, but no more. However, this is a benchmark that does not necessarily take into account local variations:

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:

... the government now thinks that 80% of market rent is an 'affordable' social rent, which in most of the SE it plainly isn't) ...
In an area where market rents are actually 2,000 clams/month, 800 clams doesn't go very far. If they're not working or working for so little that they qualify for assistance, how exactly are they supposed to come up with an additional 1,200 clams/month to top that up?

Obviously, they can't. So the options are: 1) move to a place where the rents really are 800 clams/month, or 2) stay and eventually be evicted for non-payment of rent and end up doing 1) anyway. And remember, this does not take into account whether employment prospects are better or worse in either location, never mind abandoning the social capital accumulated in that community.

The same thing is happening in Caprica City:

quote:
...just four percent of privately run SRO* hotels surveyed are renting all their rooms for the welfare shelter rate of $375, compared to nine percent last year. The authors found no vacant rooms renting for $375 or less. ...

... Other statistics highlighted by CCAP include an average lowest rent of $469 a month ...

... The report also identifies a “troubling trend” of rents rising to $500 a month or higher, with 614 of SRO rooms surveyed renting at this rate. ...

... CCAP also noted that provincial income-assistance rates have not been increased from $610 since 2007. Yet between 2009 and 2013, the average lowest rent in SRO buildings surveyed increased from $398 to $469. ...
Downtown Eastside housing survey shows rising SRO rents

*SRO = single-room occupancy hotels like these:

Three Vancouver SROs win prize for worst living conditions
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Yes. The detail of your explanation is not quite correct but the general tenor of it is- thank you.
 
Posted by Leaf (# 14169) on :
 
I suspect there may be a pond difference regarding one's relationship to the land, and having to move.

quote:
69 per cent of the acreage of Britain is owned by 0.6 per cent of the population. Or, more pertinently, 158,000 families own 41 million acres of land, while 24 million families live on the four million acres of the urban plot. No other country in Europe, apart from Spain, has such an unequal concentration of land ownership.
Article here. I suppose that's progress:
quote:
less than a century and a half ago, all land was owned by 4.5 per cent of the population and the rest owned nothing at all.
Article here. So unless you were part of the aristocracy, you sat on some rich bugger's land and could be bumped off it at his pleasure. This caused Some Resentment and motivated emigration.

North America, by contrast, was treated as terra nullius, "land belonging to no one" (with which several aboriginal groups begged to differ, but I digress). Moving from place to place is likely to have been by choice for better opportunity, rather than being caused by some distant rich bugger throwing you off his land.

Strangely, I think the difference in attitude to gun ownership may be a historic carryover from one place to the other. People who had emigrated and finally got land ownership were unhappy with the prospect of being forced off it for any reason. Hence the mythology around using firearms to defend one's homestead.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Leaf--

Yes re guns and land, at least here in the US. And it's been reinforced, for decades, on TV and in the movies--primarily in, but not limited to, Westerns.

And, for pioneers, it was a long time before they had to deal with much (if any) law enforcement. So people settled things on their own, often with violence.
 
Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
It has been going on for years. Even back in the seventies the DHSS was moving families out of London to seaside towns that had seen better days and didn't have great communications with London. I can remember this in Bexhill and St Leonards but I'm sure it happened elsewhere too.

It was all entirely voluntary you understand.
I'm finding this whole thread fascinating because, as far as I understand it, my own government has the opposite policy: If you wind up jobless and on a benefit in our own miniature version of London, you can't opt to move away to our own miniature version of [insert name of faded provincial town here], in order to both save money on housing and live better on the remainder, because by doing so, you would remove yourself from the category of "actively seeking work", and thus not qualify for a benefit any longer - the assumption being that there IS no work in faded provincial towns. What really galls me about this is that for some people, realistically, there are no jobs ANYWHERE. Not just because some people are unemployable, mind - though that's likely true, but because there are just more people than jobs. It's how things are. Someone has to miss out - always. Why should these people then have to pay a staggeringly high proportion of their (incentivisingly meagre)* benefit, in order to live in a festering shithole of a dwelling, whose many deficiencies are likely to be entirely ignored by any landlord, given that what is really worth money in this city is land, not buildings - and the value of the land will skyrocket anyway, while Johnny unlucky pays the mortgage and eats white bread and weetbix? Why, especially when said provincial towns are faded, as much as anything, from a 50-year hemorrhaging of population to the main centres?

*Can anyone explain to me why you incentivise poor people by taking money away from them, but incentivise CEOs by giving them more?
 
Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by anoesis:
... *Can anyone explain to me why you incentivise poor people by taking money away from them, but incentivise CEOs by giving them more?
Poor people are motivated to do whatever it takes to survive and care for their families. Rich people are apparently only motivated by greed. One can argue whether this is true or not, fair or not, but it is how public policy is justified. We can't allow the safety net to become a hammock, but the rich will pack up and leave if they aren't making "enough" money.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Aren't we also going back to a notion of the undeserving poor, who actually should be punished? Of course, no politician is going to say that explicitly, but current withdrawals of benefits for relatively minor infringements, suggest it. In fact, a while ago, I think Osborne made a crack about people still in bed, with the curtains shut - inference, they are lazy and undeserving of help.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
The trouble is, some of us have relatives who are exactly the type of person people have in mind when they utter the word 'scrounger'.

I'm not ashamed of it because they're sentient adults who make their own choices, but I have 3 adult (50+) relatives who have never had a proper job, who have spent their entire adult lives claiming one benefit or another, who have always been housed at public expense, who have fathered (they're all male) children and given nothing towards their upkeep and made precious little effort with their upbringing.

Various well-meaning family members have over the years contributed significant sums to provide furniture, transport, holidays, etc, etc, etc; other family members have taken over the housing and educating of children.

These three men feel no shame, all three will happily (and at length) tell you how "the tory system and tory class" is ruining the country and none sees anything wrong with having spent 30+ years taking out of a system to which they have contributed nothing.

Do I consider these three (and their various non-working partners) "undeserving" - yes, because they are.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
The trouble is, some of us have relatives who are exactly the type of person people have in mind when they utter the word 'scrounger'.

I'm not ashamed of it because they're sentient adults who make their own choices, but I have 3 adult (50+) relatives who have never had a proper job, who have spent their entire adult lives claiming one benefit or another, who have always been housed at public expense, who have fathered (they're all male) children and given nothing towards their upkeep and made precious little effort with their upbringing.

Various well-meaning family members have over the years contributed significant sums to provide furniture, transport, holidays, etc, etc, etc; other family members have taken over the housing and educating of children.

These three men feel no shame, all three will happily (and at length) tell you how "the tory system and tory class" is ruining the country and none sees anything wrong with having spent 30+ years taking out of a system to which they have contributed nothing.

Do I consider these three (and their various non-working partners) "undeserving" - yes, because they are.
So what would you do with them? Make them homeless?
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
I'd have no problem with that in principle, if they are indeed as l'o describes and there are no mitigating factors such as mental ill health.

[ 30. March 2015, 13:14: Message edited by: Albertus ]
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
The trouble is, some of us have relatives who are exactly the type of person people have in mind when they utter the word 'scrounger'.
Well quite. One of my mother's friends was proud that he was able to hide so much of his income from the HMRC, yet was more than happy to claim all the benefits - reduced council tax, blue badge, winter fuel, state pension, NHS treatment - that he could.

I'm sorry you have relatives like that. Fortunately for me, I'm not directly related to anyone with an offshore account or works in the City.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
posted by Doc Tor
quote:
Fortunately for me, I'm not directly related to anyone with an offshore account or works in the City.
Eh?

What is wrong with working in the City of London?

As for an 'offshore' account, plenty of us have them, and declare them, and pay tax on any interest earned. I first got an 'offshore' account so I could be paid for some work I did in a foreign country where I knew I was likely to be going from time-to-time for a considerable time. So I have that account and pay interest on any money in it to the tax authorities of the country, and if that turns out to be less than my tax liability here then I pay the difference to HMRC.

Don't assume everyone is on the fiddle - most of us are honest.
 
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
posted by Doc Tor
quote:
Fortunately for me, I'm not directly related to anyone with an offshore account or works in the City.
Eh?

What is wrong with working in the City of London?

As for an 'offshore' account, plenty of us have them, and declare them, and pay tax on any interest earned. I first got an 'offshore' account so I could be paid for some work I did in a foreign country where I knew I was likely to be going from time-to-time for a considerable time. So I have that account and pay interest on any money in it to the tax authorities of the country, and if that turns out to be less than my tax liability here then I pay the difference to HMRC.

Don't assume everyone is on the fiddle - most of us are honest.
Indeed.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Don't assume everyone is on the fiddle - most of us are honest.
Scrounger means different things to different people.

I genuinely believe that if you can work, you should. Nothing comes for free. I also genuinely believe that if you earn, you pay all your taxes and don't chisel. And that those on benefits who do game the system cost the country far, far less than those who have great wealth and game the system.

If the only thing that comes out of a little bit of satire on my part is that you remember that the vast majority of benefit claimants are honest, decent people, and that the problem with 'scroungers' is disproportionately at the top of society, and not at the bottom, then my work is done.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
...the problem with 'scroungers' is disproportionately at the top of society, and not at the bottom
It's my impression that most of it isn't even done by people, but by companies.
 
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
...the problem with 'scroungers' is disproportionately at the top of society, and not at the bottom
It's my impression that most of it isn't even done by people, but by companies.
Oh, there's a lot of that too. But companies are comprised of people.

Basically, people. And yes, I do think most folk are mostly decent, and it isn't just fear of getting caught that curbs their baser instincts. But there's an awful lot of money at the top, and very few sanctions in place if they are caught - whereas at the bottom, there's very little to play for and the penalties Draconian.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
I have to agree with Marvin. The economy and legal system too are designed with companies, ie legal entities that are not people, in mind. While limited companies and the like can sue and be sued they cannot be sent down for five years and it is very rare for the owners of same to suffer any criminal proceedings.

I doubt any party would advocate levelling this particular playing field as it would put investors off if instead of losing their money they might, God forbid, be held responsible for what has been done in their name.
 
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
I have to agree with Marvin. The economy and legal system too are designed with companies, ie legal entities that are not people, in mind.
Sure, but equally there are plenty of high net worth individuals who arrange their affairs so that their assets are effectively owned via interconnected sets of companies - so I don't think you can absolve *individuals* of responsibility so easily.

The figures for money lost via tax evasion (rather than tax avoidance of the sort above) dwarfs the money lost in benefit fraud. Evasion will largely be down to individuals.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
I have to agree with Marvin. The economy and legal system too are designed with companies, ie legal entities that are not people, in mind.
Sure, but equally there are plenty of high net worth individuals who arrange their affairs so that their assets are effectively owned via interconnected sets of companies - so I don't think you can absolve *individuals* of responsibility so easily.

The figures for money lost via tax evasion (rather than tax avoidance of the sort above) dwarfs the money lost in benefit fraud. Evasion will largely be down to individuals.
I wouldn't absolve individuals of responsibility - far from it - but it is my view that the very structure of companies facilitates tax evasion. If I could arrange my household finances as a limited company can, I'm sure I would pay far less tax. PAYE may be convenient for the Treasury, but anyone with the option seems to use alternative means, whatever they may be.
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:


Do I consider these three (and their various non-working partners) "undeserving" - yes, because they are.
And have Mr Cameron's reforms caused these people to get jobs and contribute to society?
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:


Do I consider these three (and their various non-working partners) "undeserving" - yes, because they are.
And have Mr Cameron's reforms caused these people to get jobs and contribute to society?
Never mind that; are they being punished with sufficient severity, so that the rest of us can enjoy feelings of smug Schadenfreude?
 
Posted by Ethne Alba (# 5804) on :
 
The Supreme Court on Thursday appears to have thrown a life line to some in this situation. Although whether this is a partial life line remains to be seen.

( hopeless at linking, need to visit that place where one learns...sorry....)

[ 03. April 2015, 12:55: Message edited by: Ethne Alba ]
 
Posted by rufiki (# 11165) on :
 
I think this is what Ethne Alba is referring to:

Tenant wins battle to stop Westminster council moving her out of London (Guardian)
 
Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
I wouldn't absolve individuals of responsibility - far from it - but it is my view that the very structure of companies facilitates tax evasion. If I could arrange my household finances as a limited company can, I'm sure I would pay far less tax. PAYE may be convenient for the Treasury, but anyone with the option seems to use alternative means, whatever they may be.
PAYE is collected from employers. They don't have to be companies.

That aside, you're picking the wrong target. You should take aim at trusts. There are plenty of good commercial reasons to incorporate a limited company. For example, it makes administration of a decent-sized business concern much more easy than any of the legal alternatives. That's a great help to commerce, which in turn generates more income to tax. By contrast, people use trusts so they can tell the taxman, a creditor, or the state administrators of various benefits that they haven't any money.

There are three ways in which the taxman loses out. The first is tax avoidance. I note at this point that the Coalition has brought in the UK's first anti-avoidance provision. The second is evasion (ie, lying on your tax return). The third is insolvency.

Now, there are plenty of ways to avoid tax without using limited companies. Imagine the following. Sterboks Rooibos Cafe trades in countries A and B. It does so under an agreement with Sterboks Bermuda Ltd that the cost of using Sterboks' logo is equal to the annual profit (other than that particular cost). Once it is deducted, Sterboks' profit in countries A and B is zero. However, it's profit in Bermuda is equal to the amount paid to Sterboks Bermuda Ltd. However, there's no particular reason why the owner of the logo can't be Mr Sterbok rather than a limited company. The law deems limited companies and humans as people.

Both humans and companies can evade tax. In the case of the latter, it is due to the company officers telling fibs, and I would be astonished if HMRC didn't prosecute the officers (and/or the company) and have them sent to prison in plenty of situations like that.

The final one is insolvency. I note that companies are designed to allow people to trade in the knowledge that they have some protection for their personal assets if things go wrong. If the company ends up insolvent, it will be liquidated, and the creditors' rights are wiped out. However, the alternative is probably much less commerce, and therefore less tax collection. Also, individuals can go bankrupt leaving creditors out of pocket in just the same way.

But if a person is careful enough to put all his assets in a discretionary trust, the creditors generally can't touch it because he can say it isn't "his". Because it's discretionary, it isn't anyone else's either... So, for the period of his bankruptcy he can laze by the swimming pool that isn't his, because he is the trustee and he says what happens to the property.
 
Posted by Ethne Alba (# 5804) on :
 
[Rufiki....a thousand blessings, ....thank you]
 


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