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My personal experience of council housing is similar to yours. As a kid, my parents lived in a council house for a number of years. Dad always had a full-time job and my mother did part-time work. And as far as I recall all the neighbours worked. In those days there were loads of reasonably well paid, non-professional jobs such as in the mines, steel industry, shipbuilding etc etc.

Council houses were originally built in huge numbers after the war as a response to the millions of houses that had been destroyed. The original concept was that they were state owned homes for a wide variety of people - doctors, labourers etc etc. Council housing really went downhill under Thatcher with the privatisation of the housing stock. Houses in the desirable areas were sold off at knockdown prices. Those estates in much less desirable areas then became "sink" estates as social housing became more based on need i.e. couldnt afford anything else, than it had before. This coincided with the wholesale destruction of well paid, non professional jobs. So in many cases nowadays, non-professional means minimum wage.

Anyway the main point is that to argue that the spiralling housing benefit budget is down to a huge increase in "career choice" unemployed is an over-simplistic view. In London and I suspect many other areas in the south east where rents are high, the majority of people on housing benefits are actually working, but find themselves part of the "working poor".

The main reasons for the spiralling housing benefits bill are:

1. The destruction of large numbers of well paid non professional jobs which has led to a new class of "working poor" which I do not recall existing when I was a kid i.e. people who were working but could not get by without state help to pay the rent.

2. The huge drop in social housing availability which has meant people had to find homes in the private sector where rents can be extremely high.

3. The lack of any rent controls by subsequent governments to keep rents reasonable.

Housing benefits go direct to the landlord so a legitimate question here is, who actually is the scrounger - the tenant who in the majority of cases in the south east of the country is working, or the landlord who is charging an inflated rent at a time when demand is high?

The way to address the problem is to introduce a "living wage" as opposed to a very low minimum wage to try and deal with the working poor scenario; to build more social housing and give a boost to economic growth; to introduce rent controls.

The way not to address the problem is to come up with brainless ideas like Cameron's that throw potentially tens of thousands of kids who can't live at home for a variety of reasons onto the streets.

You are spot on regarding Cameron and housing benefits, the twatt.
However, there was nothing wrong with selling council houses to those who had had lived in them from day one and paid their rent to the council.
What was wrong, and I still can't get my head round it, was the councils not building replacement stock. I doubt that there are any councils with no spare land that could be used for affordable housing. We're surrounded by the stuff here in Brighton. I mean to say, the mortgage obtained was passed to the seller, so why didn't they rebuild replacemets? Was it because the govt took the sale money and put it into the govt coffers? If that is the reason then the govts are a bunch of coniving cheating twisting lying bastards. But hey, what's new?

Re. my suggestion to build more affordable social housing as part of dealing with the huge housing benefits bill, I would also introduce incentives to help people in work to rent this housing.

David Johnson wrote:

> The way not to address the problem is to come up with brainless
> ideas like Cameron's that throw potentially tens of thousands
> of kids who can't live at home for a variety of reasons onto
> the streets.


No real surprise there David. Politicians are not normally famous for using their brains.

My own view is that the welfare bill definitely does need to be slashed - it's too easy to claim some benefits and there are (as Arginald quite rightly points out) far too many wasters, spongers and shirkers taking the piss.

This proposal though is completely hare-brained. A blunt instrument that will probably disadvantage a lot more "genuine cases" than it will take spongers out of the system.

What's wrong with tightening up the rules where they need tightening up, but at the same time judging each case on its merits? Or is that too sensible an approach?

- Eric

The council stock should not be sold off. Those houses belong to the council tax payers. They should only be sold if the money received is enough to build a suitably sized replacement. I doub't that can be done. Take a look at today's 3 bed shoe box houses and compare to a 1950's council home. They are twice the size.

Those tenents are not paying a mortgage to the council. The council is not a bank. Why are council tax payers subsidising tenents who get to buy their houses cheaply? Then we have to pay more council tax to put people into bed and breakfast because there is not enough housing stock. I too would like to know what happened to the money. I expect it was used to keep council tax down? Or was it used to pay those fat cats in town hall and provide them with index linked gold plated pensions?

"What's wrong with tightening up the rules where they need tightening up, but at the same time judging each case on its merits? Or is that too sensible an approach?"

I can see what would happen if Cameron introduced this plan but with "judging each case on its merits".

A vast bureaucracy of pen pushers, interviewing, documenting etc every single case of an under 25 who was claiming housing benefits. Interviews with parents/social workers/probation workers/police to understand why they could/could not live at home. Claims that were turned down resulting in a lengthy appeals process etc etc etc. It would probably spend more money than it saved.

Personally I would prefer the approach to reducing the housing bill that I outline in your post that you respond to. But hey I'm biased.

The council house sale money went to the councils but they were banned from spending it on new council house builds.

The reason they were banned was because Thatcher was determined to shrink the size of the state which is why she privatised our nationalised industries at knockdown prices. The same applied to state built and owned council housing.

Cameron is doing exactly the same, shrinking the size of the state, but using the fallout from the banking crisis as cover.

On the subject of council house sales, many council houses ended up in the hands of speculators which has played a major part in the rental boom in the south.

And in 200 years time Labor will still be blaming Maggie for everything that is wrong in the UK!!

Well this is where you are wrong. The cost of a house today is the cost of the land and the materials to build it. The land being the costliest.
The council own the land that they build on, therefore the cost of a replacement house is less than the sale price and therefore if managed correctly the council would make a profit from each house sale and rebuild.
It aint rocket science, but, I doubt that it is the way things are done.

In thaty case then unban the use of sales to rebuild the sold stock.
All of the people around here who bought their homes, about 50% are still in them, me included, so I dunno where all of the speculators are. Most people then spend a lot of their money on renovations, new kitchens, bathrooms, conservatories etc, so the areas improve somewhat. So, unless one is a dyed in the wool socialist who has fuckall and wants to share it with everyone I cannot see what the problem is, if sales are managed properly which means rebuilding.