The End is Nigh

This was not a cheerful way to start the working day:



On my desk I found the latest Inside Housing magazine announcing the death of social housing. The coalition's so-called reforms effectively end social renting as a tenure. Requiring new social tenants to pay 80% of market rents will result in one of two things:

Housing Benefit will have to increase to cover the much more expensive rents, increasing how much is spent on benefits in order to subsidise the provision of new social housing;

Or

Housing Benefit won't increase and will no longer be sufficient to cover social rents, ending the safety net for the vulnerable that social housing was meant to be.

I wonder which will happen? Here's a clue: the government is totally obsessed with reducing the housing benefit bill.

The National Housing Federation are saying that the level of new social rents will be so high that in places like Camden, Hackney and Haringey households would need to earn £54,000 to pay their social rent without housing benefit. David Cameron's defense of this is, '[Are] our constituents working hard to give benefits so people can live in homes they could not even dream of? I don't think that's fair.'

This welfare-scroungers rhetoric, seemingly taken straight from the Daily Mail, makes me incredibly angry. Cameron is ignoring the fact that the housing market is a disaster in this country, supply is inadequate, owned and rented housing is getting less and less affordable, and there is a particularly acute shortage of housing for the most vulnerable. That's why spending on housing benefit has increased. In London and the economically thriving parts of the South, private renting (let alone buying a house) is unaffordable for people on an average wage. It is a barefaced lie that only unemployed 'scroungers' need housing benefit and social housing. It is also a barefaced lie that social housing is in any way mansion-like.

Here are some facts from the government's own housing statistics.

• The percentage of households who own their home outright and have no
  members of the household working (57%) is comparable to that for social
  renters. This is because both contain a high proportion of the retired.
  
  
• 31% of social tenants are retired; only 21% are under 35. Younger people are far more likely to be in private rented accommodation.
  
  
• Social housing is more likely to be overcrowded than private rented or owner-occupied. (6.7% of social renters, 5.4% of private renters and 1.6% of owner-occupiers are overcrowded.) A third of all overcrowded households live in London.
  
  
• More than a quarter of all children in the social rented sector (25.7%) are living in overcrowded conditions, compared to 5.8% in the owner-occupied sector and 15% in the private rented sector.
  
  
• More than a third of social renters work: 24% are in full time work, 10% in part time work. Only 8.4% are unemployed.
  
  Let me reiterate that: eight per cent of social tenants are unemployed. Would you like to see the table I got that number from? Here it is. David Cameron, your claims about unemployed scroungers are simply not true.
  
  
• 24.5% of social tenants are economically inactive, meaning that they can't work and are not getting Job Seeker's Allowance. These would be the disabled, ill, and full-time carers.
  
  
• Not all social renters receive housing benefit at the moment - 59% to be exact.
  
  
• Households buying a house with a mortgage had an average income more than three times that of social renters (£47,500 and £14,800 per annum respectively). 65% social renters have incomes of less than £15,000 per year.

Does it seem like social renters are getting an unfairly good deal here? I think not.

Social housing is allocated to those that most need it - the elderly, disabled, young people who've run away from abusive families, homeless families with children. I'll tell you what's not fair, Cameron: dumping these people on the streets, shunting them between bed & breakfasts, or forcing them into overcrowded accommodation. You don't need me to tell you that this will trap people in poverty.

How can this government have the gall to use the word 'fair' as their mantra whilst callously kicking away the welfare safety net? They have decided that if you can't afford shelter you're just not trying hard enough, whether you're a child, disabled, ill, elderly, or just another victim of the recession. William Beveridge must be spinning in his grave.