Butti

• Comment on: £1.8m to tackle 'beds in sheds'

  Butti's comment | 14/05/2012 12:20 pm

  I don't think identifying them is the problem. You just need a satellite and the assumption that there will be one at the end of the garden / yard.
  Identifying where people come from may be a bigger problem - DNA testing could probably establish where they have come from and prove to their government that they are their citizen. If we can start to send them back with messages about how gorgeous their living conditions were maybe we will start to stem the tide.
  Rick, landlords are converting sheds and garages into living quarters and provided they have been used as such for four years appear to be immune to knocking them down. Change in the law required I think.

• Comment on: PM under pressure to boost green deal incentives

  Butti's comment | 10/05/2012 11:16 am

  Aligning VAT seems like a good idea.
  BUT in order to get the Green Deal to work there is going to have to be a lot of community generated activity, a lot of showcasing of examples, explaining and an awful lot of support for the elderly and vulnerable who seem to often occupy the least energy efficient housing. I get the impression the government has vastly underestimated the deterent effect of 'hassle' on elderly and vulnerable customers.

• Comment on: Tenants show appetite for right to buy

  Butti's comment | 09/05/2012 3:47 pm

  I believe in a previous article Rick added the calculations which indicated the housing was replaced on a 16 sold : 1 built. Not quite what the government are saying.

• Comment on: Brit taxpayers should jump housing queue says MP

  Butti's comment | 16/04/2012 2:18 pm

  Isn't the problem that;
  a. We don't have enough housing (in the areas where people want to live)
  b. The stuff we are building is intermediate rent
  c. Intermediate rent is not necessarily affordable
  d. If you want the rent to get paid and it is not affordable you want to fill it with young professionals not people who live in poverty and have problems
  
  We are back to the 'worthy poor' that we housed before homelessness legislation.

• Comment on: Right to buy to cover 30% of new home costs

  Butti's comment | 12/03/2012 2:28 pm

  Code 3 I believe is costing about £110k for each house. It's even better news for the Conservatives, hopefully will allow them to sell off more social housing and replace it with 'affordable' market rents.

Butti has not added any discussions yet.

• Posted in: Research on social tenants and attitudes to environmental issues

  Butti's post | 19/10/2011 1:02 pm

  F451 is right, I think JRF have done something on this recently.

  Also look at the Tyndale Research Centre, particularly Whitmarsh, L.

  I'm doing carbon free housing and behaviour for my dissertation.  You may find the following articles a useful start;

  Reeves, A. (2011) 'Making it viable......' Energy Efficiency 4. p.75-92 (Done with Peabody Trust)

  Bergman, N & Eyre, N. (2009) 'What role for microgeneration.......' Energy Efficiency 4. p335-353

  Whitmarsh, L (2009) 'Behavioural response to climate change.....' Journal of Environmental Psychology 29. p13-23

  Those and the references shold give you a start.

• Posted in: Ban "Anonymous" Posters to Forums

  Butti's post | 12/10/2011 6:00 pm

  I too think 'respect' to Rick for being himself.

  I have to remain as Butti as I am trying to become a housing professional and expressing some of the views I have on Grant Shnapps is probably a capital offence.

  I can out F451 as my brother.  It MUST be him as he used to have inane conversations with me for hours as a child on how I knew I really existed and wasn't a figment of his imagination!!!

• Posted in: Should affordable housing be affordable?

  Butti's post | 25/08/2011 0:06 am

  Chris,

  Whilst writing a recent assignment of affordability there were two main methods offered in the literature.

  1. The ratio method - up to 30% of income

  2. The residual method - covering whatever the rent was, could be renamed the housing benefit method.

  The second is a massive disincentive as it taxes earned income at about 96% for those who decide to work rather than stay on benefits.  This is what IDS has been trying to change.

  B

• Posted in: Woman jailed after riots in Manchester freed by judge

  Butti's post | 22/08/2011 8:30 pm

  She was in receipt of stolen goods from her lodger.

  I don't believe she was offered the Blears option - 'pay for the shorts and we'll let it go.  If you like go public and wave a big cheque infront of the camera's'.

  The sentence was disproportionate considering she wasn't rioting and considering what sentence she was likely to get a week before the rule book was thrown out.

• Posted in: My Housing Officer is very unhelpful

  Butti's post | 03/05/2011 9:23 pm

  Rick,

  You are correct on the tree front.  You can cut the branches that overhang at the point they overhang but you have to offer them back to the neighbour as technically they belong to the tree!

  B