CIH: charge high earners more rent
The president of the Chartered Institute of Housing has suggested tenants whose circumstances improve could pay more rent to tackle waiting lists.
Howard Farrand suggested new tenants who begin earning above the higher rate of tax could see their rent rise accordingly without threatening their security of tenure. He said: ‘A person’s ability to pay should be reflected in their rent.’
Charging higher rents to tenants in the future could then fund new affordable homes, he added.
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Readers' comments (8)
Melvin Bone | 08/01/2010 9:08 am
Surely it would be much easier to link it to security of tenure.
Maybe review the tenancy annually and remove the security of tenure when the earnings increase? Subsidising rents like this cannot go on for ever...
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Harry Lime | 08/01/2010 9:23 am
Haven't we been here before with this conversation? What constitutes a "high earner"? Common sense says that someone on £50k would be looking to buy their own house anyway, but if you're on £50k in london with 3 kids and your other half isn't working to look after the kids, then £50k isn't the fortune man others may profess it to be. Then there's the argument that says you'd be stifling ambition, for people to better themselves, why try and earn an extra £5k a year if you know that'll trigger a rent increase that'll see you pay £1k of it in rent, etc, etc The only way this would come in would be with an overhaul of the whole system, including security of tenure. I fail to see how you can have a debate that theoretically accepts that someon could be earning £50k, possibly even more without first discussing if it's appropriate for them to have a social property in the first place.
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kass | 08/01/2010 11:06 am
How many social tenants in the land earn £40,000 net of work expenses and taxes?
I suspect a handful. Of this handful how many do have to support families of one kind or another with this income? And the first handful becomes even smaller.
It seems Howard Farrand suggesting we overhaul the tenancy system with a different system so that such a tiny handful of tenantsl cannot get away with paying social rent, has not taken into account the economics of it, resulting in being much more costly thant any profit coming out of it. Which means that an iniative like this far from helping to build more new homes will only lead to building even less.
the Chartered Institute of Housing has a long history of blaming tenants for the ills of social housing and this is clearly an institution devoted to attack tenants and their tenancy with unremitting consistency.
It is about time that in line with other changes the Chartered Institute of Housing be totally overhauled or even abolished.
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| 08/01/2010 2:29 pm
Ridiculous. With 70% of social tenants on benefits, their rent paid by the taxpayer, CIH now want to torture a tiny percentage of the remaining 30% who are paying their own way? Not content with taking their taxes to pay for estate based intergenerational welfare dependency (thanks NuLab) they want to put the rent up of the working few? Great idea. Why stop at 70% welfare dependent estates. Let's go for the full 100%. Who are these people? Clearly they live nowhere near social housing.
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worried well | 08/01/2010 2:51 pm
Let us examine the idea. You want to encourage residents to become self-sustaining, get jobs, come off benefits and pay their own way? Let us put an immediate disincentive in their way. As soon as you manage to get a job, then you can face increased rent bills.
I think that these statements draw attention to how the CIH thinks. Our money might reduce, therefore let us increase the amount coming-in to compensate. How about a slightly broader view of this? Yes a little more money will come in, which has to be then offset by destroying any ambition to get a job or do better.
Does the CIH really improve the sector, or is it more that when you get a qualification it becomes a badge to signify that you have ticked a box?
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Mike Watson | 08/01/2010 4:53 pm
How could you justify not applying the same surcharge to all mortgages?
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Gazza | 09/02/2010 9:34 am
In the news, they are talking about a woman, waiting for housing for 18 months, well my friend and his wife, who are very ill, have been waiting for 15 years for public housing, and they are both on an invalid pension, and no-one gives a stuff.
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Sancho | 09/02/2010 10:24 am
And Gazza has hit upon the counter argument; how do you free up social housing from the people that don't need it to the people that do? Just putting their rent up won't work (for the reasons above) neither would chucking them out, for the same reason.
The best thing to free up more housing in the long term would be to end succession, but then that destroys the idea of a family home and damages the goal of sustainable communities.
It's a tricky one and, I think, the reason why we normally alight on the idea of trying to make tenants more aspirational - but this leads to more demand for ownership, drives prices up and prevents the very thing it tries to encourage.
Being a bit radical, the solution to me seems to be the gradual abolition of social housing. No more new build for social rent, only intermediate and market rent. As successions are used up, homes become whatever tenure the landlord wants. Yes, that will reduce wealth for private individuals, but will save public finance that can be spent elsewhere. Make housing less affordable and it will stopped being viewed as an easy option and restructure the market so that it is a spectrum rather than polar opposites.
It would be a nightmare to actually do it though.
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