Teenagers targeted
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Boris Johnson’s advisors are planning to use vocational training as a carrot to entice teenagers in social housing to move into privately rented homes.
The London mayor’s housing director, Richard Blakeway, has called for a new ‘social offer’ for the children of social tenants.
They would be offered assured leases on private rented homes, combined with help to gain skills or training, as an alternative to their own social tenancies.
Mr Blakeway this week described the quality of life in social housing as a ‘joke’. ‘Forty-six per cent of social tenants on estates love their dog more than their neighbour,’ he told the British Property Federation’s residential housing conference.
‘Given that concentrations of worklessness are excessive in social housing, coupled with a staggering level of inter-generational poverty, we need to seriously look at offering teenage children of social tenants a practical route out of poverty,’ he said.
The deal would be offered to 16 to 25-year-olds on a voluntary basis. ‘This is not a bid to end security of tenure, because that would be a bid to end my own career,’ he said.
Alan Walter, chair of the pressure group Defend Council Housing and a tenant of Camden Council in north London, said: ‘Somebody should put Rottweiler Blakeway on a lead.’
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