Panorama on subletting

04/05/2011 12:25 pm

According to Panorama a serving police office is subletting his council flat (£91 pw) for £450 pw plus £200 deposit. The flat is near Butler's Wharf close to Tower Bridge in London.

I gather this and other issues are on tonight's programme.

04/05/2011 2:47 pm

For sake of debate - if we are to embrace Conservatism to the highest and let the market rule everything, what then is wrong with sub letting.

If a person has the aptitude to make money for minimal outlay by using assets that they have access to in order to meet a need from which they can derive a profit, why should they not be allowed to do so.

Indeed, surely red-tape removal should be used to make sure that such new markets can be exploited to the full in the same way as other exploitation of public funds and assets are or are proposed to be.

04/05/2011 4:17 pm

It's interesting to see PSR put his location as "Middle Earth" as his Utopian Lefty views are about as believable or actionable as Tolkien's fairy tale world from which he takes his inspiration.

The British like to see a level playing field in things. The way social housing is currently allocated (by State employed bureauocrats using spurious "needs" based criteria that reward fecklessness, irresponsibility and often self created "deprivation") is generally loathed by the British public. We understand and welcome the concept of competing with others in the free market and paying a market price. Which is why home ownership (at around 70% of all tenure) is the single most popular form of housing. We even understand putting our name down on a list and waiting our turn.  

However what we really loathe is somebody getting something for nothing which they patently do not deserve to get ahead of someone else who perhaps has done something to deserve getting it.

Which is why sub-letting of social lets is so universally despised. A system gamer convinces a faceless bureauocrat to let them have a State subsidised property and then lets it out for a profit. It would be altogether fairer to have that property for sale or rent on the open market so that everyone could have a fair crack of the whip at living in it. Rather than just a chosen few who know how to play the system having such an opportunity. No wonder social housing has become so universally despised and discredited in the mind of the public. Programmes like this tell us exactly what we suspect is going on. The allocation system is rotten to the core.

04/05/2011 5:17 pm

Apoica (or lets call him ILAG his old pseudonym) has a hatred of social housing per se, but most notably (a) its level in Islington and (b) the needs-based allocation system of social housing.

Interestingly, on (a) he chooses to live there and the irony of that I find most amusing as surely this disciple of the great God of choice can simply move.

Yet its (b) that really riles him (and the many others who collectively used ILAG as their name on here.) 

Its faceless bureaucrats rewarding the feckless he oft proclaims and wants to return to pre 1970 allocation systems.  What he fails to mention of course is that housing allocation is protecte and works according to the law and not faceless bureauocrats.

Most interetsingly he wants the highly subjective allocation of social housing by individuals working to no guidelines other than whatever face fits (or more likey by how big their brown paper parcel is)

finally i do agree that the public does get angry when people get something for nothing in these ways  - though im pretty sure bankers and their bonuses and MPs and their duck moats are much more universally despised than the social tenant

04/05/2011 8:54 pm

I know not of whom you speak nonny. But I do like cats as well PSR!

Re social housing allocation, I am of the same opinion as Michael Collins in The Great Estate and his analysis of the impact of the 1977 Homeless Persons Act is correct. It destroyed social housing as a tenure of choice and made it the residual tenure of last resort that we see today. The guidelines for merit based allocation were perfectly clear. They involved a local connection (Sons and Daughters etc) and they involved being in work. So that the tenant could support themselves and their family (if present) without recourse to the State. 

Today, we now see the polar opposite of the practises that defined the Golden Age of Council Housing. No local connection (straight off the boat is fine and actually preferred in many Looney Left areas) and - of course - benefit cases only. We now have a form of RSL - the commerical HC funded HA - whose entire business model is predicated on warehousing HB cases. This seemingly limitless guaranteed revenue stream from the State assures the corporate bankers who co-fund their developments of a safe bet. Social housing has become the tenure of last resort because of all of the above. Secure tenancies - introduced by Thatcher in the 1980 Housing Act - replaced the old 28 day notice to quit LA tenancy and these, combined with a supine judiciairy who also regard social housing as the tenure of last resort and refuse to evict the insufferable, were the final nail in the coffin. 

So in order to restore social housing to it's pre 77 condition:

i) Scrap "needs" based allocation and return to the merit system. Priority to those in work and so can pay their rent without recourse to the State. And no, subsequently loosing your job would not result in eviction. A work history, however, would be required in order to qualify. As would a genuine local connection going back 15 years or so. Recent immigrants would not qualify for social housing full stop.

ii) Scrap the 1980 Secure Tenancy. All social tenancies to be the old rolling 28 day notice to quit LA tenancy or AST. No requirement for costly ASB court cases that do not succeed due to the supine judiciary. Result will be removal of troublemakers (who are then deemed intentionally homeless with no obligation on the LA to re-house) and decent neighbours.

iii) Full restoration of the RTB discounts pre-Prescott 2005 cap in order to stimulate the wealth creation engine that was RTB. Described by some as the single largest transfer of wealth from the rich (the State) to the poor (the tenant) in history and an engine of social mobility.

iv) When i), ii) and iii) are in place we then use the receipts from iii) to build more social housing allocated according to i) and policed according to ii).

Job done.

05/05/2011 1:44 pm

Sorry Tom if you feel your point is being ignored, but are you trully so niave to not expect the BBC to trot out 'facts' to support their current controlling political masters.

The demonisation of tenants, the poor, and anyone else who needs to be blamed for the failure of consumerism is both in blatent and subtle forms. Panarama ceased to be a punchy exposition of truth as soon as it's Granada competition was killed off by Maggie's privatisation of the airwaves and deregulation of broadcasting, both in the name of competition and both contributing to the dumbing down of TV to the Murdoch-mix of soap and propaganda.

If you are looking to the television for complete argument and whole facts then you may as well remove the plug.

In the absence of mass-media independence it falls on minority publications, like IH, to be brave and challenge the pressure to conform to the central dictations. (Which, IMHO you achieve more often than not giving consideration to the commercial pressures that must also factor!)

05/05/2011 3:30 pm

I've never been to Spain either, but I know it to be full of English tourists.

05/05/2011 4:19 pm

You are turning into Mary Whitehouse PSR making assumptions about programmes you've not watched...

I've not watched it either maybe we'd better fire up the iPlayer and comment tomorrow...

05/05/2011 4:59 pm

Optimism is a good trait Tom. I feel the same when I look at the schedules wondering if there will be anything worth watching.

Melvin - if I've turned into MW, does that mean I've died?

Nonny - yes this does rather cut against the rat infested slum dwelling image that the Daily Mailers would insist the undesirable social housing is - excellent point and one that should be rammed into the faces of the posters who insist on telling us that social housing is bad and undesirable.

Meanwhile, that reminds me. Your googling is correct Tom!

05/05/2011 6:39 pm

I like the way they presented the Local Authority of the 9 person overcrowding in such a poor light "how could this be allowed to happen", "this isnt what social housing was intended to be like".

Yet there was no mention of the tenants social and moral responsibility, just keep having children knowing the state cant provide for her and complain when it cant.