Housing Benefit / Right to live in expensive areas.

[bluekieran]

Do the poor have a right to live in expensive areas?This argument seems to centre around two viewpoints

Comments

[spangle_kitten]

Rent capping does seem to be the way forward. It's the landlord's faults that rent is driven so high ~ but it's also high property prices and mortgages that factor into that as well. Maybe rent should be capped at whatever the mortgage payment is plus a bit extra to cover bills and "reasonable wear and tear".

I see both viewpoints, but overall I'm more on the side of the "don't screw the taxpayer" mainly because I know so many people that dream of being able to live in a £400 a week 4 bed house in zone 1, rather than out in zone 3 or 4 in a 2 bed flat and having to travel in every day.

[glensc]

Maybe rent should be capped at whatever the mortgage payment is plus a bit extra to cover bills and "reasonable wear and tear".

Unworkable, mortage payments will depend on ammount borrowed, which does not necessarily reflect the accomadations worth. It depends on how % mortage, as well as the timespan the payment is taken out over and how good a deal was bargained at that time eg fixed rate while there was a market crash or variable rate.

[spangle_kitten]

To give a comparison...the 4 bedroom house next door to me in Wales, in a rather nice area, is currently renting for £800 a month.

[djpsyche]

I fall on the side of if you can't afford to live someplace expensive then move. In the States, when I lost my job, I lost my place to live and had to couch surf and even stayed in a homeless shelter for a while. Hello, moving into a less exclusive neighbourhood is SO far from having to couch surf or live in a homeless shelter. Tough luck mate but there are lots of people -with jobs- living in the less exclusive areas, what's your beef with joining them?

[green_badger]

Come to think of it the whole gentrification argument doesn't really work in London, where there are always really poor areas smack next to really rich ones. xxx

[suicideally]

You're thinking about this from an individual standpoint - the problem is that neighbourhoods become socially non-integrated if only one demographic is able to live in the area.

[pinksarah]

I agree that ghettos of rich and poor is definitely not the way forwards but how on earth do you stop some people sitting on the dole for generations and living in really nice places that everyone else pays for (and possibly can;t afford themselves)? Surely that isn't OK either?
Trying to unpick how to have a system where effort is rewarded and genuine hardship is off-set by the state without the flipside of people working the system seems nigh on impossible.

[green_badger]

The trouble with that is that landlords have to cover their mortgages, and house prices are also absurd.

(OK so you get plenty of landlords who own multiple houses and don't have mortgages, but also plenty who do. If I went away for a while/was out of work I'd have to rent out my place.) xxx

[sushiho]

What about the radical idea of the government (via Councils) buying/building houses, where they set the rent at a reasonable level that they're happy to pay out on benefits for (or just skip the whole red tape of paying out housing benefit, and just assign benefit-qualifying people to the houses without having to issue & collect rent payments as they'd be going back into the same coffers).

Wouldn't that solve the problem, provide housing, control rents/benefit payment limits, and ensure integration across geographical areas?

Listening to debates on this on R4 I couldn't understand why this or some variation of it wasn't being suggested, does it not make sense?

[hirez]

But that's just crazy talk!