Tory scumbag Richard Benyon announces massive rent hikes for social housing estate

[NoXion]

Thing is, for those who survive the purges, this won't have been "social cleansing", it's have been "the market" in operation, with "the invisible hand" allocating housing to those able to pay. Those people will feel (already feel!) that they deserve to live in London, based not on merit or the contribution they make to society but desert based on ability to pay.

In my last paragraph I was thinking less of the survivors of social cleansing and more of those who are victims of it and yet somehow are convinced that it's justifiable or happens for good reasons. Thankfully those kind of people seem to be less common here in the UK than they are in the US. But over the last decade or so I've definitely seen an escalation of "aspirational" shit on TV and other media and it cannot have failed to have fooled at least some of those which it is targeted at.

As for crumbling slums, you're kind of missing the latest wheeze whereby local authorities get into partnership with developers, and "regenerate" estates through knocking down our slums and replacing them with shiny new boxes, in return for being able to build so-called affordable homes for sale on part of the land. Our slums won't be crumbling, at least not visibly, for a few years.

Isn't that just another example of gentrification? If these "affordable" homes aren't really such, then they don't strike me as slums, quite the opposite in fact (notwithstanding that a lot of buildings these days seem to shittily built no matter what their ultimate asking price). Those people who are moved on by such developments have to end up somewhere, and there is where I would expect the crumbling slums to be found. Basically it seems to me that unless something quite radical happens, the polarisation of effort and investment between London, certain commuter towns and the south-east in general versus the rest of the country will continue to increase until something gives way.

 

[weltweit]

This issue (The OP) highlights for me is that housing in Britain is just not right.

Rents are too high and house prices are increasing too much.

It isn't just this rich landlord, my own puts the rent up pretty much every year.

 

[Sprocket.]

It's not just this pariah is it? there are millions of these parasites making money off the less fortunate from housing to care for the elderly.
What doesn't help is the millions of folk who sit watching Homes under the Hammer and think I wish I had a massive portfolio yielding 8%.
That then look up to shits like this as an example of how to run society.

It should be law that if you own an estate on a street as a landlord you should live on that estate or street, they would be passing them back to local authorities faster than they could put their fox hunting costumes on.
Turn their country mansions into state funded homes for the poverty stricken elderly and turn their gardens into community allotments.
Bastards all.

 

[DotCommunist]

so much for the 'property owning democracy' dream eh. It's been more or less accepted among people of my age and class that the only way you're on the ladder is if you get a particularly successful career or inherit. So it's rent till you die.

 

[Dogsauce]

There's always the north. Two bed flat for £38,000 round the corner from me. It's alright here.

When the last non-twat is evicted from London they should jam open the Thames Barrier and leave the rats to drown, frantically ringing round trying to find a 'prole' with the necessary skills to unjam it as the tide comes in. Then in the aftermath we'll turn it all into a nice tidal lagoon with swan pedalos and that kind of shit.

 

[weltweit]

so much for the 'property owning democracy' dream eh. It's been more or less accepted among people of my age and class that the only way you're on the ladder is if you get a particularly successful career or inherit. So it's rent till you die.

Unfortunately rent levels are so high, for many people, that generating a deposit under their own steam you either need a very good salary or to be a couple with both on very good salaries.

 

[jusali]

When they run out of cleaners to clean their offices, tradesmen to maintain their houses, shop assistants to sell them their food, Police to protect them, nurses to fix their sick and midwives to birth their spawn, then maybe just maybe they might think this social cleansing wasn't quite such a good idea?

 

[Pickman's model]

so much for the 'property owning democracy' dream eh. It's been more or less accepted among people of my age and class that the only way you're on the ladder is if you get a particularly successful career or inherit. So it's rent till you die.

or win the lottery

 

[Pickman's model]

When they run out of cleaners to clean their offices, tradesmen to maintain their houses, shop assistants to sell them their food, Police to protect them, nurses to fix their sick and midwives to birth their spawn, then maybe just maybe they might think this social cleansing wasn't quite such a good idea?

it'll be like the admirable crichton before the 'rescue'.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

When they run out of cleaners to clean their offices, tradesmen to maintain their houses, shop assistants to sell them their food, Police to protect them, nurses to fix their sick and midwives to birth their spawn, then maybe just maybe they might think this social cleansing wasn't quite such a good idea?

That's what happened in New York in the 80's wasn't it? There was a huge shortage of key workers because the sky high rents drove people out of the city to replaced by City types etc who soon found they had no-one to empty their bins etc. IIRC it led to a policy of 'afforable' property for those designated as key workers.

 

[DotCommunist]

That's what happened in New York in the 80's wasn't it? There was a huge shortage of key workers because the sky high rents drove people out of the city to replaced by City types etc who soon found they had no-one to empty their bins etc. IIRC it led to a policy of 'afforable' property for those designated as key workers.

and wasn't the idea of affordable housing for key workers (like nurses and teachers in the rhetoric of the time) an unfufilled new labour policy during Tony's second term?

 

[SpineyNorman]

lock him and 'beau' wells in a room together and see who crawls out.

If him and wells had a fight to the death in which both were killed who would be the winner?

Everyone else.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

and wasn't the idea of affordable housing for key workers (like nurses and teachers in the rhetoric of the time) an unfufilled new labour policy during Tony's second term?

A lot of the regenerated estates in the mid-noughties had "affordable housing" or "key worker" stuff tacked on, but I am not sure of the scale. As little as could be got away with, certainly.

 

[DotCommunist]

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/may/25/keyworkerhousing

thats what I was half-remembering

But even the optimists accept that it fall well short of solving the problem altogether. Indeed the accommodation crisis for key workers in the south-east may still get worse unless, or until, the property market goes into decline.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

That's what happened in New York in the 80's wasn't it? There was a huge shortage of key workers because the sky high rents drove people out of the city to replaced by City types etc who soon found they had no-one to empty their bins etc. IIRC it led to a policy of 'afforable' property for those designated as key workers.

Did it extend to bin men? I thought key worker housing was generally aimed at people who still have a bit of power in the jobs market - 'fuck it, I'll just move out of London' is quite doable for a nurse or a teacher. Not so much for bin men I expect, and definitely not for cleaners etc.

 

[DotCommunist]

Did it extend to bin men? I thought key worker housing was generally aimed at people who still have a bit of power in the jobs market - 'fuck it, I'll just move out of London' is quite doable for a nurse or a teacher. Not so much for bin men I expect, and definitely not for cleaners etc.

look at how the noughties nulab initiatives defined keyworker.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

and wasn't the idea of affordable housing for key workers (like nurses and teachers in the rhetoric of the time) an unfufilled new labour policy during Tony's second term?

It was but, like effective rent control, it was obviously all too difficult and had to be abandoned in favour of the current deregulated arrangements that lead to developments like this

 

[Dogsauce]

Developers were allowed by this government to renegotiate the percentage of 'affordable' accommodation agreed in planning consent for projects on the basis that due to falling prices some of the schemes were no longer viable and wouldn't otherwise be built, justified on the basis that at least some housebuilding was better than none. Some developers came forward and proposed zero affordable/social elements and this was accepted.

They've even been able to negotiate the percentages down in London, where property prices haven't dropped at all.

IIRC this was the case with Heygate.

 

[marty21]

Just announced that the estate is being sold to the Dolphin Square Foundation. This was founded in 2006 when the Dolphin Square Trust ( ex employer of mine) sold the lease of their Pimlico estate.

They are only guaranteeing rents to 2016, it would have been better for the tenants if a Housing Association or Hackney Council had bought it.

 

[oryx]

Just announced that the estate is being sold to the Dolphin Square Foundation. This was founded in 2006 when the Dolphin Square Trust ( ex employer of mine) sold the lease of their Pimlico estate.

They are only guaranteeing rents to 2016, it would have been better for the tenants if a Housing Assiciation or Hackney Council had bought it.

Yeah, when I heard this on the radio I thought it was a HA who'd bought it. The woman interviewed on BBC London radio sounded happy, but rents guaranteed to 2016 is only a partial victory.

 

[Spymaster]

Did I hear on the radio that Russell Brand had something to do with this?

 

[weepiper]

Did I hear on the radio that Russell Brand had something to do with this?

In that he came along at the end of it, got them some publicity and is now being given all the credit for the residents' hard work, yes.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Just announced that the estate is being sold to the Dolphin Square Foundation. This was founded in 2006 when the Dolphin Square Trust ( ex employer of mine) sold the lease of their Pimlico estate.

They are only guaranteeing rents to 2016, it would have been better for the tenants if a Housing Assiciation or Hackney Council had bought it.

Great for the interim though. Well done residents and supporters.

 

[Pickman's model]

Just announced that the estate is being sold to the Dolphin Square Foundation. This was founded in 2006 when the Dolphin Square Trust ( ex employer of mine) sold the lease of their Pimlico estate.

They are only guaranteeing rents to 2016, it would have been better for the tenants if a Housing Assiciation or Hackney Council had bought it.

from personal experience i know how strapped the council is now and so being bought by hackney probably never on the cards