is on the Guardian leader on the British housing market and the paper’s assertion that buying to let, which has skewed the whole housing market and made people homeless and poor, is a ‘mass’ occupation, rather than one mostly indulged in by entitled baby boomers:
socialistMike
June 1, 2007 8:47 AM
‘the masses’ in this case being fairly wealthy people with high credit ratings.
The real masses aren’t engaged in this predatory behaviour. We are tormented by it.
Home ownership ‘popular’? Well, yes, but only because the other choices have been made so unattractive and difficult for people. The number of people who can afford to buy property hasn’t expanded greatly – the number of properties that people can buy has, through loose credit and a rigged, bubble market.
This is partly why there is an ‘underclass’. There is no point in working just to pay a rip-off landlord when most wages are so low: with housing benefit deducted pound for pound from any income people can work for just pennies per hour – who in their right mind would do that? So landlords can charge what they want (what the rigged market will bear), forcing people out of work by making it a pointless and unremunerative waste of effort and the bill is picked up by the taxpayer.
Where I live the average wage in the job centre is about £12,000 per annum and the average rent is £650-850 per month. Add council tax on top and you can do the sums yourself. If you claim housing benefit you won’t necessarily receive the full rent and, in any case, your benefit will be reduced to leave you with the minimum income guarantee – about £58 per week for all living expenses regardless of how hard or long you work.
Freedom for the new rentiers is achieved by tying up their tenants in a bureacratic nightmare of poverty and insecurity.
Of course, we have been through all this before, ‘Cathy Come Home’ and all that, which gave rise to a proper housing policy – rent controls, secure tenancies and council house building. Of course, New Labour is ignoring what it once knew in order to enrich the ‘aspirational’ middle class while it leaves its traditional supporters in growing housing desperation.
Everyone is diligently ignoring all those people who are too poor for ‘affordable’ housing.
Those’re the same people whose children will be carrying the burden of paying for Labour’s grandiose PFI projects way, way into the foreseeable future, ensuring that the poverty trickles down the generations. Cheers, New Labour boomers!
