Redistributing wealth

There was an epic post over at Devil's Kitchen the other day, pulling together Guardian pieces, Tim Worstall and Ol' Blue Eyes, covering the government's proposed cap on Housing Benefit. Therein the Devil summarises the problem by quoting a comment from the Guardian piece.

To sum up, some people are effectively being given a pre-tax income of £77,000 for doing nothing, and people far poorer than that are paying for it through taxation. The chancellor claims this is unfair and you disagree. Right.

The case point being that housing benefit is paid based on average rents in each area, so in posh Camden unemployed folk, folk on low income, foreigners and the incapacitated can claim £1000 a week or so, paid for out of the tax that everyone else has to pay.

After discussing the issue with people who know about this sort of thing, and my own wee flag I like to wave about how you can pretty much buy a house in Hull if you're on Job Seeker's Allowance, it seems that the problem lies in the 'Local Connection' section of the 1996 Housing Act, which essentially penalizes claimants and councils who seek better value further afield.

I suggested doing something about this one the government's Spending Challenge website.

So I was rather surprised this morning to read on the BBC that the government were acting on my suggestion.

Alas, I didn't bother reading the article until later. The thrust seems to be to move unemployed folk from poverty ghettos to more affluent areas, which is kind of the opposite of what I had in mind.

JAY'S POLITICAL BLOG reads it as:-

On the surface, this idea is not bad in itself. Many people do move to wherever a job takes them. But as Mr Balls says, the coalition has already cut millions of pounds from funding for the jobless. He is absolutely right to accuse the Tories and the Liberal Democrats of taking money away from the poorer regions whose economies need regeneration; a move which will, in turn, only serve to slow the overall economic recovery, if not take Britain back in recession.

By encouraging people to move to more prosperous areas where the jobs are more likely to be, that is exactly what the Conservative-Liberal coalition are doing.

My take is that in Hull you've got fourth generation unemployed people, the cost of living is very low, the housing benefit bill per claimant is low compared to Camden, Westminster and Islington.

So, if you've got unemployed and unemployable people, why keep them in broom cupboards in the most expensive areas when they could quite merrily have a higher standard of living and more space elsewhere.

What could happen is that the Tories and the Liberal Democrats would be taking housing benefit money away from the richer regions and moving it to the poorer areas.

Me, I used to live in expensive West Hampstead, I had a nice job and could afford it, unemployment got me, my self-confidence was shot to fuck, I moved five miles west to Wembley where rent was so much cheaper and I could survive on minimum wage until my self-confidence rose to the heady heights it is today.

I'm fucking great me.

Camden Social Housing

Trying to get my head round it all.

The BBC has this

About 17,000 people are on the housing list at Camden Council but the authority wants to renovate up to 500 homes for rental to raise revenue.

Theo Blackwell submits this

Camden council is set to rent out hundreds of flats on the private sector market, despite waiting lists being 17,000 strong.

The story, regarded by one councillor from another London borough I spoke to as "outrageous", has attracted widespread criticism, even making it to the BBC.

The Mighty Camden New Journal also carried this story

There are 17,000 people waiting for a council home in Camden and the council has shown little sign of making a dent in the queue over the last decade. Objectors are angry at the idea that people in desperate circumstances might miss out on a flat because it had been rented out to somebody with far more comfortable economic circumstances.

Raedwald carries a story about The 'Housing Demand' Myth

In every call for an increase in social rented housing, the need is justified by quoting that some 4.5m people or 1.8 million households are now on waiting lists. Have you ever asked yourselves where these millions of people are living now? Are there great tented camps in Hyde Park? Are they sleeping in your High Street? Well, since the latest figures for 'rough sleepers' are astonishingly low, I guess almost all of these 4.5 million people are already living somewhere with a roof over their heads and a bed to sleep in.

Which might have been triggered by Peter Hetherington's piece in Teh Guardian

With 4.5 million people on a waiting list for social housing in England alone, and the level of building failing to meet rising household growth, the need for more and better homes becomes more urgent by the day. Remember, the government's own housing targets are based on an extra 240,000 homes annually from 2016, but this year we might be lucky to reach 70,000. Alarmingly, that's half last year's level - itself 19% lower than 2007.

I myself believe that amongst doing the law and order business, rubbish collections and defense, the state (local/national government) has two wee additional duties, namely providing shelter for homeless people and providing low cost housing for paupers. (Me, I'm a pauper, so I get Housing Benefit and I get to stay in the same flat I stayed in when I was fully employed).

Anyhoo, I think out of all I've read so far, Raedwald's piece provides the most illumination, questioning the nature of the 4.5 million on the waiting lists for social housing. The 17,000 in Camden are the same mob. I'm not questioning that there are some vulnerable and deperate people in need of cheap social housing, but what's the make up of the 17,000?

How many are contently staying with their parents or boyfriends and just think it would be nice to have a social housing? What's the breakdown? How many people on that waiting list, just ticked the box without actually needing to? How many people need social housing and how many would just like to pay less rent?

Sure its an admin thing, but its also a cheap fix and lets the debate be a bit more honest about the numbers involved.

In Camden they do it by points, you get points for being ill, for being vulnerable, for having kids, for being on the waiting list for a long time. You get to bid on properties with how many points you have.

So, to validate the 17,000, it would be neat look at the distributiony thing graph, to see if there's like a straight line from the folk with the most points to the folk with the fewest or is it a logarithmic sort of line, which tails off sharply? And furthermore, can we prod at it and see what the graph looks like if you ignore points for being on the waiting list for a long time.

Should it be a 'waiting list' or some kind of 'priority list'.

West Hampstead Thameslink Footbridge

West Hampstead Thameslink
Originally uploaded by manc_ill_kid

There used to be a neat blog, London Connections, that had fanboy details of all renovations and stuff on the London Underground and trainish transport projects, but the lad running it stopped last year. And there's nowt about it on Going Underground, I guess this bit of London transport blogging falls to me.

So, at West Hampstead Thameslink, they've put up a new footbridge, and it's got these towery bits for presumably elevators so the station gets disabled access to all platforms.

For the past few weeks, as I walk past on my way t'Job Center, I noticed they were digging up the nearside platform, digging holes and filling them with concrete and metal things. Exciting stuff. And then wham! I wander past on Monday and there's this ruddy great bridge there.

It must have been a heck of a sight to see them craning it in.

Anyhoo, The Camden News had announced that the council granted planning permission for it back around 26th February, so its all in order I guess. Not sure about Stefan Hoffart's claiming the bridge overlooks his dining room, that side of the stariway is all boarded up.