Londoners should brace for themselves for an influx of toffs whilst the poor sleep on the streets if Boris Johnson’s latest Housing Strategy is given the go ahead.
According to the Mayor, 42,000 new houses a year are planned for the capital over the next ten years. Many of these houses will be bought by global super-rich vultures who seem intent on buying up London properties as investments, not homes. Most of the rest will go to highly paid professionals. 5,000 will be built for ‘long term private rent’ at the current soaring market levels. Of the total number of new homes Boris plans to build a mere 15,000 a year will be ‘affordable’.
Yet even this will mean nothing to the hundreds of thousands of low income Londoners desperate for decent and secure housing. 40% of these ‘affordable’ homes will be ‘low cost home ownership products’. The Mayor’s own report admits that the average annual income of people who access these schemes is £33,000 a year – over two and a half times the salary of someone working full time on minimum wage and £7,000 more than the amount of out of work benefit a family of any size can now receive in London.
For those not on £33,000 a year – which means most of London – that will leave 9000 homes a year. That is less than the 14,500 households that were accepted as homeless in London in 2012/13 and they represent the tip of the iceberg. As the Bedroom Tax and Benefit Cap bite the number of homeless families is likely to soar. There will be nowhere for these families to go if Boris gets his way.
And even these 9000 new homes will not be anything like the kind of long term social housing that is so desperately needed. These new homes will be on fixed term tenancies and the majority will charge an ‘Affordable Rent’ – which can be anything up to 80% of market rents.
Half of these homes, just 4,500, will be set at “discounted” rents. But this according to the Mayor means: “set at the lower of up to eighty percent of market rent or the local housing allowance (LHA).” The lowest Inner London LHA rate for a three bedroom property is £305.77 a week in South East London whilst in Inner North, East, South West and West London LHA rates are set at the maximum payable under housing benefit rules – £347.48 a week.
For a family with three children who are out of work, this would mean an income of just £150 a week once rent is paid. These families will not be able to afford to stay in the capital If you are unable to work due to sickness or disability, are unemployed or have caring responsibilities then you can fuck off out of town as far as Boris is concerned. As the report says: “access to these homes would be targeted to those in work in the first instance”.
A development in Stratford announced last year and aimed at low income workers was charging £323 in ‘affordable rent’ a week just for a two bedroom flat a long way from the centre of the capital. This is more than could be earned in a week even for someone on the much touted Living Wage. The so-called Living Wage isn’t even enough to pay for an Affordable Home. That politicians of all parties trot out these glib phrases with a straight face shows just how out of touch the political class has become. What is transparent bollocks to the rest of us is a credible housing strategy to these clowns.
You can read the Mayor’s proposed housing strategy at: http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/London%20Housing%20Strategy%20consultation%20version_0.pdf
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the void 
Floppy haired and idiotic fop. We need to get rid. Fast.
It ought to be illegal to own more than one property, or buy-to-let. Will Milliband do this if he gets in? Will he fuck!
Thatcher started the rot years ago with the right to buy social housing with cheap mortgages. I seem to remember at the time there were many who could not afford to do that unless you had a job with great pay or you were retired on good pensions, most people never had that kind of money sloshing around so it would have been our grandparents who may have took advantage at the time. It seemed a good idea in theory but the legacy is coming home to roost in 2013 with a shortage of affordable social housing.. much less one-bedroom properties that don’t seem to exist that often except where a greedy private landlords convert a house into rabbit hutches for extortionate rent per month.
Fact is the Tories are now seeing the folly of all that social housing sell off from those days when the thought about other countries joining the EU and having the legal right to come and live in this country was far from a reality that we see today. Probably those people sold their purchased social housing and potentially became middle class and looking up to the Tories in an aspirational way. It was then the dawn of the Yuppie… they were hideous little creatures with their shirt sleeves and braces and hooray henry attitudes holding a brick up to their ears thinking they looked so cool. Going back to the mortgages.. the Tories are at it again with tax payers money being used to subsidize cheap mortgages up to around 600k! I mean.. who can afford to buy a home of that value?, it betrays it’s intent with headroom for that kind of high price… just another scam in the bigger picture of things.
There is nothing the Tories do today that will not be weighed down with suspicion by most people.. once bitten twice shy. There is always a devious agenda behind every tory action with little sincerity.. it’s all designed to lead us into a false sense of security. As much as it’s painful and pathetic to watch Cameron pretending he is a man of the people by bullshitting people into believing he listens to this or that band and falls over his own ignorance
in the process of doing so. He is about as hip as a wet willy in the Eton showers whilst George picks up the soap and learnt never to fall for that again… if there was justice, most of the cabinet should be behind bars for crimes against humanity in the name of personal financial gain, and illusions of success… green shoots my arse… there is no glory for the Tory but people are spending when they can ill afford it and the coalition takes the empty applause from supporters. When it comes to Tories pointing the finger at people on benefits I would say.. people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Mrs T also removed the rent cap on private rents. The got her old man to by loads of houses to rent out….Time to undo all her ill thought out plans and get shot of this shower of shite.
Thank God I live 200 mile plus North of London.
george
it’s the same puddle….
“Eton Mess”
Monday, 1 October 2012
http://etonmess.blogspot.de/2012/10/under-boris-and-cameron-london-is.html
This recently came up again… sometimes ignorance isn’t bliss…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eton_Rifles#David_Cameron
Monday, 7 January 2013
“Rent and property prices in the capital are obscene – and its turning London into a city for the rich”
http://etonmess.blogspot.de/2013/01/rent-and-property-prices-in-london-are.html
“Boris Johnson says Super Rich are an ‘Oppressed Minority’ worthy of our ‘Humble Thanks’ – Time for a Reality Check”
http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2013/11/18/boris-johnson-says-the-super-rich-are-an-oppressed-minority-worthy-of-our-humble-and-hearty-thanks-time-for-a-reality-check/
Another idiot who needs to be gagged, he is an embarrassment to this country… It’s not good having the Tories in a position on the world stage where it might be considered they are representational of the attitudes and the kind of people who live here, thankfully they are a minority and it’s important people remember that and never lose sight of it as they try to find a scrap of solace it this god forsaken country slowly being dismantled.
Oh come on, the prices of new houses in Battersea, outlined by Mayor Boris are coming in at £30 million – he’s surely trying his best here????
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/nov/25/battersea-power-stationpenthouses-30m-price
Well, we will have to take a leaf out of the two Polish birds (who moved in a room upstairs from me),and buy bunk beds. Two people to a room should be affordable, eh? Or three to a large one?
Yea they are called prison cells?
It might well come to that, plus think of the burdens that could be shared between 2-3 families living together co-operating, helping raise one-another’s children.
Would be somewhat ironic if it were Tory economic policies that ultimately led to the demise of the traditional family unit.
Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog.
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They want to keep the property bubble inflating as this is the sand that this country is built on now. When (and I say when not if) the property prices collapse to equilibriate in line with the economics, banks will crash left, right and centre again. Sooner the better I say.
Yes, and the gov. will expect the poor to give the banks all there money again. . To fund the rich who bought the houses which dropped in price. .
I think the banks are already doling out money with the so called ppi scam to the middle and upper classes who were protected by the insurance and are now having it refunded if bought into it.
I don’t think there would be so much advertising of it or interest from the legal profession if it were not another money making/taking racket to pay it back.
By the way, the post about two to a room was sarcasm, but while it goes on I am afraid your house price wont drop and your wages wont go up.
You can either keep moaning about the cost/lack of housing, or support the call for an end to unskilled immigration. We are overcrowded.
Shut the gates!
pat ato
with respect only 7% of the land mass in the uk is built on, and 1000’s of 3bed homes ex of bedroom tax, now unoccupied, are being bulldozed, freeing vast swaths of land for redevelopment …
So what %age of the landmass being built upon would be environmentally sustainable by the planet in your opinion?
Where do we draw the line? And when/how?
Do you want future generations to grow up in a giant city with no
forests or fields?
You are missing the point,which is not that there are not enough homes, it is that there are too many people. This affects the lives of everybody. Wealth = assets divided by people.
If you keep importing minimum wage unskilled labour who is going to pay for the construction of there accom? The materials and labour required to build a 2 bed flat cost IRO £80K, without the land
(the bit affected by prop. prices) so on their wages can they afford it?
What do you think? And What will happen while we wait for all this magically funded housing to appear?; Whats happening now.
And when that housing is full it wont be enough because the next wave will have arrived. Unless we stem the problem the solution will only ever be short term.
pat ato
this is about planning for the future where we are is where we are, in terms of available accommodation…one of my passions in life is perma-culture….the foundation stone of socialism is human rights…..there is plenty of land for all…to live on sustainably…the capitalist economic model is plain wrong, it unbalances nature and natural forces…
It is the capitalist model that encourages mass immigration in order to
keep the lower ranks worried for their jobs and livelyhoods, but the problem is still one of the breeding habits of the worlds uneducated.
There will never be an end to the number of human beings needing
land to live on, and increasing the supply will fuel the demand.
It will be impossible to keep up, so why bother with short term solutions? Shut the gates and be done with it. The baby boom will slow as the newborns are educated, and things will even out a bit.
Shut the GATES!
pat ato
if you think i want to be locked in with a bunch of capitalists, think again.
for me the future is better served getting rid of capitalism..then everything else will naturally fall into place..it will not happen over night..boris is not serving the british people but the “oppressed rich”, people burdened with the great responsibility of wealth, i’m sure there will be many people willing to set up wealth de-burdening booths along the thames….
Yeah, Pat Ato, but the first thing our ‘friends from abroad 🙂 ‘ do when they arrive on these shores is start breeding (if they don’t already have a brood) – you can’t stop people shagging and having kids! And the funny thing is that once they are here they become anti-immigration! lol
And agree to, that immigration only serves the interests of the rich; it serves only to frighten the proles by increasing job insecurity as well as depressing wages and destroying working conditions.
ALL the political parties are serving the rich, and the only way you will stop it is to vote independent at the next election and sling the parties out!
Agree too! They are all in it together!
You won’t get rid of capitalism/the money system because we all buy/are conditioned into it – we are all held out the carrot that we too can become rich – one of ‘them’. Everyone is trying to get/wants to be rich! Of course the vast majority of people waste a lifetime pursuing a fool’s errand. Capitalism isn’t going anywhere soon.
Foreign workers are not our enemy, the Capitalists are! I couldn’t care less about immigration. I have no problem whatsoever with my ethnic minority neighbours. Workers of the world should unite and fight against exploitation.
http://www.internationalsocialist.org/
It’s not immigration That’s at fault! Our so called leaders want us to blame migrants so our attention is off them? Divide n rule?
We need a socialist alternative?
We need an anarchist alternative that does away with government entirely. A society organised along horizontalist lines, just consider that!
For that to even be possible we must first abandon the futile goal of Economic Growth, as E.F. Schumacher pointed out. Anything else would be akin to CaMoron’s ‘Big Society’. So long as The State exists it has an obligation to care for its people.
Dont even GO there. The rich want the poor blaming each other, not the immigrants they have imported to cover the pensions deficit. If you had seen or experienced how my life has
been affected by immigration you wouldnt even think of posting such a bizarre comment.
You sound ever so much like an odious racist with your simplistic solutions. Are you a UKIP/BNP supporter?
Immigration is only a problem under the present state, i.e capitalism holding sway, it is therefore capitalism and NOT immigration that is the problem.
Pat u r bizarre. Exactly the rich want the poor blaming every one but the so called leaders. And u fall into the trap, u blame migrants!! What a racist rant!!
pat ato
sounds like a people coming here taking all our jobs rant, that plays into right wing hands…the cause of the lack of decent housing, and other services, lies with successive right wing govts over the last 30+ years, which has caused very complexed social problems for the working classes..ie industrial and community decimation, privatisation of industry, and people being forced away from their natural communities to look for work, ie forced to commute greater and greater distances, often would look for and take local accommodation where the jobs are, a mass migration of labour, now there are no industries, recruiting or absorbing labour, as industry used to be able to do, as it is all gone…we live in a time where toffs (bosses), can maintain their social cohesion and indeed enhance it, as seen in the massive gentrification of london that is on going….the working class legacy in the uk has evaporated, this is a difficult and bitter pill to swallow, this is “jobs fight club” britain, that our capitalist overlords have continuously planned for, it is straight from “hard times”, and a reassertion of deserving and undeserving poor, less eligibility et al…
people come here legally or illegally, they are like you and me, working class, desperate for work, for a fresh start in life, often wearing rose coloured specs, are enthusiastic until ground down by our state…some go back to their eu countries of origin some do not, some cannot go back to their countries of origin…both our strength and our weakness is our working class honesty, we must stop serving the dishonest…the mass unionised helicon days of the british working classes, if one can call it that, have gone…what happens next is up to us, working class people live in very complex times, and working class people must stick together, for the cause of humanity, we must stick together to overcome dracionia….
ps pat ato
see also jv’s malnourishment blog post….
pps pat ato
as i’ve described above, very often leads to the social isolation, many many people in the uk are now experiencing, because many britsh people have reached the end of their tether. sick to the back teeth of, “if we/you/one moves to seek employment all our/your/one’s problems will be solved”, but in fact have been made worse by so doing, now often alone and in living in isolation. in following their jobs migration “betterment” dream, the british working classes once had at the initial collapse of our natural communities, in the early 80’s and set off on a journey to migrate from their beleaguered and decimated communities as trickle turned into torrent, that has led us to where we are today….just look at british cinema, music, and comedy, from 1940> many of those films et al, could not be made today, from a social commentary stand point, they would be seen as completely irrelevant to today’s way of lie, as fantasy, had it not been true at the time and recorded…the material fabric that produced these treasures has been torn to shreds…to thrive people need strong vibrant communities…”brassed off”…
Boris the blue eyed blonde with the German Bulger sounding name really thinks he is part of a super race.
Boris Johnson = Utter CUNT
Someone called Tanya Byk has a petition going around trying to stop the 11% rise in salary for MP’s being proposed.
g fawkes
yeah i’ve posted it back 1…
The Bank Bailout
According to the National Audit Office, The UK taxpayer spent £850bn bailing out the Banks in 2008. This is almost twice the nation’s total annual budget. For this amount, the UK could have funded the entire NHS (£106.7bn a year) for eight years , our whole education system for twenty years (£42bn a year) or provided two hundred years of Job Seekers Allowance (£4.9bn a year).
Thanks for the exact(ish) figure, Mr Reynolds.
Most people I ask believe it to be 80 billion, as they cant really handle
billions in the 100’s. But is that u.s. billions or british billions?
Are we talking 850 thousand million, or 850 hundred million?
An answer in digits would put things in perspective for everybody.
There is a figure quoted as of 2009, wgich equates to 26,5grand for every tax payer in the country, so that is understandable
even if 5 years out of date.
http://thefinanser.co.uk/fsclub/2011/08/how-much-have-the-bank-bailouts-cost-uk-taxpayers.htm
http://thefinanser.co.uk/fsclub/2011/08/how-much-have-the-bank-bailouts-cost-uk-taxpayers.html
oh dear dear cameron can socially “cleanse” brits out of london,but eastern europeans no chance,sorry if off subject slightly but the rich in park lane have got one huge problem comming next year,my heart bleeds for them
read the express comments section my oh my “the rich are revolting” moi ide love your take on this my friend
Please forgive me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression that if a developer built properties, x number of percent had too be made available to both the SOCIAL HOUSING AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING NETWORKS. Can this be verified?.
does anyone know, what date this 6 month workfare starts in april next year ??
After April 1st, allegedly, though it remains to be seen how they are going to find sufficient placements for millions of people. I think it’s bullshit and won’t happen.
Copy cats
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/29/blig-n29.html
annos
on change org there is a new petition boris should take an iq test…..
Philip, I would love to know the answer to that question too. Surely that the answer to building houses cannot to build for the affording population otherwise it wouldn’t work. I have seen lots of new houses go up in the North West and surely the houses cannot be filled quickly by private home owners. Apparently the North doesn’t have a shortage of social housing, which is good, but still 700 people sleep rough a year in just 1 area of the north.