RIGHT TO BUY - A tale.

Right to Buy

Not abolishing “Right to Buy” is one of the crimes of our MPs. Granted for the middle class, it seems like a good idea, why not give away billions of pounds just on the basis that someone was lucky enough to have been allocated a council house when they needed it, why not promote the capitalist ethic.

The following story is true; if you see nothing wrong with the attitude expressed you are probably not alone.

I was confronted at a conference by an ex-policeman (not that I think his profession relevant) who wanted to complain about Kirklees. His complaint was that his aged parents, who lived in Hightown, had been refused Housing Benefit.

They had lived in and brought up a family in a Council House provided by Spenborough Council, their son (the Ex-policeman) thought it was nonsense them paying rent so he encouraged them, and financed them to use Right to Buy, especially as they were entitled to the maximum discount, worth over £40,000 to them.

Obviously the son used his own money to fund the purchase so it was only right that he should charge a rent, equivalent to the Council rent. It wasn’t right though that his parents had to pay so he encouraged them to apply for Housing Benefit.

This was his complaint; nasty, mean Kirklees had refused to pay it. He was considering evicting them so they would qualify for a council bungalow, which was much better suited to their current needs.  

Right to Buy - State theft.

STATE THEFT 

Council Houses were built and paid for by local people. When Thatcher wanted to give a bribe to families just on the basis that they had been lucky to be allocated a house by their council, she should have paid for central government money, instead she stole it from local councils.

We now have a situation where these houses are now owned by private landlords (40%) and the State, through Housing Benefit is paying much more that it does for council owned houses it has not yet stolen.

The scheme is morally wrong, economically wrong and Socially wrong.

The Labour Party Nationally is compliant with this corrupt policy by refusing to address it.


http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/40-of-right-to-buy-homes-now-in-hands-of-private-landlords_uk_5a2a70f7e4b073789f68f161?utm_hp_ref=uk-homepage

How will you wait for a council house.

Housing policy could hit vulnerable people

Housing policy could hit vulnerable people

The National Housing Federation (NHF) has warned that a shortage of sheltered and supported housing could be exacerbated by “disastrous” Government policy. The claim centres around a reform that will see housing benefit in all social housing capped at the level of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) as of April 2019. With LHA calculated on the basis of household size, those in homes deemed to be under-occupied could lose out. David Orr, the NHF’s chief executive, said providers of such housing may refrain from delivering them if funding from rent is in jeopardy. The NHF suggests that there could be a shortfall of 300,000 homes by 2030.

Kirklees Conservative Defends Land Banking

In a bizarre contribution to the debate in Council in response to the Conservative Governments White Paper on removing blocks to building, the Kirklees Conservative Group chose to defend "Land Banking".

This is despite the government, the LGA, most conservative councils and just about everybody involved in housing condemning the practice. "Land Banking" is the practice of buying land, getting planning permission to build houses, then not building the houses, just sitting back and watching the price rise. It can be done by a speculator, or by a large housebuilding company. Typically the company gets permission to build, say, 200 houses, but only builds 20 straight away, it could take 10 years (or more) to complete the site, meaning that people who buy the houses have to spend years living on a building site, with dirty roads, congestion and noise.

The additional effect is that it reduces "available land" in the local plan and allows developers, aided by government inspectors to get planning permission on sites not zoned for housing, such as Green Belt Sites.

It seems the only people who think "Land Banking" a good idea are speculators and the people they collaborate with such as Bankers and Lawyers, and now of course the Kirklees Conservatives.

HOUSING HAND OUT TO THE RICH

HOUSING HAND OUT TO THE RICH

It is no surprise that the Conservatives choose to hand out money to the rich, but the fact that they do it pretending to be helping to solve the crisis that is in part created by the right to buy. The BBC article reproduced below show it helps those who don’t need it, whilst those without the high wages are stuck with bedroom tax.

About 4,000 households in England earning more than £100,000 annually are in the Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme.

Official figures to December 2016 show more than 20,000 households who are not first-time buyers have been helped.

The initiative, which started in April 2013, aims to make buying a home more affordable.

But research conducted for the government found that just over half of those who signed up to it said they could have afforded to buy without access to the scheme.

Help to Buy was launched by then Chancellor George Osborne to attempt to encourage more housebuilding.

The government offers a 20% equity loan to buyers of newly-built properties and 40% in London, on properties worth up to £600,000.

The buyers have to put down a 5% deposit and, when the property is sold, the government reclaims its loan.

This means if the value of the home goes up, the government will make a profit.

Similar schemes were set up and have now ended in Scotland and Wales.

 

Labour's shadow housing secretary John Healey said: "While the number of younger people who own a first home is in freefall, the number of government-backed affordable homes to buy has fallen by two-thirds since 2010 and badly targeted schemes like Help to Buy are not focused on those who most need a hand .

"Labour would change that and make helping first-time buyers on ordinary incomes the priority for Help to Buy."

Gavin Barwell, the housing and planning minister, said: "We're committed to helping more people find a home of their own with the support of a range of low-cost home ownership products.

"Our Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme continues to make home ownership a reality for thousands of people, especially first-time buyers right across the country."

The government said it had committed £8.6 billion for the Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme to allow it to run in England until 2021.

 

POLITICS IS ABOUT PEOPLE

POLITICS IS ABOUT PEOPLE #1

 

JOAN & ALFRED

 

In our early 70’s we lived in our own house, it was a three bedroomed semi where we had brought up our family. We were quite active but couldn’t manage the stairs and the cleaning. We could not find a bungalow to buy that met our needs. Thankfully we applied to the council and were lucky enough to get a lovely bungalow that we can manage and we didn’t have to move away from our friends.

Talking Housing Policy - Kirklees Cabinet and John Healey MP

Cllr Steve Hall, Cllr Cathy Scott, John Healey MP,
Cllr Graham Turner, and Leader of Kirklees Council
Cllr David Sheard (not pictured, Cllrs McBride and Kendrick)

Member of the Labour Cabinet met recently with John Healey MP, the shadow housing Minister, to discuss the housing crisis.

Over a 2 hour meeting many ideas where discussed on how the current housing crisis in Kirklees could be addressed. 

John took on board the comments from the Cabinet, and is to feed this back to his team. These will contribute to developing policies to help address the current Government's abject failure to ensure a decent home for all. 

Ensuring everyone in Kirklees has access to a decent home is a priority of the Cabinet, and they will look at all the possible options to achieve this. 




 

Clegg slams Tory Mates

George Osborne Didn't Want To Build Houses That 'Produce Labour Voters,' Claims Nick Clegg                                            

Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (left) and Chancellor George Osborne (right) react during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, London. | PA/PA Archive

                                                      

George Osborne and David Cameron blocked plans to build more social housing because it would "produce more Labour voters", Nick Clegg has claimed,
According to the former deputy prime minister, the chancellor and prime minister rejected repeated Lib Dem attempts to get more money to build homes for people on low incomes.
Clegg quoted the chancellor and prime minister in an interview with The Independent today as telling him: "All it does is produce more Labour voters."

The former Lib Dem leader also said Osborne blocked his attempts to expand childcare provision for two-year-olds for poorer families in favour of offering 30 hours of free childcare for older children as it would score a political victory over Ed Miliband.
Clegg claims the chancellor told him at the time: "All we want to do is to shoot Labour’s fox".

Huffington Post

UKIP ON HOUSING

Housing is an important local issue in Kirklees so UKIP’s views on housing are interesting.

 

UKIP have claimed that they offer something different on housing. However, their representative in Parliament Douglas Carswell MP has voted with the Tories time after time on the housing issues that matter most.

 

 

On private renting – Labour recently put forward plans to require all landlords to ensure rented homes are ‘fit for human habitation’, meeting basic standards including being free from vermin and having working boilers. Yet, these modest plans were voted down by the Tories – and Douglas Carswell.

 

On secure homes for council tenants - Labour tried to stop the Government changing the law to undermine stable family homes by forcing councils to restrict tenancies to a maximum of five years. Despite the fact that it was Margaret Thatcher who enshrined this right, UKIP’s Douglas Carswell again sided with the Conservatives and voted to end security for council tenants.

 

On local homes for local people – UKIP’s manifesto may have promised to prioritise homes for those with a connection to the area, but when UKIP MP Douglas Carswell had the chance to vote for Labour’s plans to give local people first dibs on new homes built in their area, he didn’t turn up.

 

UKIP talk about offering something different on housing, but the reality is they just follow wherever the Conservatives lead.

TAX on WORKING FOLK

TAX ON WORKERS

You may be aware that the government are proposing, that those residents living in Social housing and Housing associations properties earning more than £40,000 per year per two highest earners within one tenancy, will be forced onto the higher 80% of market rents payments system, even though they have existing tenancy agreements.

The income from this to local councils will go to the governments treasury debt to counter the Tory's austerity debt, whereas income from this increase to housing associations will be kept for re-investment.

Currently this proposal exists within local councils but up to the earnings of £60.000 Gross per house hold, but on a discretionary basis. At the moment very few authorities have implemented this as its clearly unfair.

The government proposal to reduce this £60,000 cap to £40.000 will effect many low paid households. Two nurses living together earning £21.000 each will fall into this catchment as the income per household will be £42,000.

The additional money taken as a result goes to the government therefore it can only be seen as income tax, which could lead to a number of legal challenges.

Right to Buy Question #5

Tight to Buy Question #5

Where do the people who have been paying their rent with housing benefit, get the money to pay a mortgage? Or if they pay in cash, why was that money not declared when applying for housing benefit?

Councils to lose out on rent changes

The Chancellor's decision to reduce social rents by 1% a year for four years from April will cost local authorities and housing associations £2.3bn by 2019-20, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Central government will pocket £1.7bn of the savings through reduced housing benefit. The rest will be shared among the 1.6m social tenants who are not on housing benefit.

The IFS said that the group "will gain an average of £420 per year". The report warned that "by reducing the annual rental income of social landlords, the cut in social rents could reduce the amount of new housing supply".

The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that 14,000 fewer social sector properties will be built between now and 2020-21 as a result.

The Times, Pages: 44-45   Daily Mirror, Page: 26

Councils scale back on house building plans

Councils across England have shelved plans to build over 5,000 homes in response to George Osborne's annual 1% cut in social housing tenants’ rents each year for the next four years, the FT claims.

According to a survey by the District Councils’ Network, this will leave district councils facing a £719m revenue gap and is why 5,448 homes have already been canned by district councils. The National Housing Federation is reported to have estimated the construction of at least 27,000 housing association homes would be cancelled as a result.

The District Councils’ Network research also revealed that English district councils have lost 3,019 homes in the past three years through the government's Right To Buy policy, but have only been able to afford to replace them with 377 new ones.

In Kirklees we are committed to building Homes for the future and looking at proactive ways of enabling this. Currently the housing applications we have at the moment on Choose n Move Registration Count 11,202, with total houses available 263.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE - HOUSING FAILURE

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE - HOUSING FAILURE

Yesterday I had a very long talk with a Kirklees resident who is not unique in any way in the situation she finds herself in.

She is in her early 90's, her husband who served in the 8th Army in Africa and Italy died about 20 years ago. Her son lives in London and her sister lives in Manchester. She has no relatives living in Yorkshire. She is living in the family house where she has lived for over 60 years, the house is a three bedroom house with a garden. She used to know all her neighbours who were also bringing up families, everyone looked after each other and the gardens were neat and tidy.

She can no longer look after her garden. Her neighbours have moved out and both the neighbouring properties are new private lets operated by a letting agent, all the gardens are now neglected and are used to dump rubbish. She has seen Police raids on her neighbours, periods where the houses have been gutted and abandoned, there have been disputes, between her neighbours about car parking ( She does not drive and sold their car when her husband died), her washing line has been pulled down as her neighbour now parks his car in front of her house.

Ideally she should be moving to a more suitable property. But as she owns her house she does not qualify for social housing. If she sold her house there is nothing on the market in the private sector that would meet her needs. In the past, not that long ago, she would have been able to move into a Council Bungalow or a Housing Association flat, where not only would she be able to manage the property she would have had neighbours of an age and outlook nearer to her own.

Today the council and Housing Association Waiting lists are getting longer and longer, the Governments reaction has been to force Kirklees to sell the best houses it has, not to use the money to build more houses, but to give the money to the Government who will then give discounts to people in the South to buy their housing association houses, that have then got a good chance of becoming private lets at 5 times the rent the Housing Association were charging.

So a lady who's husband fought in the second world war, who has never claimed any benefit, who paid for their own housing needs is now stuck in house, that though full of family memories is now a burden, she is alone, struggling to make ends meet, her husband was not a Banker, he only worked hard all his life in a job without a massive pension, or annual bonuses. She is stuck in the middle as the Conservative Party continue in the mission so amply demonstrated by Dame Shirley Porter, in bribing people who were lucky enough (or regrettably in some cases clever enough) to be allocated Social Housing when they needed it.

Social Housing Sales is not meeting the aspirations of those in need.

HOUSING CRISIS

HOUSING CRISIS GETS WORSE

Last week I was approached by a constituent with an acute housing problem. The  young family, a working family, were facing a crisis, already in unsuitable overcrowded accommodation they had received a further blow with a serious medical crisis (I don't want to go into detail for fear of identifying the family) meant that their accommodation need was greater still.

I will do what I can for them, but had to point out that the type of accommodation that they desperately needed was in the class that George Osbourn has told us we have to sell, to give him the money to bribe people in Housing association houses with un means tested hand outs.

We have been told that if no one in our area is wanting to buy their Housing Association House, we still have to sell our houses and give him the money to allow him to give to people in the South, where ex-council houses are being rented out privately at 6 or 7 times higher rent than the council charged.

If anyone still believes this government is not constitutionally corrupt they are not looking from the same place as I am.

Poor Pay for Houses for the Rich

POOR SUBSIDISE MANSIONS

Just when you thought the Conservative Housing Policies could get no more daft and unfair they excel themselves in brass necked robbery. They plan to give first time buyers who can afford a £450,000 home a £90,000 public hand out.

To pay for this they are scrapping subsidies for "Social Housing" and "Affordable Housing", they are letting developers build 100,000 houses without contributing a penny to local road networks or schools. The Builders are flocking to be added to the Conservative Press release to sign up for this hand out, no longer will they have to pay expensive accountants to work out how to avoid their taxes, the Conservatives have done it for them.

Planning fees are being abolished which means another cut for local authorities, with Eric Pickles determining planning appeals and interfering with local plans, is it any surprise that companies scramble to support the Conservative Scheme.

This scheme discriminates against anyone over 40, anyone without surplus funds or anyone who has managed to get a first step on the housing ladder. It is doubtful that it will reduce the price of houses as the developers will pocket the profits they make from this tax avoidance. This £90,000 hand out must be compared to the bedroom tax imposed on those without inherited wealth or access to nepotistic support.

TORY HAND OUT TO THE RICH - AGAIN

Brandon Lewis, one of Eric Pickle's protégés, has just handed the Abu Dhabi Investment Council £8.9m in a move that the director of planning at the Conservative-controlled authority the City of Westminster, John Walker, described  as “insane”.

Questions must be asked about this policy. Is "insane" the only description that can be used or should we be looking for other motives?

The policy is the decision to scrap the requirement for developers and speculators to make a contribution to Social Housing (housing that some ordinary people can afford). This has been pushed through even though the departments own estimates (probably on the low side) estimate that £1.9b worth of "affordable" housing will be lost nationwide, all to line the pocket of the "Spivs and Speculators" (to use Vince Cables words).

Among the first beneficiaries of the policy were the developers of a block of luxury Mayfair apartments, including 5,000 sq ft units with cinemas and billiard rooms. The scheme, 20 Grosvenor Square, is backed by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, and the developers had agreed to donate £17.9m to affordable housing as part of the planning deal, but Lewis’s policy allowed that to be slashed by £9m.

Councils estimated that Lewis’s policy could boost property companies’ profits by hundreds of millions of pounds, while the City of Westminster said it stood to lose £1bn in affordable housing contributions.

Developers condemn housing policy that risks wrecking social mix in London

KNH Toy Store

The annual KNH toy store - helping families have a brighter Christmas

Help spread the word of @Shelter, on housing and homelessness

We've recently been contacted by Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity, who have provided us with this quite startling information. Here is what they have told us. Please help us share their message with others, by sharing this post with your own networks:

We know that one in 14 people in Yorkshire and The Humber fear they won’t be able to afford to pay the rent or mortgage at the end of this month. Yet many people in this situation would feel too ashamed to ask for help.

Shelter’s helpline receives too many calls from people in desperation, and on the brink of losing their home, because bills and notices have been left unopened and problems have piled up.

This January we are encouraging those at risk to seek advice from Shelter and avoid problems spiralling out of control.

We would very much appreciate your help in getting this message out there.

You can take these four actions to help people in Kirklees to find professional advice:

   1. Post a link to our online advice on your website - www.shelter.org.uk/advice

   2. Encourage your case workers to bookmark our online advice pages -

      www.shelter.org.uk/advice so they can refer to them when dealing with housing-related case work

   3. Let your constituents know how to get help from Shelter via our

      online advice and free telephone helpline number - www.shelter.org.uk/advice 0808 800 4444

   4. Tweet our online advice details, or retweet us. You can find us at @Shelter

You may also wish to share the ‘Shelter Stories <http://www.sheltercontent.org.uk/adviceblog/> ’ blog, which seeks to offer a first-person, friendly, and accessible introduction to advice.

For lots of people, the New Year period brings further challenges and worries.  That’s why we are urging anyone worried about paying their rent or mortgage to make seeking early housing advice their New Year’s resolution.