Winning Wedge Issue
Browsing Labourhome it seems clear that Labour activists have not got a clue just how out of touch they are from voters on Right-to-Buy, or as Dave has renamed and revamped it, Rent-to-Mortgage.
The Labourhomies attack it for ideological reasons, they despise the policy as nasty and Thatcherite. Extending home ownership has been a central tenet of Tory belief since the time of Macmillan, especially since a property owning democracy favours them politically, giving people a capital asset, bolstering independence and enhancing social mobility. State provided housing favours Labour politically, helps keep voters tethered to the public sector, increases dependency and inhibits social mobility. Labour activists think of council estates as helping those in need, Tories see them as keeping people in need.
It is a fantastic wedge issue. Labour activists talk about RTB/RTM in terms like "selling off the housing stock" and "reducing the supply of social housing", voting council tenants see it as moving up, owning their own home and getting a start on the property ladder. If council tenants under the new scheme can buy their homes at a good discounts to market value because of the length of time spent renting, the scheme will be a vote winner. Labour activists don't seem to understand there are no votes in keeping people trapped renting in the public sector.New Labour strategists will be triangulating carefully, weighing further upsetting the activists versus thwarting the aspirational strivers known in New Labourspeak as "decent hard working families"?
55 comments:
That was rather political, Guido - it is August you know!
NuLab response:
a) cautiously welcome the sales (they need the money).
b) quietly tip off their activists that they're gonna nail any aspirational, greedy, wannabe property owner with an inheritance tax that they'll be unable to pay.
c) house then seized to pay said tax and returned to public ownership.
d) everybody on the left is satisfied.
Guido - that's the theory.... but all the indicators are that there is a massive shortage of "affordable housing", particularly social rented housing, and this policy would only serve to reduce supply. The net effect will be to exacerbate housing shortages and further fuel house price inflation. The result will be even greater social polarisation and even greater levels of social exclusion for those left behind, coupled with increasing resentment from those on below average incomes who will find it even harder to get housing. The council house policy sell off worked last time round because there was an over-supply. This is not currently the case. Ideology may turn out to have counter-productive effects in this particular case - the Tories need to think harder about housing policy (particularly as they are opposed to creating new housing in South East growth areas).
Wouldn't it be wonderfully ironic if thirty years on almost to the day another Tory election victory was based on the same manifesto pledge as in 1979
THE SALE OF COUNCIL HOUSES
Many families who live on council estates and in new towns would like to buy their own homes but either cannot afford to or are prevented by the local authority or the Labour government. The time has come to end these restrictions. In the first session of the next Parliament we shall therefore give council and new town tenants the legal right to buy their homes, while recognising the special circumstances of rural areas and sheltered housing for the elderly.
In terms of political advantge surely this policy has passed the tipping point.
We now have a whole class of teachers nurses and coppers who can't afford to live anywhere neat their place of work.
Families, those hard working families that Conseratives will rely on if they are to get power, can no longer afford any sort of accomodation in decent areas because there's no social housing. The private renting sector is full of crap accommodation at Rachmann rents. That's what keeping people in need.
How does moving a home from the grip of the state into the ownership of the householder reduce supply?
Tories are opposed to building in their backyard.
Indeed - selling council houses can help build more social housing. When a council or housing association owns a council house the monetary value of the property is locked up whilst it is tenanted - it cannot be used to fund the building of more homes. This can mean the value is tied up for decades.
RTB, when managed properly, allows initial housing crises to be addressed and then for the capital tied up to be released to fund more development. Instead of ageing houses ouccupied by regulated tenants for life, with the public facing the cost of maintenance etc, the public gets brand new unoccupied housing stock - perfect for addressing real housing needs.
It is all just a ploy to increase the Tory take on inheritance tax when they get into power. Geo. Osborne, Esq., on t'wireless this morning, when quizzed about Byers's preposterous exercise in Brown-undermining (see "What is Byers Up To?", below), pretty much said that the Conservatives would not abolish IHT in the interests of fiscal responsibility and, er, prudence I suppose.
Sorry to be political, but it's Guido's fault. Post more totty, please.
Get real!
Average council/housing association rents amount to between £2,500 and £5,000 per year. How much of a mortgage do you think that will support? Add in the fact that the tenants/owners would now have to pay maintenance (previously met from their rents) and it's a non-starter. That is why Rent-to Mortgage schemes have failed to take off in the past.
Voice of Reason - If you want coppers, teachers and nurses in a particular area, and they can't afford houses there, the answer is not to make them a gift of capital or rent, but to make the people who live there and want their services pay more to fund higher pay. If yoy live in, say, Ken or Notting Hill and want the coppers to live there too, you pay a higher precept to the Met so they can pay them enough to live there. It's just as much a cost of living in W as house prices.
I've concluded that encouraging this nonsense on Labour home has been productive for the Tory cause.
This item is not a watering-down of the usual gossip quality mark. It's quite clear that Guido's emphasis is on the ferrets-fighting-in-a-sack aspects of this story rather than the dull technicalities of what makes a good housing policy.
The three great political questions worth bothering about are always: who's up? who's down? whose round is it?
Policy is a factor in what gets the ferrets fighting. Guido has lasered-in on the economic point. The usual Leftist attack on the sale of council houses was that it reduces the number of available homes. Well, how is a home "available" if it's got a ruddy council tenant living in it? Or, put it another way: which local authority is going to display socialist heroism and evict 'undeserving proles' in favour of 'deserving proles'? They won't even evict undeserving proles running crack dens etc etc.
Re Blue2win's comments on the 1979 Manifesto - I have a dim memory that rent-to-mortgage/shared equity/whatever schemes were actually in the 1979 manifesto: one of the great ideas shelved as too difficult.
At the moment, we have an artificially inflated housing market where prices are kept astronomically high. Hence core workers such a policemen, nurses, etachers etc being unable to afford anywhere near their place of work.
Releasing cash which is currently locked up in social housing will not mean that there are any less house, but it will mean that more hosuing can be built. This might, just might, cool off the property market to a more sensible level without huge crashes and negative equity. This will, of course, mean that the Tories will have to buck their ideas up on new housing. But this doesn't mean Prezza-style concrete outlay all over the fluffy baa lambs, there are a lot of developable brownfield sites out there, particularly abandoned buildings (I can see one that could easily house a dozen good-sized flats from where I sit). We can also regulate those sneaky shysters, estate agents.
A final thought. What HW doesn't appreciate is the attitude of an average council house tenant to casual vandalism when it's property they own rather than something the council has to clean up for them, and the subsequent downturn in this kind of anti-social behaviour. Not that I'm advocating giving the scrotes a fucking good kicking, of course.
voice of reason said...
We now have a whole class of teachers nurses and coppers who can't afford to live anywhere neat their place of work.
So a big round of applause to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth who`s expansion plans include building a car-park on what is currently subsidised Nurse`s accommodation.Many of these Nurses being from places like the Philippines and India factor in the cost of accommodation when they decide to come here.By the time they`ve paid 40% of their wages just to have a roof over their heads in the crummy part of town and paid through the nose to get to work ,whereas now it`s a short walk, it`s just not cost-effective and they`ll go elsewhere.Of course the car-park will earn a lot of money for the hospital and who gives a toss how many operations are cancelled,wards closed down e.t.c. because of staff shortages as long as the books balance?
the tories are running to catch up on this one. labour is already extending right to buy (as 'right to acquire') to housing association stock. problem is, RTB discount rates have been cut and as a consequence this year the level of sales has been the lowest on record (http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/article.aspx?articleid=1447974). equity shares (shared ownership) are labour's way of bridging the gap, letting people build up a share of their homes over time.
in addition, housing associations are already looking at using housing benefit to purchase new social-rented housing ( http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/article.aspx?articleid=1447355 ) and it's just a small step from there to expanding it to individuals as cameron is proposing.
the key question is, will giving tenants 15 or 20 years' worth of housing benefit cost the state more or less than giving them the RTB discount? and will the take-up be greater than RTB? i'm betting overall this will cost more. so where's the money going to come from?
oh and the best way to speed up the delivery of new homes is not to 'release cash locked up in social housing', it's to sort out the woeful planning process, as any housing developer will tell you.
oh and this is factually incorrect - "When a council or housing association owns a council house the monetary value of the property is locked up whilst it is tenanted - it cannot be used to fund the building of more homes. This can mean the value is tied up for decades."
housing associations can, and do, borrow on a large scale against their housing stock to fund new housing development. you might not like who those homes go to, but that's not to say they're not built. what we actually need is more of that kind of thing.
Going on how Guido's moderated this site before, i thought this blog only wanted gossip, humour or tittle-tattle, not 'boring' and serious... or is the latter OK if it's (albeit gentle) labour bashing??
Why should I or anybody else have to subsidise some scrotes future house purchase by allowing them to buy their council house/flat at a discount?
That is what has happened in london , in fact abu hamza the tottenham ayatollah made a swift 100k by excercising his right to buy.Those properties should stay in public hands (not private hooks)
right to buy on housing association property has never been a goer as the council of mortgage lenders have always made it clear that they'd reduce their lending to housing associations - the policy would have an impact on how HA's were able to pay back lending which accounts for the majority of funding for the build of many properties
a great policy to have in opposition but not one that's likely to be implemented in practice without central govt throwing money at the scheme to fund the discounts
a better scheme would see landlords supporting tenants to build an equity stake that would allow them to put a decent deposit on a property built for sale.
Probably the best piece I've seen from Guido.
"Labour activists think of council estates as helping those in need, Tories see them as keeping people in need."
Ah-bloody-men to that.
William Norton I have, er sort of, given you an direct quote from said 1979 manifesto.
Dont get too excited LabourHome may be as full of nutters as ConservativeHome!
I'm at a disadvantage as to which Tory Thatcher policy failed the most?
Was it the sale of energy provision that gives us the cheap gas and electric we enjoy today, or was it the death of mining that makes us independant of Russia, or was it the sale of BR that gives us a modern, cheap and fluent rail travel? I'm at a loss to the lunacy of the former Thatcher SS werewolves still fighting their total destruction of this once great land.
But Guido has at least helped. It must surely be the selling of council houses which was the biggest flop of all that almost no-one took part in.
Thank you Guido.
Couldn't you all just spread out a bit? There's plenty of affordable housing up here in the rarified north... you don't have to live in the southeast, y'know.
Gary
"But Guido has at least helped. It must surely be the selling of council houses which was the biggest flop of all that almost no-one took part in"
Which alternative universe are you living in? "Almost no one"
Do me a bloody favour.
It's easy and convenient for the Left to blame the sale of council houses (IMHO, to their rightful owners) for the increase in property prices. It's more down to a growing population, and crucially, changing demographics. More people are living on their own, and for longer.
Who wants to see key public sector workers prevented from living in certain areas? No-one. But the answer is not increasing their already significant dependency on state provision. People should be paid what their skills demand, and be given the opportunity to own their own homes.
The policy is just as relevant as it was in 1979.
Well, Hull spent all that lovely money from the sale of Kingston Telecomms on refurbishing and bulding loads of homes which stand empty. I don't see Prezza offering up these for the homeless immigrant communities. Not a good vote winner.
But, NuLab have the typical problem between aspiration and dependancy. They now that dependancy breeds support, and the social budget grows, creating state jobs, to feed this dependancy. Just like a dealer hooking his clientele and ratcheting up the drugs.
Methinks that NuLab should be reported to Knacker of the Yard.
Blue2win: yes, I saw the quote re sale of council houses. But there was in addition to that something or other about shared equity/rents-to-mortgages, which is a slightly different matter.
Guido
What I would like to know is, what is the difference between Dame Shirley Porter supposedly buying votes by selling off council property and Labour buying votes by housing and employing vast numbers of people in the labour voting regions?
Surely an effective opposition (something we lack) should be asking some questions and making an effort to hang some people out to dry.
Any of you considering voting Conservative at the next election are idiots, the slap headed ponce who heads that organisation has promised you no change so why vote for them?
Peter Smallbone. We agree, except they should be paid what their skills AND DEMAND FOR THEM dictate.
Splendid post by Voice of Reason about the, er, plight of teachers, nurses and coppers.
Does anyone know any teacher, nurse or copper who actually wants to live near their place of work? If they're anything like the coppers I come across, they can't wait to get away, something they often manage to do surprisingly close to the end of their shift...
morrisox once upon a time police officers HAD to live on their patch,in a Police house.
I know this as my Mother grew up in one.I also know that my Grandfather knew every villain as they were his neighbours and knew who had done what and then arrested them, and rather than cautioning them he made sure they got a few years up their backsides.
Those policies worked.
Sorry Guido you are blogging nonsense! If you live in an area where wages are low (I do) If you live in an area where house prices are abnormally high (I do) If you live in an area where council houses have been sold off, and are now second homes (as they are) How are local people going to have somewhere decent to live? Many people in social housing are on housing benefit, how are you going to explain to the taxpayer, that they are paying for people to buy their homes: could be a problem. Try living in the real world Guido, it might come as a shock to you. What does Dave inted to sell off next, Sheltered housing.
If Council houses are so wonderful they must never ever be sold to the people who live in them (lest they discover independence from the State) - why don't all those Labour MPs live in Council houses and PAY RENT for them? Not buy 2 council flats and knock them into one huge property - like Ruth Kelly!
Also, those same Labour MPs will not be permitted to buy second homes, using the taxpayers' money (Additional Costs Allowance) thus gaining a huge capital asset at the end of their tenure as MPs, but will have to PAY RENT for another nice Council property in London, near Westminster.
Guess that'd be a vote winner with Labour MPs, don't you think?
Living opposite the British Museum and paying council rent is a good option.
the trouble with people who buy their council houses is, they feel compelled to install fake stone cladding on the front, a crazy-paving drive, huge ornamental gates (radio-controlled) and a curly neon sign that says "Mon Chateau". Quite spoils the character of a decent council estate, it does. There you are, padding off down the chippy on a Friday night with your curlers still in, past the pawnbrokers and the rag and bone man, and suddenly some bloody nouveau riche bugger with three Rottweilers and a giant SUV, etc...(cont. P94)
Ask anyone who bought their council flat how great right to buy is.Here you can buy yourself an ex-council flat for about 60 grand.Slight problem is that unless a certain percentage of other residents also bought theirs you can forget anyone getting a mortgage,most lenders pulled the mat from under proud new owners after re-assessing the desirability of such places should they be re-possessed.These places also have a myriad of problems such as councils trying to charge owners for say re-painting communal areas,they have have to maintain council property,private owners in the same block may well get a bill for their share of the work done whether they wanted it or not.Minor things such as communal digital tv aerials also turn into a major headache with bills appearing and yet another battle with the rocket scientists who answer the council`s phones...if you`re lucky.So you`ve got your flat,it`s all yours,all you`ve then got to do is find someone with that 60 grand in cash that really wants to live in Dodge City,spend half their lives arguing the toss with dense council officials e.t.c. rather than using that money to pay off a big part of the cost of a new Barratt place in somewhere called "Zone 57" or similar,usually a closed-down and tarted up old people`s home the council sold them for for a pittence.
"Try living in the real world Guido, it might come as a shock to you."
Most people in the real world (UK) own their own houses.
"It must surely be the selling of council houses which was the biggest flop of all that almost no-one took part in."
You are joking aren't you?
Nice comment on Labourhome, apropos of Cameron - and apparently not said ironically:
"He's try[ing] to turn people who live in social housing into hard working families."
What does that say about labour activists view of their "natural" consitituency?
I'm with you on the sale of council houses - but only if they are sold at their full market value. likely? No.
do hard working individuals get to buy their council house too, or is it only "hard working families"?
What about families who have never worked in their entire lives and have no intention of ever doing so?
Do they get to buy their council houses, with the mortgages paid by the State?
Dave certainly isn't stupid, though the detail looks a bit hazy at present.
The Tories know they absolutely have to capture the inner cities if they are to survive as a party. That means
eradicating the inner-city TradLab council collusion with the terminally workshy who are their main 'clients'.
- Defranchise the politicised property-hating, wasteful Councils (who to spite their RTB tenants do scandalously little to repair the fabric of council blocks but load the RTB tenants with ludicrously high service charges, which inhibits council tenants from wanting to buy in the first place).
- Transfer all council property to housing associations, who really are trying - and slowly succeeding - in adding value to an area.
- Reform the moribund planning laws.
- Split off the lazy benefit drones-for-life from the large segment of aspirational low-paid working people, give the latter a glimpse and taste of something they can achieve to take pride in, give a sense of partnership between them and government and make the sacrifices manageable, and you have an extra Tory vote of millions over a long period of time.
Cheap at the price - the Class War collapses, and we finally get some of the social cohesion we need - and deserve. Of course it irritates me to work bloody hard for decades to pay the mortgage, and see someone else get a free £100,000 worth of equity and pay off their mortgage within 8-9 years. But it happened before,under Mrs T. and we got used to it, and even began to see its value.
But let's stop all the whinnying about 'key workers'. Police, firemen nurses, teachers, they'll join the real world the rest of us equally low-paid professionals already live in, a world of compromise between commuting and quality of life, a few years of sacrificing ciggies, booze, clubbing and frequent hols against future prosperity.
Cameron may have spotted a winning strategy, as the latest poll figures suggest.
Well, do the Tories want to lose the next election? Or win it?
Venerable Hitchens, police officers once had to live in section houses, police houses, call them what you will. And how we yearn for those far off, simpler days when honest villains cried 'It's a fair cop guv, you've got me bang to rights etc., etc.' These days, you're more likely to hear 'It's an unfair cop, you're infringing my rights'.
Loath as I am to descend into unrepresentative cliche, those post war days when the police service was run along disciplinary lines similar to the Army are long gone.
Whether that was ever the right way to run a police service is another issue, but what has also disappeared is feeling that the police are part of the community they serve. They are well-paid public servants who now head for the same home-ownership enclaves as all the other aspiring young professionals.
Many is the time when I see a couple of young coppers wending their way back to the station. They choose this route because it is less likely they will see anything that needs investigating near the end of a shift.
Enough of this "key" worker bollocks!
Can someone explain to me what makes police/nurses/teachers more important than say dustmen/sewage workers/street sweepers etc, let alone the people who actually directly contribute to the economy?
Apart, obviously, from their presence on the public payroll, and therefore their being just another component of the government's client electorate .....
I'm with kafka - to an extent - on this. I keep reading about how key workers can't afford to buy houses because a house will cost seven times their salary. Well, I can't buy a sodding house either because a flat will cost ten times my salary where I need to live.
I am fast running out of sympathy.
Having said that, I do think nurses are more important than street sweepers. Not police though. They're never there when you need one, coz they're all off shooting brazillian electricians.
We would not need to worry about the shortage of housing in "decent areas" if the government stopped paying benefits and providing housing to the lowlife that turn decent areas into crime-infested slums. This is exacerbated by the shortage of good schools provided by the State quasi-monopoly and the high cost of buying and selling due to stamp duties. One side effect can be seen on the M25 with people travelling hours each day because moving home seems out of the question to them.
There is a desperate shortage of affordable homes, as many have said, there is a real need for the Conservative Party to dust down the old policy of Harold Macmillan who created the massive council house build in the fifties...Instead of selling Council Houses they are needed for the many low paid people and, in high value property area's, for nurses, police officers,firemen,
all necessary workers.
Council houses (or housing association homes) are needed and to sell them off when they are in such short supply and high demand is ridiculous.
We will soon have 2million Romanians and Bulgarians here shortly and we must provide shelter for them.
Come on Conservatives show the Labour Party who believes in Council Homes.
A couple of points ......
The company I work for, the staff commute in from pretty much anywhere within a 30 mile radius. Why shouldn't "key" workers do the same?
Looking in the car park at my local rozzery, you wouldn't think they needed any help. They can't all be officers' cars, or are there no constables left anymore? The concept of the local bobby pounding a beat he knows has long gone, so why they need to live next to the nick god only knows.
Firemen ... I know a few, and they all seem to have sidelines as tradesmen of one sort or another. A woman I work with who's married to one had her house completely refurbished by off-shift firemen. Let's applaud them for the dangerous work they do, & pay them accordingly, but let's not get sentimental.
One of my nieces is a degree-qualified nurse. She's had to go to Australia to get a job. No lack of nurses at our local hospitals, but doubtless due to some piece of governmental mismanagement, most of them aren't directly employed . Go there, and every nurse seems to be wearing a different uniform. There are directly employed, agency nurses, and even military staff on secondment. Supplying housing isn't going to change this mess.
Guido, how come you never attack tories?
Is it because you are Iain Dale?
Yes Guido, and your little Tory friends are the first to whinge and complain when there is no decent public housing available. 'Right to buy' was a privatisation exercise; it took away housing built and owned by public money for public use and handed it over for a pittance for private use.
RTB from councils can go horribly wrong - at River Heights, Plumstead (two blocks of flats), leaseholders are finding that out. They still have to pay service charges to (Labour) Greenwich Council. Last year - due to the belated discovery by the Council of an accounting error in its initial estimates of the service charges - leaseholders suddenly received demands for £4,000 so-called "arrears" of service charges and are now being asked to pay more in service charges alone than the Council tenants in the same blocks are paying as rent. For some leaseholders, the service charges are now double the cost of their mortgage repayments. I gather that the leaseholders plan to apply to an LVT to determine the reasonableness of the Council's service charges, and of the so-called "arrears".
"Yes Guido, and your little Tory friends are the first to whinge and complain when there is no decent public housing available. 'Right to buy' was a privatisation exercise; it took away housing built and owned by public money for public use and handed it over for a pittance for private use."
Yes, how horrific that working class people should own their own homes instead of being dependent on the government.
Selling council houses or indeed housing association houses under the right to buy was in the Conservative manifesto for 2005. As indeed was an expansion of shared equity schemes.
Selling a "social housing" property to its tenant does nto affect the availability of social housing as it removes one housing unit at the same time as it removes one person/family needing housing.
Tenants under either a secure tenancy (1985 Housing act) or Assured tenancy (1988 housing act) can't be evicted unless they breach very specific terms of their tenancy. For this reason they tend not to move. So seeling the tenant the house makes no odds. It just means you don't have to pay some arrogant housing officer to patronize and piss off a perfectly law abiding tenant.
Of course if Labour MPs were so concerned about this, they should sell off their second and third houses, to make more housing available to the public!
Personally I'd like to try my hand at a New Labour mortgage like the one David Blunkett or Tessa Jowell managed to secure.
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