Monday, Feb 22, 2010
Danegeld
BBC: Grants to rent empty Somerset homes as social housing
Imagine you are a council with a long waiting list for social housing. What do you do (a) build more social housing to cater for them, which will bring down rent levels, and then charge a rent sufficient to cover your running costs (so there's no real cost to the taxpayer) or (b) give owners of vacant properties massive grants (out of taxpayers' money) to help them renovate their properties (thus pushing up rents)? On Planet Home-Owner-Ist, the answer is (b) of course.
Posted by mark wadsworth @ 02:07 PM (1074 views) Add Comment
8 Comments
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1. Baroo said...
But Mark who would pay for the construction of the new housing under option (a)? Perhaps the tax payer? And how would that compare to the cost of these subsidised renovations?
Just a thought.
2. Crunchy said...
Spot on mark!
Why let the bubble pop, when you can use the taxsuckers money to prop.
3. mark wadsworth said...
Baroo: "who would pay for the construction of the new housing under option (a)?"
The tenants would pay for it via their rents, i.e. as long as their rents cover running costs and interest on any borrowing, it costs the taxpayer nothing. The council is perfectly entitled to set a rent that covers this cost (anything over £80 a week would cover it, probably)
I am a taxpayer, as it happens and I have thought this through. I balk at propping up house prices even further by giving existing property owners grants to renovate their houses, in exchange for which the taxpayer gets at best nothing, and at worst a higher bill for Housing Benefit.
4. rumble said...
(a) build more social housing -- solves a problem
(b) give owners of vacant properties massive grants -- delays a problem
5. mrflibble said...
Unbelievable. I now firmly believe that the whole farm has been staked on keeping this housing charade going in the desperate hope we can somehow return to the successful housing flipping based racket economy we once had.
Times change and this country isn't changing with them from the looks of it. Our house flipping days ended when we flipped them passed the point where FTB's could not get involved, but hey, lets not allow that to stop us.
I'm half expected to hear that Gordon Brown has spend £50bn on some magic beans soon...
6. Ulfar said...
The capacity for lending is finite, it doesn't matter how much the government try to defy this rule it will eventually fail.
7. magnaman said...
PHEW!!........thought the headline was refering to "Grant" Bovey!
8. dbc reed said...
The Empty Homes Agency which is a big influence on alleged thinking on this question is very much of subsidise owners to renovate school.But a lot of the homes on its facts and figures crammed website are a)derelict b) in areas people don't seem to want e.g.old Lancs cotton towns.This is a job for LVT man.These empty homes should be taxed on site value only and when the owners give up on them,the sites should be cleared pending re-development as affordable housing on Mark Wadsworth lines if necessary.With Burnley etc,it is surely a matter of getting replacement industries to go there. (Like Thatcher did with disused Sunderland airport in a regression to socialist regional planning/ interference with "market").