Young Londoners Leaving

[simvastatin]

On 28/06/2018 at 13:57, longgone said:

maybe the outskirts 

round brick lane white chapel  it`s hipster heaven. 

Hipsters are very villainous if you don’t have a beard and smoke an e-cigarettes 

They attack with sarcasm 

[longgone]

38 minutes ago, vincent said:

Hipsters are very villainous if you don’t have a beard and smoke an e-cigarettes 

They attack with sarcasm 

no match for a chair leg 

[simvastatin]

2 minutes ago, longgone said:

no match for a chair leg 

Don’t be to certain 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/18/polish-girl-16-found-dead-at-school-after-complaints-of-racist-b/amp/

[longgone]

53 minutes ago, vincent said:

Don’t be to certain 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/18/polish-girl-16-found-dead-at-school-after-complaints-of-racist-b/amp/

shame 

no hipsters there probably a few landlords though. 

[simvastatin]

1 minute ago, longgone said:

shame 

no hipsters there probably a few landlords though. 

I was alluding to “it’s not just sticks and stones “

[longgone]

2 minutes ago, vincent said:

I was alluding to “it’s not just sticks and stones “

she did herself in no one at fault. 

off topic anyway.  

[simvastatin]

Just now, longgone said:

she did herself in no one at fault. 

off topic anyway.  

She was a good decent young girl 

[longgone]

1 minute ago, vincent said:

She was a good decent young girl 

indeed. 

[simvastatin]

7 minutes ago, longgone said:

indeed. 

that sounds like a sarcastic “indeed” the way my old headmaster Mr Hobson used to say but his brain got trashed flying spitfires in WW2 so what’s your excuse 

[longgone]

4 minutes ago, vincent said:

that sounds like a sarcastic “indeed” the way my old headmaster Mr Hobson used to say but his brain got trashed flying spitfires in WW2 so what’s your excuse 

does it ? 

sounds fine to me.  

seems you are looking to drum something up here.  i suggest you jog on. 

[simvastatin]

5 minutes ago, longgone said:

does it ? 

sounds fine to me.  

seems you are looking to drum something up here.  i suggest you jog on. 

Not really I am never going to change you, and like wise you will probably never change me

[longgone]

1 minute ago, vincent said:

Not really I am never going to change you, and like wise you will probably never change me

excellent glad we got that sorted i can sleep well tonight. 

[simvastatin]

2 minutes ago, longgone said:

excellent glad we got that sorted i can sleep well tonight. 

LOL 

[Bland Unsight]

13 hours ago, fru-gal said:

It's not nonsense. Immigrants are more likely to fit into the categories that puts them into priority banding according to social housing criteria. The criteria is based on "need" and more points are given according to how much in need they are. For example, overcrowding is one of the categories that qualifies as a "need".  Immigrant families tend to be larger than native ones (often for cultural and religious reasons) and therefore more likely to be living in overcrowded accommodation. This means they are more likely to be placed in a higher banding and have higher priority for housing to alleviate overcrowding. There is nothing racist about this, it is just a fact.

It's obviously not racist to suggest that immigrants are more likely to fit with certain social housing criteria (it may even be true, though I thought that migrants were predominantly young and working and studying so I'm dubious that the typical migrant has a large family).

Making the argument about migrants and housing allocation is in my opinion pretty much the opposite of the most common form of racism, which is to attribute a property to a group and then wittingly or unwittingly attribute that property to an individual simply because they are drawn from the group. If you both believe that Irish are drunkards and therefore also believe that an Irishman of whom, aside from the fact of his Irish ancestry, you otherwise know nothing, is bound to be a drunk, then that's racism.

My fear for the forum is that the emphasis on matters of race and immigration is looming large whereas its impact is likely to be much more modest and there are few context where this is more obviously the case than social housing.

The only sane reason to be concerned about mass immigration in relation to social housing would be if one felt that native born nationals were more entitled to that housing (a reasonable if not unimpeachable position) and that immigrants were stopping native born nationals getting social housing. However  (and if someone wants to roll up their sleeves and crunch the numbers to prove me wrong I'm keen to be corrected) my guess would be that if every immigrant family that has arrived in the last ten years and secured social housing was thrown out of it and every immigrant family on a waiting list was taken off that list then there would still be more people demanding social housing than there was social housing. Why? Because for about thirty years the Conservative party, the Labour party, the Coalition and then the Conservatives again have made sure that very little social housing is built whilst at the same time a massive swathe of the previously existing stock was sold off.

The matter of the level of immigration is small beer when the reasons for the disappearance of social housing from London are properly understood. Fundamentally, we are a democracy and we kept voting for less social housing, so we have less of it and therefore there isn't enough of it to go around (with or without added demand from immigrants).

Source: Migrants and Housing in the UK: Experiences and Impacts, Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, November 2017

Edited July 5, 2018 by Jurassic Bland

[Will!]

41 minutes ago, Jurassic Bland said:

The only sane reason to be concerned about mass immigration in relation to social housing would be if one felt that native born nationals were more entitled to that housing (a reasonable if not unimpeachable position) and that immigrants were stopping native born nationals getting social housing. However  (and if someone wants to roll up their sleeves and crunch the numbers to prove me wrong I'm keen to be corrected) my guess would be that if every immigrant family that has arrived in the last ten years and secured social housing was thrown out of it and every immigrant family on a waiting list was taken off that list then there would still be more people demanding social housing than there was social housing. Why? Because for about thirty years the Conservative party, the Labour party, the Coalition and then the Conservatives again have made sure that very little social housing is built whilst at the same time a massive swathe the previously existing stock was sold off.

The matter of the level of immigration is small beer when the reasons for the disappearance of social housing from London are properly understood. Fundamentally, we are a democracy and we kept voting for less social housing, so we have less of it and therefore there isn't enough of it to go around (with or without added demand from immigrants).

On a small point of pedantry, I think it's worth pointing out that social housing does not necessarily equal government-subsidised housing.  If a social landlord wishes to offer tenancies to immigrants who cannot afford to house themselves, as some churches did during Windrush, then that seems to me to be a matter entirely for them, as long as they are not using government subsidies to fund this.

Personally I think that the only non-British citizens who should be eligible for government-subsidised housing should be key workers, who provide essential public services, and asylum seekers, who may have no other source of housing. 

[GregBowman]

14 hours ago, Si1 said:

It's a size thing too. Commuting in to Manchester Leeds or Birmingham city centres from pleasant rural satellite villages or suburbs is pretty easy, so there isn't the need for the middle classes to occupy the inner cities, which remain ungentrified.

Good point 

[Bland Unsight]

2 hours ago, Will! said:

On a small point of pedantry, I think it's worth pointing out that social housing does not necessarily equal government-subsidised housing.  

On an equally small piece of pedantry there's an awful lot of government-subsidised housing in the private rented sector. 

[iamnumerate]

12 hours ago, Will! said:

 

Personally I think that the only non-British citizens who should be eligible for government-subsidised housing should be key workers, who provide essential public services, and asylum seekers, who may have no other source of housing. 

I agree with the proviso that asylum seekers should only get permanent residence if

a) they prove that they were in danger

b) they can support themselves.

If (b) is not shown then they should only get temporary - and be forced back home when things improve.

[Will!]

On 05/07/2018 at 21:52, Jurassic Bland said:

On an equally small piece of pedantry there's an awful lot of government-subsidised housing in the private rented sector. 

Agreed.  Local Housing Allowance in a high-density metropolis like London is a real cauldron of unintended consequences.  Personally I'd turn Housing Benefit into a non-refundable Income Tax relief (also known as 'negative income tax'), but I've posted about that before (and talked about it at a Labour Party constituency meeting in south London and proposed it to the Labour National Policy Forum etc...)

Edited July 8, 2018 by Will!

[Bland Unsight]

Bit of analysis from the GLA's February 2017 Housing in London

Quote

The chart shows the current tenure of homes in London, not their tenure when first built. A large number of homes initially built as council housing have been transferred to the private sector (through the Right to Buy) or to housing association ownership (through stock transfers), while many private rented homes were initially owner occupied and vice versa.

Also, from the same source:

Whilst the leverage isn't nosebleed horrifying, the housing associations are usually using lots of borrowed money. For example, L&Q group houses 250,000 people in 95,000 homes in London and the South East (link). Their  2017 balance sheet showed about £4.4bn worth of debt (including £2.6bn in bank loans) against about £11.2bn of assets (predominantly existing housing stock but including about £1bn of "land and properties for sale and work in progress"), link.

This is financialisation in action.  You move from the situation before the Land Compensation Act 1961 whereby local authorities can buy up land cheaply and add to the stock of housing (holding down house prices and the price of land for residential use) to the present situation where housing associations borrow money and the borrowing is backed in part by rents paid by the state. That leverage then contributes to the bidding up of the price of residential use land and the price of houses in the capital. 

Edited July 8, 2018 by Jurassic Bland

[Bland Unsight]

That said, the key trend in London tenure mix doesn't concern the housing associations (source of figure is the GLA 2017 report again).

 

[maverick73]

All smart people are.... all I see are reminders of the European community of construction builders... ?

[Bland Unsight]

8 hours ago, Jurassic Bland said:

That said, the key trend in London tenure mix doesn't concern the housing associations (source of figure is the GLA 2017 report again).

 

By the way, does anyone remember when the 1988 Housing Act introduced the Assured Shorthold Tenancy? IIRC it was late Eighties, maybe 1988?

[goldbug9999]

On 05/07/2018 at 10:18, stuckmojo said:

I agree with that. And it's insane. 

Average salary in london is 35k, only a tiny % earn 100k+, what it does have is armies of middle managers and civil servants earning 40-60k.

Edited July 8, 2018 by goldbug9999

[longgone]

1 hour ago, goldbug9999 said:

Average salary in london is 35k, only a tiny % earn 100k+, what it does have is armies of middle managers and civil servants earning 40-60k.

none of those salaries provide a "high" standard of life in london at the current price level unless already owing property from a long time ago.  at current pricing levels minimum wage should be 50k per annum for shelf stackers. ?