Housing market success and failure

[Tim Lund]

It was almost too pat, but this morning I was chatting to neighbours living in adjoining almost identical properties. In the first, a tenant was moving out, her landlord was there as well, and a short while later the new tenant came along and started moving in. Everything very amicable, and warm words all round for the services of Wooster and Stock (I'm not getting paid for this- but I have no problem giving credit where it's due.)

Next door not so happy. Belonging to a housing association, after some work had eventually been done on the property, now months later they still hadn't managed to fill the space, even though I'd assume the rent would be much less. I asked why, but there was no satisfactory answer. I'm sure this housing association has all sorts of policies in place about fairness and social responsibility, but it seems in this case market forces do a better job.

[Edited to correct impression given that the housing association property was empty - but it is c. 75% under-occupied]

[simono]

Well there may be a number of reasons. However in the vaste majority of cases the nomimation from the property will come fron the Council and not from the market. Lewisham I think operate a choice based lettings system, giving usually homesless families some choice about where they live. Even so typically they only get two choices. People do sometimes turn down the first property they see. We have to remember that in many cases this will be their property for a very long time, maybe for life. After all when you are buying a house you rarely buy the first of second one you see.
Also whilst people are supposed to give 4 weeks notice before they move out, sadly they rarely do. So the new tenant is not lined up before the previous tenant moves out.
The allocations also has to be fair, it is not driven by the market but by an assessment of the need to the people who are moving in.
I don't know how long the property has been empty, where I work we relet properties in just over 3 weeks, depending on the works that have to be done.
The two markets are not directly comparable and they cannot be as they serve different client groups with very different needs. However there is no excuse for leaving scarce social housing empty for any longer than is absolutely necessary.

[Tim Lund]

Simon:

Your response made me see I'd slightly misrepresented the picture - see my edit above. And also see my PM - I'm always happy to learn from someone with more direct experience of how things work.

For me the heart of the matter is why the market for housing is failing in this case - in the same way that I'm interested in why the market for work is failing for so many young people, as touched on in the thread I started on Intergenerational injustice. You write

The allocations also has to be fair, it is not driven by the market but by an assessment of the need to the people who are moving in.

which begs the question whether market forces can be made to work fairly to provide lower cost housing. If you say it can't, then you divide citizens into "different client groups", which I find troubling.

[Eagle]

I think it is wrong that councils are legally bound to house people whether they are deserving cases or not.

People born in The UK who have a job ( or have had for most of their working lives ) should get priority.

The growing number of people who have no intention of ever working should be housed in empty housing in The North.

People not born here seem now adays to not only have the same rights as the locals but in many cases more.

I await a Liberal Blast.

[Tim Lund]

I think it is wrong that councils are legally bound to house people whether they are deserving cases or not.

People born in The UK who have a job ( or have had for most of their working lives ) should get priority.

The growing number of people who have no intention of ever working should be housed in empty housing in The North.

People not born here seem now adays to not only have the same rights as the locals but in many cases more.

I await a Liberal Blast.

Eagle - you're saying here that what people deserve should make a difference to whether they get housed - which I think everyone would agree with. Where we may differ is what makes a difference to what people deserve. There's a hard-line 'classical' liberal / free market position that all that matters is if they can afford to pay. There's a more conservative view, which you and probably many other people hold, which says that whether they were born in the UK makes a difference. There's another view - which you and many others will also share - that what sort of work people do, even if it doesn't bring them in enough income to afford market rents, also makes a difference. For example, young people starting out on a career in teaching or nursing might well be thought to deserve special treatment. However, if such 'proper' jobs are not getting created, thanks to the state of the economy, and specifically the failure of the market for jobs, then this is going to be a bit harsh.

Then there's the more recent sort of 'liberal' position which is that someone's personal difficulties should make a difference - so for example, if they have kids in tow and nowhere else to go. I suspect this is the main sort of thing you where hoping for a 'Liberal Blast' about

As for housing them in The North - isn't Hampstead full?

[Eagle]

Thanks Tim for your well constructed reply.

I object to two groups mainly getting on the housing list.

Foreigners.
Can you imagine Ellis Island 100 years ago if you were lucky to get by the medical and other tests ,the immigration official said , welcome to the USA , would you like an appartment on 5th Avenue
or a mansion on Long Island.
Do British people arriving in other countries get housing paid for by the state.


Also people who have no intention of working. They do not have to have children as you state.
The state should have no duty to house people who are parasites on the rest of us.

[Tim Lund]

Thanks Tim for your well constructed reply.

I do try

I object to two groups mainly getting on the housing list.

Foreigners.
Can you imagine Ellis Island 100 years ago if you were lucky to get by the medical and other tests ,the immigration official said , welcome to the USA , would you like an appartment on 5th Avenue
or a mansion on Long Island.
Do British people arriving in other countries get housing paid for by the state.

I suspect not as easily as here, but I may be wrong. I think there are EU rules which mean the benefits available in any country are available to citizens of any EU country who are there, but because English is so much the international language, there are many more people ready and able to come here than Brits wanting to bunk off to say Spain, however much better the weather.

Like you, and almost everyone, I imagine, I'm more annoyed by the idea of a foreigner living here off the UK taxpayer than a native born Brit doing the same, but I'm rather more annoyed that anyone should be able to, which is surely a failure of government. On another thread you commented recently on the

hundreds of thousands of jobs in London being done by immigrants. One should be asking why British school leavers are not doing these , or some of them.

- a position with which I have more sympathy.

I'm glad there are so many immigrant groups in London, not just for the diversity they bring, but because they're good workers, and on balance benefit the economy.

Also people who have no intention of working. They do not have to have children as you state.
The state should have no duty to house people who are parasites on the rest of us.

I don't think many people will disagree - but may take issue with the suggestion that significant numbers getting housed thanks to the benefit system are actually parasites. The problem is - how on earth do you tell?

[Robin Orton]

I think society benefits from having a leisured class - parasites, if you like - and I don't mind a small part of my taxes going to support them. All this work,work,work stuff really depresses me - Anglo-Saxon Puritanism in its latest dreary incarnation. Who's going to write the poems, sing the songs, dream the dreams?

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.

[Tim Lund]

I think society benefits from having a leisured class - parasites, if you like - and I don't mind a small part of my taxes going to support them.

them - or me? Are you not now one of this leisured class, bringing us now dreams, joyful songs and poetry ? Is it your taxes going to them, or ours to you? Shall we do a little actuarial analysis on whether your lifetime pension contributions and tax payments, on various different investment assumptions, would pay for whatever pensions you are receiving now, free bus passes and other benefits of baby-boomer-dom? Or is that sort of thing just too, too Anglo-Saxon puritan?

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.

I'm coming on all Polly Toynbee-ish, wanting to insist that poverty is a relative concept, and that anyone who insists on it being a matter of absolute need is some kind of throwback to the classical liberals who brought us the New Poor Law in 1834.

[Robin Orton]

Robin Orton wrote:
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.

I wish. Philip Larkin, I'm afraid.