Homes for life or just until you’re successful?

An independent report published today, claims that the average young couple with children, will need to save for a deposit for 12 years. The report goes on to say that a childless couple living in Yorkshire will need to save for almost five years to get a deposit on a house, where the average property is £87,599.

With unemployment levels still high and banks remaining reluctant to lend, getting a mortgage if you do manage to raise the deposit is no easy task. The government’s Help to buy scheme, where only a 5% deposit is needed would mean a couple with children in London would have to save for an estimated 20years according to Shelter.

With that in mind, many are left paying over inflated rents to private landlords for often poor accommodation while sitting on council housing waiting lists.  It is a fact acknowledged by all political parties that there is a shortage of 1 and 2 bedroom properties. Councils and housing associations are desperately short of suitable properties. While consecutive governments have continued to sell off council houses and failed to build replacements, there simply are not enough properties left to meet the demand of an ever growing population.

While most agree investment in building more properties is needed, some claim that the answer is to evict those families who can afford to pay rent freeing up homes for the very poorest and unemployed.

There are several obvious flaws in this argument.

Even if there was a cap, where any one earning over £25,000 per annum for example would lead to people being afraid to succeed, knowing that a promotion at work might result in having to move the kids from their current school and into a less comfortable property. It would create disincentives.

 At present, council tenancies are for life. This means that couple are able to build up their family while striving to improve their lives knowing that they are laying down roots that they have a roof over their heads. The alternative is simply a generation of nomads.

 Families wanting to live in a nice house will spend money to make council houses nice for their family, if they know they are staying as long as they need the home. If tenancies were reviewed or there a chance that if you are lucky enough to get a job then you will be forced to move, the likelihood is that tenants will not spend their money improving the home.

Others suggest that certain professions should be banned from council homes, such as union leaders and members of parliament. Again, this would only serve as a disincentive to working class people to aim for the better jobs. Aspirations would be crushed while the working class would be unrepresented in the top jobs, even more than they are already.

Aspirations and incentives aside, if the only people allowed to live on council estates were the poor or unemployed, then those estates would become ghettoised workless lifeless crime ridden no go areas. The cost of which would be massive. The cost of crime and the fact that no one would be paying full rent and in many cases no rent, would put greater burdens on local authorities no ease them.

Investment is needed urgently to build houses, and the occupants need to be from all walks of society. There should be a sliding scale of rents and taxes that reflects the tenant’s ability to pay. This way, local authorities will get money they need to provide services that they cannot afford at the moment due to crippling cuts to budgets.  I would like to see my local councillor or trade unionist living next door to the unemployed or low paid manual workers living next door to journalists and teachers. That is the way to set an example and breed aspirations. That is the way to lift the quality of council estates.

Obviously, there needs to be strict criteria on allocation of these properties. There needs to be proper consideration to the most needy getting them. There is even an argument that there should be a minimum waiting time to stop giving immigrants who have just arrived, priority over families with a history in the area.

   There is to some extent still a degree of snobbery from critics of council estates. The middle classes look down their noses at the people living on them, thinking they are full of work shy chavs. If hard working men and women who have bettered themselves lived on these estates the stigma would start to erode and maybe decent people might once again be proud to stay on the estates. There used to be a phrase that an Englishman’s home is his castle, if we are not careful an Englishman’s home will be just a dream…

council flats-just a dream for some?