General Discussion
I was speaking to someone in Dawlish today who was explaining to me how the Warm Start scheme (aka scam) works. Now, does anyone know if this is correct? This is the scheme:
Basically, she was furious that a person she knows who is a tenant on housing benefit has recently had the heating and plumbing redone on her landlords property courtesy of you and me the tax payer. I'm not sure how much but the scheme pays up to £6,000 and the landlord does not have to contribute a penny.
If this is true, how is this right?
Just reading a bit more of it: "To be eligible you must own your home or rent it from a private landlord."
So I guess the scheme doesn't apply to squatters. Wtf?
Looks like it is true then so it is another total disgraceful abuse and waste of tax payers money. No wonder everyone I know is a friggin landlord or wannabe landlord.
Hi Steve. Farther in law had new energy efficient storage heaters fitted under this scheme. He is 74 but he says Age Concern (UK) organised it and EDF energy paid for it. Looks like it could be a tax loop hole for the energy supply companies or some carbon emission, Green crap.
Cant find any evidence that the tax payer is footing the bill and it certainly isnt a scam the stuff is top quality and expertly fitted by Southern Electrical Contracting he had to wait over 12 months for it to be done though
cheers
Sorry, it should have read 'Warm Front' in my first post. I am not sure the tax payer is not footing this bill. From what I have googled the reasoning is that Landlords have no incentive to be energy efficient and spend money on improving properties for tenants.
Well it should become law then like it is for other businesses. Or the tenant should be able to claim back from the landlord money wasted due to poor heating and insulation.
By scam I mean an excuse to fund tax payers money through to property owners. The whole system of housing benefits and grants is one big scam as far as I am concerned. All part of propping up an over-inflated housing market with tax payers money.
Remove housing benefit and the whole housing ponzi scheme would collapse.
Remove housing benefit and six members of my immediate family would be homeless!
I haven't got room to house them, mind you I could fit the grandchildren in my shed, they're still small.
Seriously though, the housing benefit is the only alternative to providing enough social/council housing. The biggest mistake ever made (in my opinion) was not allowing the moneyreceived from the sale of council houses to be put back into building more.
I don't think your family members would be homeless. They would have to be evicted first.
However, having six members of your family on housing benefits kind of shows what a mess we are in with this benefit.
Removing housing benefit today would cause a severe headache for the borrow-to-let speculators and hence the banks. It would save the tax payer £20 billion a year though. Yes it would cause a financial mess for some that would have to be cleaned up afterwards, but at least we would have got rid of this total waste of money.
But this will never happen because governments are too weak and their one and only solution to all failing and failed policies and organisations is to 'prop it up with tax payers money'.
Before Housing Benefit it was called rent rebate and was more controlled!!!!! We had a rent assessment officer who would check on the rent being asked to assess if it was fair for the property, this type of benefit has been around for over 35yrs that I know of because I was eligible for it then when divorced with children. Maybe they should bring him back now to deal with these overinflated private rents!!!!!!!!
Smokey, we definitely need an alternative to the current system and I think a good place to start is to abolish it and see what happens and what needs to be done even if it means getting the army in to set up temporary accommodation for those affected. In fact, those affected that are capable of working can help the army put up the accommodation. It would also be against the law for any landlord, borrow-to-let speculator or bank to evict anyone without their being other suitable arrangements in place for them to go to.
I know this is quite a radical move, but we would then be back to scratch as it were and could assess what needs to be done. Supply and demand would then kick in and the oversupply would force down house and rental prices. Eventually most people would get somewhere to live at a price they could afford and the temporary accommodation could be slowly dismantled over time.
Constantly pumping tax payers money into a bloated property sector via bank bailouts, housing benefits and grants is madness and I think it is time to end this madness.
I understand what you are saying Steve but can you see it happening ? I know this is me living in the past but when they started building again after the war, they had to put up prefabs for people in some areas due to the bombing, I cant for the life of me think why they cannot do that now to solve the housing crisis. I remeber seeing something on local tv a few years ago of a company that said they could supply units like this to help solve the housing crisis at a reasonable price. I know that many of these prefabs still excisted in Exeter not so many years back
How about making Supermarket developments incorporate a block of affordable flats into their plans say one flat per 100 sq meters of store. These could be erected from cheap timber frames like Butlins twin decked chalets used to be, and could form part of the car park area. The council could then provide a list of waiting tenants and these could be vetted on the basis of financial suitability.
Another way to reduce the housing benefit burden would be to raise the age of council responsibility to provide accommodation to 21 therefore putting the increasing number of teenage pregnancy cases back into family responsibility
Smokey you are right about these prefabs still being around. I have seen them on Rightmove in parts of England. I think Wiltshire but can't be sure off hand.
The problem is not the cost of building houses but the cost of land marked for residential purposes. This is completely under the control of government along with the bank of England base rate.
Having bailed out the banks, which effectively means guaranteeing piles of dodgy mortgage debt that people could easily walk away from by declaring themselves bankrupt, the government has put themselves in a difficult position.
However, there is no reason not to allocate land for social housing as long as the land is owned by the government. There will always be builders willing to do the work if corporations are not interested. This could be used as a vehicle to move people from housing benefit funded accommodation to government funded accommodation which would be much cheaper.
We have always needed social housing in the UK and people may as well accept it. Unless a completely radical way of organising society is introduced that is a fact. So we may as well accept it and handle it in the most cost effective way possible.