Yesterday, the BBC reported that David Cameron’s government is about to end secure tenancies for council house residents. It will also put rents up to ‘near market values’ for all social housing tenants. These terrible policies are the very same Tory proposals that my colleagues and I first uncovered three years ago. Last year this four minute video, made by the Guardian, summarized the issue in full.Back then, the Conservatives said we were “scaremongering”. In fact, it’s almost five months to the day that David Cameron told the Telegraph that Labour had spread “lies” about this which, he said, was the reason Labour won the Hammersmith Parliamentary Seat. I wrote to him about his false and un-prime ministerial accusations but he has never responded. Now, it turns out everything that we said his government would do has sadly been proved true.
These proposals are dire. They, along with the Coalition Government’s new plans for housing benefits, will put many of our neighbours on low incomes into a state of despair. Large numbers of local families will not be able to make ends meet or pay their rents. What will happen to them then?
1 comment:
I think that prefabs will come back. I cannot see any alternative. After the 2nd WW the then Labour Government commisioned several different types of prefab to last 10 years and many still stand today. With the combination of lack of social housing being built, and the forced displacement of families on HB I do not know where these people are going to live. The outer boroughs that have been mentioned in papers from H&F already have their own housing problems.
In my view the coalition will have to look at prefab housing for some years to come or face homeless families on the streets of Whitehall holding placards.
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