Saturday, November 20, 2010

Tenant's finances to be checked after two years!

Apparently tenant's finances are to be checked after two years, and if they don't need or rather qualify for social housing they will be asked to move on.

Great plan, should free up lots of social housing. In fact Labour came up with a similar very stupid idea before the election. They also ditched it, because whilst on the face of it, it is attractive, it is also very very barking mad.

If you are going to check someone's finances and on the result of that check make them move, then they will never breach what arbitrary number you have set. We already have this problem with the rest of the welfare state where people can't afford to take jobs because they would lose money doing so. The net result will be a very anti Conservative squashing of aspiration which is one of the driving forces of the party.

It does however get worse. If, as intended people who succeed move on, and those who don't stay, then estates and housing stock will fill with a homogeneous lack of achievement and ambition further stifling aspiration and ambition and directly counteracting the effect of allowing council house tenants the right to buy which broke up estates of despair.

The government wants to help the 1.8 million households on the waiting list. That is easy, we no longer have a dismal Labour government which utterly failed to build as many houses as any other government so anything will be an improvement.