Making innocent people homeless doesn't solve our housing problems, Mr Denham

Sometimes things just make me cross as they are so pointless, so obviously about ministerial willy wagging rather than addressing any real problem. The announcement by John Denham, Secretary of State for Communities, of the:

“...the first-ever national crackdown on tenancy cheats to recover up to 10,000 council and housing association homes fraudulently sublet, and release them to those in real need.”

OK it looks pretty good – bad people are making “thousands” from sub-letting a council house they have a tenancy for but don’t need. And the sub-letting families “do not qualify for a council or housing association home”.

But Mr Denham.....

There are over 1.8 million people on housing waiting lists and there is not enough social housing for them. In most places the only lettings go to those in the very highest categories of need – nationally this is at about 70% (and is probably 90% once specialist housing types like sheltered housing are taken out). So what the minister means by qualifying is simply being either at serious risk of homelessness, fleeing violence or having very specific medical or social needs. These people get housed.

Instead of worrying about “illegal subletting” ministers should worry more about the following:

1. Affordability: a study by Huw Jones at re’new for Leeds Housing Forum showed that on current trends in rents we will reach the point where Council rents are unaffordable to those in low paid work

2. Supply: public sector landowners fail to release land for developing social housing – and when they do suggest development of land they demand full market value making provision only affordable with public subsidy (i.e. national government housing funds are siphoned through local authority, NHS and other public land sales to be spent on something other than housing)

3. Use of commuted sums: councils up and down the country are sitting on millions gathered from developers – they should be given a time limit to spend this or have the cash handed over to housing associations for them to develop and this would be linked to release of land

Evicting a load of poor (often immigrant) families so as to house some other deprived families solves nothing, creates a new problem of homelessness and serves no obvious purpose in improving housing outcomes. Seems to me that this action is about stock control rather than helping to house the poorest and most needy in our society.

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