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Polly and statistics once again

Westminster expects 5,000 families to be evicted by housing benefit cuts – and it\’s happening almost everywhere. Councils have no choice as they frantically search for cheap housing, often hundreds of miles away. In Hull the bedroom tax hits 4,700 families with a spare room, and only 73 small properties free.

Well, you know, I\’m just not sure about that. I really would be surprised if in a city as large as Hull there are only 73 empty houses.

Ah.

Mr Miliband said: \”The policy is not just unfair, it is not going to work either.

\”In Hull, 4,700 people are going to be hit by the bedroom tax and there are just 73 council properties for them to move to.\”

Now that is rather different, isn\’t it? RightMove seems to have 500 houses to let today. And that of course won\’t be the entire supply available (that doesn\’t even include flats at that site) in the city.

Further, of course a council house is not the same as \”affordable housing\” or even \”social housing\”. Here is the list of housing associations which have properties to let in Hull.

There may well only be 73 council properties available to let. But that\’s got pretty much fuck all to do with the availability of affordable housing in the place.

The truly gorgeous part of this story is of course this:

Large areas of former urban authorities, including Newcastle in the north east, Birmingham in the midlands and Ms Bartlett’s home city of Hull on the Humber were being afflicted with what policy analysts and academics called market failure. Unpopular areas of towns and cities, streets and housing estates, were being abandoned in their droves by residents willing and able to escape the terminal decay that had set in.

Labour’s favoured solution, as trumpeted by then deputy prime minister John Prescott, was to set up and fund the pathfinders to fix these failing housing markets. Many of the areas earmarked for rejuvenation, including Greek Street in Hull where Ms Bartlett rented her three-bedroom house, were considered by the pathfinders as beyond help: their favoured, expensive and often controversial solution was to demolish and rebuild; to rejig the housing market from scratch.

In Hull alone 1,031 homes have been bought with government cash from homeowners and landlords. The pathfinder programme as a whole has seen 21,765 homes acquired and 20,586 knocked down, according to Homes and Communities Agency figures.

The fat fucker decided to increase the supply of homes by knocking down homes. Is it any wonder that there\’s a shortage of homes?

9 thoughts on “Polly and statistics once again”

  1. One wonders if, in some cases, the big house with two people in is in a crap area, and the rent is actually lower than the two-bedroom flats that are actually available, which are in better areas.

    There really should be a requirement on the bedroom tax that there is a smaller property available and that the smaller property should be cheaper than the overoccupied one.

  2. Rather a selective reading of the article which puts the skids under the whole neo-liberal argument e.g.”…developers sit on enough land for half a million homes,waiting for prices to rise.They admit to making higher profits despite no building.Tayor Wimpey has called this its ‘ongoing strategy of prioritising margin over volume’The IPPR’s housing report shows how a conspiracy between banks and developers means a deliberate refusal to build,for fear of exposing land’s true worth.This zombie dysfunction needs firm government action”.
    Please deal with the substantive issues rather than complaining that the deportation schemes have been rendered inoperable.

  3. There is another side to this which needs to be taken into account.
    There is at least one family in my area with 4 generations of tenants in four different 2/3 bedroom council houses. When you add up their accommodation, they have a total of eleven bedrooms, for 5 adults and a baby.
    There are numerous families in this area with three generations in three different 2/3 bedroom council houses, because it has become traditional for each generation of benefit claimants to evict their offspring when the child benefit dries up. Maybe it’s about time this backfired on them.

  4. While having no time for the crap of assorted leftists it seems that the amount “saved” by messing about with housing benefit is not worth the hassle for savings that are peanuts comparerd with the way the debt is still being rocketed up by blulabour.
    If it is–as I believe–just some scheme concocted to stop the publicity black-eyes of million-pound- house immigrants, it would be cheaper to turf ’em out to cheaper homes and leave everybody else alone.

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