Housing: creative solutions

October 2023 and the City of London sees the removal of the cap on bankers' bonuses - a few will now start to receive their Brexit Bonus. Yet this post-EU policy shift stands in stark contrast to the continued squeeze on low-income families through the Benefits Cap. While both measures involve limitations on income, they paint a worrying picture of a widening economic chasm. Proponents of the Bonus Cap lift cheer the return of London's financial clout. They argue that rainmakers deserve their golden parachutes, attracting talent and boosting the sector's competitiveness. But critics warn of a return to the casino culture that fuelled the 2008 financial crisis. Unfettered bonuses, they fear, could incentivise reckless risk-taking, leaving taxpayers on the hook for the next meltdown. Meanwhile, those on the breadline face a different kind of squeeze. The Benefits Cap, in place for a decade and applied to just under half a million households, has had a devastating effect .

  8 facts you need to know about welfare reform This blog is simple. It gives facts that contradict commonly held and repeated views. It debunks the myths that we hear regularly. Print it out and keep it near you. MYTH 1. Keeping the rise in benefits to only 1% is fair because it hits shirkers, not workers. Fact: 60% of the reduction falls on in-work households. Why? Because the 1% rise - which equates to a real-terms cut - affects universal benefits like child benefit and tax credits like child tax credit. MYTH 2. Spending on benefits for those out of work is out of control. Fact: the majority of all welfare spending is on pensioners - 53%. Also, benefits for those out of work is less than a quarter of the total welfare budget. Second, on average, between 2000 and 2010, welfare spending grew annually, in real terms, by only 1.75% - compared to 5.5% in the 1950s and 1960s, and 3% in the 1980s. Third, benefit spending in 2011-12 accounted for 10.4% of GDP, lower than the mid-80s (11%

Housing policy has travelled a long way from post war Britain. The modern approach was described by Housing Minister, Aneurin Bevan. When announcing major investment in building social housing he said he wanted to see places, “ ...where the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and the farm labourer all lived in the same street. I believe that is essential for the full life of a citizen... to see the living tapestry of a mixed community.” Today, housing policy has regained its Victorian ethos; a tool used to divide. A scalpel is being applied to the ligaments that bind community. Where there is harmony, they bring discord. The gap between the haves and the have nots, the deserving and the undeserving poor, is growing wider. For individuals, that divide is increasingly difficult to breach.   Remember 2016. It is not just the year that for the first time the state permanently stopped subsidising the building of social rented housing, it is also the year that the undeserving were chased out of

Published in Inside Housing: https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/this-ole-house-42273  

As we approach the anniversary of the introduction of the bedroom tax, its’ impact is becoming clearer. DWP figures to November 2013 show that the HB reduction has been applied to 498,174 households and each has lost on average, £14.40 per week. With increases likely as families move into the higher priced private sector, the reduction in HB is likely to be £150m short of the recently claimed £490m. Let’s remind ourselves of the core argument. Speaking in the Lords on its introduction, Lord Freud said, “We do not think that taxpayers should be expected to meet the cost of somewhere approaching 1 million spare bedrooms, a cost of around £0.5 billion every year...”   So, what else could be done to make up this shortfall? How else could households be incentivised not to hold spare rooms? In the interests of fairness, what else could be done? After all, as an exercise in using fiscal policy to influence behaviour change, the spare room subsidy has been pretty successful. It has opened our