About half a million of our social housing tenancies are ‘under-occupied’. We are short of social housing. So the answer is to pack off those under-occupying to smaller homes. What a neat fit. Everyone benefits! There is now an intention to pay housing benefit on he size of the household,rather than cost of rent, so move now before you end up with a shortfall. Giving up on the friends and neighbours you’ve built up over twenty years or so hardly matters, after all. You’re poor, so of no political significance, and you won’t have the guts to set fire to yourself like Chinese people resisting redeployment.
What’s wrong with this argument?
Allcoppedout's Blog 
“What’s wrong with this argument?”
Nothing really.
The problem with ‘social housing’ has been caused by the last few decades boom in immigration (OK, the ‘right to buy’ helped, but only because more social housing wasn’t built to replace the lost stock).
This has had the effect of crowding out the inner cities and inner suburbs(where the low-paid jobs are).
What’s wrong with the ‘argument’ is that we don’t listen to all of it Julia – as you begin to point out (all we can do really). The Grauniad is already boring on about how unfair it is to some poor sod who wants her extra bedroom for grandson visits (a major use of ours) and who worries that she has scraped together money for decorating and carpets she’d have to find again if moved. No mention of the family of six living with only two bedrooms etc. – or of the problem origins you hint at.
10 years ago here (northern devastated by loss of manufacturing northern town) they couldn’t give social housing away- now there is none – and a lot of what there was is now in the hands of private landlords getting twice the Council rents.
About a book of argument later, I’d guess we are missing the opportunity not just to build houses, but the much vaunted ‘community’ of people working.
So, this is one of the Tories ideas of a ‘Big Society’ is it? Turf out all the older people who have lived in their council homes for decades, raised their families in them, put down roots, built up strong bonds with their neighbours, and generally looked after their homes whilst being good tennants and paying their rent on time.
No doubt the older generation of rent payers will be thrilled by this ‘big idea’ of them being booted out of their homes in old age, uprooted from the community they settled in and friends they have known for a long time.
Great idea! Yes, disrupt and unsettle the lives of all the older generation in council houses and split up the established sense of community they have. That will make them feel secure! [Not] There might just be an added bonus here with that idea, because a good number of them could die from the stress and upheaval of a move to a new home, in an unknown area, away from their friends and possibly even family nearby. That’ll save on pensions!
Yes, disrupt their lives, cause them lots of stress by forcing them to move home when they don’t want to do that.
In the long run, if they kill enough of them off with the stress of it all, that could also save on care home and NHS costs. What a cunning plan of those crafty Tories.
Did the Treasury come up with that idea?
“Great idea! Yes, disrupt and unsettle the lives of all the older generation in council houses and split up the established sense of community they have. That will make them feel secure!”
And in the cause of making them feel insecure…
Like lots of policy this has one bit that makes sense, then it falls down.
We could, instead, do more thinking based on a range of ground opinion instead of budgets in figures.