£106k per year council house

How is this justified then?

No idea but I think the council has a duty to house people and I assume they need one bedroom per 2 children and 4 bed houses in st johns wood do not come cheap.

I don't see why they can not be moved to an area that is cheaper and probably has a better chance of them finding unskilled work.
 
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Zegna - £500 cap according to the paper - Still £2000 a month though, more than a lot of peoples wages that!
 
Zegna - £500 cap according to the paper - Still £2000 a month though, more than a lot of peoples wages that!

I think thats a new thing that has only just started, its really good news and it will probably help bring down rental price in london also.
 
Zegna - £500 cap according to the paper - Still £2000 a month though, more than a lot of peoples wages that!

one would need to be taking home atleast £1k a week to rent @ £500 p/w. ridiculous.

i often wonder what goes through the heads of the housing benefits staff when they allow these claims? i know they can do nothing about it but it must pee them off a little...
 
The thing is housing benefit covers up to the 30th percentile in an area (it will pay up to the cost of the bottom 30% of houses listed in descending order of cost). In these areas these houses fitted into the 30th percentile. The only change now is that there is a cap.
 
indeed, £500 a week is still outrageous! how do they justify these amounts? I cann imagine london being a lot more expensive than up here but seriously, i thought 500 a month was expensive when you can rent houses for 300 a month round here never mind 500 a week for benefits!

this countrys doomed, they should make people work for their benefits cleaning up streets and if they refuse then stop paying them! too many people pee me off going and buying a bottle of cider when your on your way for a grueling nightshift, seeing the same people daily knowing your first day of the weeks wage is basically going to funding them!

should also stop people having babys if they cant provide for them, bit like china where they have a cap of one child is it? the countrys already over populated with limited jobs, and would stop kids being raised by lazy dole bums getting taught how to cheat the benefit and create more of the lazy ba**ards :@
 
I think the £500 is per house rather than per tenant, so if there were 10 people in a house £500 wouldn't be so outrageous.
 
Good, my parents work their assess off and even though they can claim benefit they refuse it.
 
The sad fact is there's probably thousands of cases like this - especially in London. There was a guy on BBC London News interviewed about his housing benefit. They were going for the angle that his family is going to have to move when the cap hits them, so being somewhat sympathetic at first. But then they showed him outside his 'family home' in Maida Vale and I started guessing how much the rent was. Turns out it was £8,000 a month!!

http://www.westendextra.com/news/20...e-plight-family-get-£8k-month-housing-benefit

And I can't get over stupid articles like this: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/stand...uld-force-thousands-of-pupils-to-move-home.do

Oh no people can't afford to live there any more because taxpayers aren't going to pay their ridiculous rents. Newsflash morons -- if I wanted a 3-story townhouse in Chelsea, turns out I can't afford it. You can't always live where you want. Why do you think people pay thousands of pounds a year commuting. Get over it, morons!!
 
Can someone explain how this 'right to buy' thing in the 90s lead to lots of high earners being able to live in very high-class 'council' housing, without having to pay the rent?

I'm just confused at how this situation started...
 
Oh no people can't afford to live there any more because taxpayers aren't going to pay their ridiculous rents. Newsflash morons -- if I wanted a 3-story townhouse in Chelsea, turns out I can't afford it. You can't always live where you want. Why do you think people pay thousands of pounds a year commuting. Get over it, morons!!

What you say makes sense. Heck it's even logical.

But consider this. If you drive out enough low-income earners, who are now in London (or in a location) who are only staying where they are because of this benefit, then you may create a shortage of said workers. They may no longer find it viable to commute. Then you have to pay them even more to get them back, and prices for services within that area will rise.

Of course the rent in the area may fall and things may balance out eventually, but there will be a period of chaos.

The law of un-intended consequences.....
 
With regards to the cap I agree it has to be done although I do worry about this creating a larger segregation between the rich and the poor, I don't think this is going to do much for rent prices, this is just going to push poor people into poorer areas with less job opportunities, I think diversity is important, not just in terms of ethnicity but also between the lower, middle, and upper classes, this could create a larger social divide in the city.

Like I've said before on this topic I think a cap needs to be put on how much landlords can charge based on the area and size of the property, it's just getting too expensive to have a roof over your head these days and capping the benefits rate doesn't make that any easier, this will not bring rent prices down imo, landlords need to be targeted, it's ridiculous that so many people are buying second homes now to rent to desperate people for extortionate rental prices.
 
There are plenty of low income earners in London that have to live within their means without leaning on the taxpayer. However, I work with far too many people that would actually end up worse off by working more because of their various income assessed tax credits and benefits. That is just a grossly unfair and surely unsustainable system.
 
In a lot of these cases where both parents don't work - what reason do they have to be staying near to central London? Not like they're working close by.

They should just get them to live in another part of the country - or at least some distance away from London so the rental prices are more reasonable.
 
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