REPORTING OF PROPERTY & HOUSING ISSUES

Whilst my previous post noted that media reporting of economic and labour issues had been in decline since the 1980s, the subjects of property and housing, and particularly the latter, have attracted more and more media attention, sometimes, it seems, to the exclusion of all other news. The present furore over the Government's proposed changes to housing benefit, following an earlier announcement to cut funding to housing associations and expressed desire to phase out social housing illustrate this very well.

In stating my provisional support for social housing, I also want to share my experience of some its problems through recounting a short history of the flat next door to my former London home.
Soon after purchasing this property, the owner "inherited" the tenancy to a nearby council flat into which he then moved, leasing his own flat to the local authority. A range of housing benefit claimants were placed in this property, one of whom, an Irish lady, also had access to another nearby council flat, and so sublet the one bedroom flat next to me to a large family from Nigeria. At various points, I drew the attention of the local authority to what was clearly housing benefit fraud, and they usually acted on the matter. Incidentally, I owned the property in which I lived, although it was suggested to me on more than one occasion that I was a council tenant, possibly because other owners in the block had entered into arrangements similar to my neighbour.

So we come back to another subject which has received much attention in recent years: regulation. It is the regulation - from policy to enforcement - of property and housing which really needs to be tackled by politicians and in the media, so that "issues of the moment", no matter how important, can be objectively considered in a wider context, and people like the Mayor of London do not have to resort to using highly intemperate language.

However, London does indeed have a particular set of housing issues, some of which have been adequately covered elsewhere, so I don't proposed to dwell upon them here. One issue which has not been fully covered in the media relates to my previous post on "labour issues": low wages. London is producing a great many low paid private sector jobs, many of which are directly in highly paid-sectors such as banking, or in services linked to these. Instead, therefore, of paying some of their employees increasingly high amounts, might I suggest that City institutions provide housing for their less well-paid but nevertheless essential workers.

With regard to the very high levels of housing benefit paid to residents in some areas of London, I would also suggest that this is as much a problem of the type of buy-to-let market which has developed in London, as of individual recipients of state support. To put it bluntly, the beneficiaries of large housing benefit payouts are as much, if not more so, the owners of the properties themselves: something the media, once again, has not properly acknowledged.