the" tenant tax"

More than fair...council and housing association tenants pay a quarter of what private tenants pay. Any couple earning those kind of sums are simply sponging of the state.

isnt it more that private tenants are getting fleeced

You can see the way this could be all going. I sincerely hope that we do not see means tested state pensions in our lifetimes.

It's probably the Illuminati's decision. THEY are to blame for EVERYTHING.

Social housing wasn't designed for the comfortably off.

You could hardly consider a couple earning marginally over 30K combined to be comfortably off!

I'd assume it is tapered and introduced gradually the more you earn over the limits.  A couple in London earning £41,000 couldn't afford to pay market rate if they had any children.  They'd struggle if they didn't have any.  If you were a student, you'd already be paying 9% of anything over £21k, if you were a student with kids you'd be losing something similar in child and working tax credits, you would also be paying tax and NI on all the extra.  For future generations not earning over 40-50k with children and huge student debt the future is bleak.

It is fair in principle, but whether it proves to be fair in practicality I doubt.  Fairest thing to do is to build loads of new homes to help bring rents and house prices down, which will increase the incentive to earn money, not decrease it which this will do.

but they wont build lots of new homes because they dont want house prices to come down

The tax changes on 2nd homes should level them off a bit.

£30k for two people to live on seems reasonable to me.

Why should they get a benefit in kind worth thousands a year, rather than the poor.

Why shouldn't they get the benefit, just because they put more into the system from working harder and paying more tax.

If you drag everybody down to the same level then nobody will make an effort to do better, and we can't all be unskilled workers.

won't this just encourage tenants to give up their work ,have more and more children and claim benefits totalling more than 30,000 (in kind) 

daft .

They shouldn't get the benefit, because it costs the taxpayer money and as there is a limited supply of social housing, it should go to the most needy.

Why should the benefit of cheap council housing be any different from any other benefit?

Shouldn't benefits be based on 'need'?

I'd say a couple earning £30k without kids outside London are not in need of any benefits.

why is the council housing classed as cheap,shouldnt we be looking at how to get private rents cheaper

exactly gazo - besides where is this cheap council housing - are we talking housing association rents ?   old fashioned council housing itself is rare to come by

If you target every benefit that's going on the 'needy,' you simply encourage more people to become 'needy.'

What's the point in working hard when somebody on benefits is living better than you are?
That's how people think these days, encouraged by these kind of measures that chop the legs from under anyone who's having a go.

Who ever said council houses are exclusively for the poor?
Even labour didn't do anything like this.

Supply and demand decides the levels that rents are set at.

If renting is too dear then people have always got the choice to buy.

the banks wont lend unless you have a very large deposit,all thats happening is the government is giving benefits to private landlords through housing benefit,

If renting is too dear then people have always got the choice to buy.

  Just when you thought he'd reached Peak Stupid

another policy that doesnt address the fundamental problem of a lack of supply of housing

Landlords earn their money the same as everyone else does who works.

Isn't the government giving money to all public servants as well.
Doctors nurses firemen the police and all council workers are all doing work for the government and getting paid out of taxpayers money.

What's the difference between a landlord and anyone else who gets their money through the government.

How many tenants are on LHA anyway?

there is more than enough housing ,just badly distributed - it's just that too many houses are under occupied ,mainly elderly i'd guess as folk live longer but many working age too  .

i live by myself in a 2b house and many more are like me

Shut up TheBaron you stupid piece of filth.

I'm fed up of paying rent on a seat in a plane......I know I think I'll buy my own

TheBaron,

It's cheaper to buy than rent in many parts of the country you utter dunce.

TheBaron

I'd bet a toe-rag like you can't even afford to run a car.

Oh that's struck a nerve - TheBerk can't afford a car.

we need more private landlords - they can be offered 0% interest loans (or whatever the base rate is) they in turn (by law) can then offer cheap council style  rents .

simples

BTLers paying the BTL rates were fleeced out  by the banks

they would have been ideal landlords

seems like theres always someone on the make  to upset the balance

coach if people choose to live in big houses thats up to them, we cant have compulsory purchases for this reason. i also think the true population is far higher than official numbers. i saw a documentary a couple of years ago that said there are a million empty properties in the uk, not sure if thats accurate but if it is it's awful.

you are correct about the numbers - very much underestimated.

there probably are  1m homes i bet - a lot of these might be in expensive areas though (gentrified areas- thats another debate )

Quote passage
Capital Economics picked up the story in a note out earlier this week. It notes that from 2004 to 2014, the number of households in the UK rose by an average of 170,000 a year, but the number of dwellings in the UK increased by some 200,000 a year. That suggests a rise in the number of “apparently surplus homes” to around 1.3 million

Many houses come under scrutiny when an attempt is made to sell them.
Mining reports, subsidence, houses built on flood plains are just a few of the reasons for houses standing empty.
The list grows longer as lender's rules for granting mortgages get tighter.

Council's own rules put a lot of their properties on the scrap heap. They just don't come up to scratch.
They sometimes try to sell these properties and many of them end up being rented in the private sector.

Yeah most substandard housing is brought for cash by landlords
and rented out by the likes of Cr@ppen.

With tenants like TheBerk living in them.