Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Rachel Smith (Mrs Vince Cable) attacks Coalition housing plans

On his blog for the BBC, Michael Crick writes:
Rachel Smith, the wife of the Business Secretary, Vince Cable has attacked the coalition's plans to end life-long tenancies in social housing.

They would lead to a bureaucratic nightmare and solve nothing, she says in the new edition of the Liberal Democrat grassroots magazine Liberator.

"It is a seriously bad idea, though it tries to deal with a real problem," she says. "The review process every five years would be a nightmare. If you found yourself threatened with the loss of your home, wouldn't you make sure your household was at its biggest and poorest at the moment of review?"
I can see the practical problems, but I have some sympathy for Tim Worstall's complaint:
we’ve this crazed system whereby if at one point in your life you need a housing subsidy then you get that subsidy for all your life.
Anyway, read more from Liberator on the magazine's website.

1 comment:

Tristan said...

The only real solution is to remove the need for council housing and housing benefits - that however requires such a re-working of the economy that its politically unpalatable to even consider the steps required.
(look at how unlikely Land Value Tax is for example - even though its likely to be a step towards such a goal)