[kirklancaster]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I'm glad it helps, I spent far too long writing it .

The main landlord set-up around here that I have issue with, is actually the "one house" landlords. Basically people who were council tenants back during the sell-off, bought their council owned property for peanuts, and now rent that property out at a higher rate on short term contracts, to people who desperately want a permanent home outside of the private sector, and use the money to pay their own mortgage on a better house . Then once their mortgage is paid off, they sell the rental property for 5x what they bought it for (most likely to a bigger landlord / company, as families are priced out even here). And it's entirely down to "right place, right time". I mean being honest, I would have done exactly the same thing given the chance, of course... I don't blame original residents for exploiting it, I blame the flawed logic that allowed it to happen in the first place.

This has also been one of my beefs in the past;

Maggie Thatcher converted traditional 'grassroots' Labour voters to Tory voters almost 'overnight' by;

a) relaxing the Consumer Credit Laws and thereby enabling them to have 'instant' better standards of living, whilst in reality 'trapping them' in a situation where they dare not 'strike' because of the amount of 'debt' which they now had to 'service'.

b) Floated deliberately undervalued Public Owned Assets such as British Telecom etc at knock down subscription prices whilst encouraging 'Ordinary Joe Public' to become 'shareholders' - even being seen to bar multi applications from her Multi National Corporate buddies and backers.

(What did it matter - the amount and scale of the undervaluing, enabled very quick profits to be 'taken' by most of these 'green' nouveau shareholders, and there was now no bar now to those same corporations buying up those STILL well undervalued shares. So in one fell swoop, old Maggie had delivered almost instant profits for her new ex-Labour now Tory supporter friends, AND delivered our Nationalised Industries into the hands of the top Tory faithful at still bargain basement cost)

3) Encouraged the tenants of Social Housing to Purchase their homes and provided huge unrealistic discounts and changes in the Law to help make such conveyancing as 'smooth' as possible.

4) Barred the funds raised from these Social Housing sales from being utilised to build new replacement Social Housing stock.

This of course - enabled the BOOM in Private Landlords and 'Levered' property acquisition with further 'gearing' and re-investment, and therefore saw public money, via Housing benefits, actually FUNDING further 'Buy-To-Let' property acquisition by Private Landlords.

Now, my point is - and has always been - that NONE of the above would have been possible without the opportunistic 'grabbing' by one-time 'Socialists'.

But it is 3) and 4) which have had the most damaging and longest lasting impact to the Social Housing market in this county, and is majorly responsible (not solely though) for the current and increasingly worsening crisis.

And a lot of one-time Council house dwellers have great culpability, because they have elevated their status and grown wealthy by initially exploiting one of the most blatant and mercenary sell offs of the VERY type of Social Housing which 'saved their bacon' and kept them off the streets.

Oh - and to the length of time you spent writing that post. It was worth it, because at least I benefited from your graft.