[user104658]

Originally Posted by Livia

I hate the whole buy to let thing, it's got way out of hand. It's appalling he's allowed to do this. Appalling... but sadly not surprising. We need more social housing. Is there another answer?

They could also allow housing benefits to be used to pay a mortgage, as I believe was once allowed. The reasoning for stopping it was petty rather than economic (in fact, it makes ZERO economic sense). Basically, they stopped allowing people to pay a mortgage on a home they owned because it "isn't fair" on others that those people end up with a house. Emotive, and petty.

Think about it;

Someone is in and out of work, on and off housing benefit, for whatever reason, for life. If they can BUY a property and receive housing benefit for mortgage payments when they are not working and pay them themselves when they are working, then once the mortgage term is up, that's it. The house is owned outright. It doesn't cost the government ANYTHING to house that person again. But because that "isn't fair", that same person will be on and off housing benefit to be paid to fatcat private landlords for that person's entire life. It costs the government double... triple... or more... what allowing payment of a single mortgage term would cost.

It's about time government put its' pragmatic maths-hat on and starts to act purely on what costs less and stops worrying about what's going to make some people get a bit huffy ("so they get a free house at the end boo hoo hoo???").

Basically, it doesn't sit well with people for the less well off to get £100,000 of "taxpayer's money" for nothing over the course of their life (let's say 50 adult years)... so they're happier to see a private landlord given almost £350,000 of "taxpayer's money" on that person's behalf over the same 50 years. It's ****ing insane.