[Livia]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

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.

I'm going to answer this, even though you said "think about it..." which is one of my pet hates...

I don't agree that the taxpayer should buy people a house. If someone's claiming housing benefit for twenty five years, or the course of a mortgage, then there's something wrong. I understand that there was a method in place (I'm not sure of the situation now though) whereby if you lost your job and needed housing benefit, they would pay the interest on your mortgage only. I think that's fair. People shouldn't lose their home because they're unemployed. But to buy someone a house who might never, ever work or contribute? I don't think so.

More social housing. As a taxpayer I'd be very happy to see my tax go toward that.