The haves and the have nots
Tenancies for life are over if David Cameron has his way. To me he is the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing except he isn’t really bothering so much to dress like a sheep. So maybe my metaphor is wrong, is he the Emperor in his new clothes? Standing naked as Margaret Thatcher and everybody swearing that he has a new suit on? Against my will to dismiss absolutely everything he does purely as market driven spitefulness, I wonder about the end to tenancies for life.
There is definitely another division between the haves and have-nots in this country among the poor, working, and under-classes: those with secure affordable housing and those without. The ones that I know with it are self-righteous in their uber cheap, semi-bougie digs. They don’t have to deal with greedy landlords and when they are trying to break free of the benefit trap aren’t sweating about what will happen when their housing benefit stops. He is right for his part, because, if you don’t have secure affordable housing, it can be impossible to move into work without moving, but there is no place to move, so the choice is then to stay unemployed if you want to stay in your home.
The question is if council housing is cheap housing used as storage units for the lazy or simply affordable and doesn’t everybody have a right to an affordable home? In my family budgeting class in high school we learned that the right percentage of your income to spend on housing is 25 percent, 30 percent max. So, to afford a home that is 500 pounds a month, you should earn 24,000 pounds a year. On minimum wage, full time, one earns just over 12,000 pounds a year. Where could you house a family for 250 pounds per month? Only in the council of course, but, unless you are homeless, waiting lists are excessive in most places. Its all really too depressing to contemplate, and I suppose maybe David Cameron sees himself as a bit of a Robin Hood, stealing from the haves and giving to the have nots.
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