Impact of Osborne's 'market rents for social housing tenants on salaries over £40K'

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug

Beware of Osborne's 'end game'

This is the lead story in this week's Camden New Journal

http://www.camdennewjournal.com/marketrents

More than 2,000 council tenants in Camden face market rents as government classes them 'high earners'

A leading paragraph transferable to other boroughs is this one:

"In his budget announcements yesterday (Wednesday), Chancellor George Osborne said local authorities would be told to demand the extra rent from tenants earning more than £40,000 a year. Officials at the Town Hall were last night working out how they would set about investigating their tenants’ finances and the cost of such a task."

And a complementary online interactive source regarding what a person's income needs to be in order to be able to afford to pay commercial rents in London can be found at

http://www.londonrents.org.uk/

A publication by Darren Johnson, Green Party Member of the London Assembly.

Can your job pay the rent?

According to the Mayor's standard definition, your rent is affordable if it doesn't take up more than 35% of your take-home pay. For example, the average household in London earns an estimated £2,608 per month after tax, so an affordable rent for them would be anything up to £913pcm.

Most people, of course, just stretch to pay London's high rents. This means we can't save up for a deposit, spend money with local businesses, or even afford a basic quality of life. Amazingly, a young person working full time on the minimum wage doesn't earn enough for an affordable room in the average shared flat in any borough of London.

What can you afford?

You can use this map to pick the type of home you want and your income, and then find boroughs in London where average rents are affordable (less than 35% of take-home pay), slightly unaffordable (35-50% of take-home pay), extremely unaffordable (more than 50% of take-home pay) or completely impossible (rents cost more than you earn).

Maybe Osborne's directive regarding social housing tenants on salaries greater than £40K will act as an incentive for social housing tenants on over £40K salaries to collude with 'right-to-buy' that is heavily tax-payer-subsidised? As I said in one of my placard-based statements, BEWARE OF OSBORNE'S 'END GAME'.