[Gllug] VACANCY: Junior Systems Support

[Hari Sekhon]

Jason Clifford wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-09-09 at 13:34 +0100, Hari Sekhon wrote:
>   
>> Still, working and having a council property is a hugely uneven playing 
>> field against the rest of the hopeless young professionals spending 
>> their lives living in shared accommodation...
>>     
>
> Why? Those young professionals are as able as anyone else to apply for
> social housing and, if they qualify, to obtain it subject to
> availability and that "subject to ability" bit applies to everyone
> seeking social housing.
>   
They'll never get anything, they're not one of the pre-determined 
priority categories. They're dead in the long run, they just don't know 
it yet (not immediate dead like gun shot, just having too few children 
to sustain themselves in the long run)

> Social housing is also becoming more and more expensive with rents
> increasing at a rate more than 500% of inflation.
>   
Still cheaper than private pay for yourself territory.

I've known people with flats paying nothing and even when working full 
time in £15K+ jobs paying only £11 per month in rent and ridiculous sums 
like that or £8 per week in another case I know personally.

>> Not talking about inflation readjustments which are trivial beyond the 
>> worth of mentioning, I'm talking about the incentive for working hard 
>> towards your next £5K pay rise (and you really need to count in at least 
>> fives if you want to get anywhere in England these days with house 
>> prices as they are now)
>>     
>
> Very few people will be seeing £5K pay rises now unless they are moving
> job.
>   

Changing job is always the best way of getting a pay rise and the jobs 
market is now making a comeback gradually (finally!)

>> 3 million people in council estates and growing is not a small element 
>> though, it's a future generational disaster unfolding.
>>     
>
> I strongly disagree. Social housing is not in itself the basis for any
> kind of generational disaster. The lack of any kind of affordable
> housing for the poorest parts of society however would be.
>   
It will be, it's only a matter of time now as the population is 
gradually replaced (I guess you could cheat and solve the equation on 
paper by simply re-classifying council types as the more successful for 
having playing the system better)

Practically it could be solved by tiny temporary accommodations, 
preferably a large redeveloped brownfield site outside of London with 
train link to re-utilize the London space better and allow those who 
work hard to pay their own way to live closer to work - for example, 
myself and many colleagues travel for 2-3+ hours per day to work, and 
walk past council estates next to work in an more central area most 
couldn't afford to live in. This new setup would still provide a needed 
safety net and get people back on their feet and working towards paying 
their own way and working back in to the competitive private market 
housing market through their own work. (You'd also have much nicer 
redeveloped London areas free of council estates instead of million 
pound houses next to the estate where you get jumped after work as 
someone from work did a few years ago).

-h

-- 
Hari Sekhon
http://www.linkedin.com/in/harisekhon

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