{"id":44329,"date":"2018-07-31T03:00:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T07:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=44329"},"modified":"2018-07-30T13:16:48","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T17:16:48","slug":"a-gruesome-experiment-in-determining-the-actual-need-for-social-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/07\/31\/a-gruesome-experiment-in-determining-the-actual-need-for-social-housing\/","title":{"rendered":"A gruesome experiment in determining the actual need for social housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Worstall<\/a> discusses an aspect of the terrible Grenfell Tower fire in London that I hadn’t considered:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The fire at Grenfell Tower in London, 14 June 2017.
Photo by Natalie Oxford via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

That the Grenfell Tower fire was a tragedy is obvious. That lessons need to be learned is equally so. At which point, OK, which lessons would we like to learn? One that would be useful is to work out how much of social housing in London \u2013 for that\u2019s what the evidence allows us to estimate \u2013 is illegally sublet. Or, as we might also put it, how much social housing in London is not actually needed as social housing?<\/p>\n

For sublets are, by their nature, at something close to market rents, the difference between those and the social rents being pocketed by those doing the renting out.<\/p>\n

No, we don\u2019t know and that might be just because we\u2019ve not been paying the detailed attention required. But it\u2019s also something we tend to think will have been glossed over in investigations into the events. Something that perhaps should not have been glossed over \u2013 if indeed it has.<\/p>\n

[…] The thought that a place, in the centre of London, where we could house \u2013 safely perhaps this time \u2013 several hundred people not be used to house several hundred people? We have a housing shortage or not?<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s the insight into that larger question that interests. We know that some amount of social (and or council) housing in London is illegally sublet. The very fact that it is shows that it\u2019s not needed. Those who are paying the landlord a reduced rent clearly don\u2019t need the property as they\u2019re not living in it. Those paying the near market rents don\u2019t need social housing as they\u2019re paying near market rents. Thus subletting shows that the entire structure of \u2013 at least in that instance \u2013 the social rent isn\u2019t necessary.<\/p>\n

So, how prevalent is it? We know that some of it occurred at Grenfell. We\u2019ve all admitted it, clearly, for we\u2019ve not insisted that only those on the tenants\u2019 listing are those who should be granted aid for having had their home burned down. So, we know there\u2019s some. So, how much?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely that we\u2019ve as much information on this concerning any other building in the country. Thus this is an excellent place to actually conduct such research.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Worstall discusses an aspect of the terrible Grenfell Tower fire in London that I hadn’t considered: That the Grenfell Tower fire was a tragedy is obvious. That lessons need to be learned is equally so. At which point, OK, which lessons would we like to learn? One that would be useful is to work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,25,84],"tags":[426,350],"class_list":["post-44329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-economics","category-government","tag-housing","tag-london"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bwZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44331,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44329\/revisions\/44331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}