FOLLOWING the budget there’s one issue regarding the cuts that seems to have been sneaked in through the back door – namely tenants in council or social housing who jointly earn £30,000 will have to pay market rent.

This is going to force many residents out of their homes they have lived in for many years.

Historically council housing is public housing that is rented to households which are unable to afford to rent from the private sector or buy their own home.

The Labour minister for health and housing, Aneurin Bevan, famously said the new post-war housing estates would be places where “the working man, the doctor and the clergyman will live in close proximity to each other”.

George Osborne’s proposal will destroy this and all you will have left is ghettos where only the very poor will live.

This Tory government and the media is pedalling a myth that all council tenants are on benefits and that taxpayers subsidises the rent.

This is a blatant lie.

There are actually fewer people on benefits in council housing than not.

The taxpayer does not subsidise tenants a penny.

The tenant who has been in a council house for 30 years has actually paid for that house more than once and will go on paying for that house until he or she dies.

Many of council properties in Oxford were built in the 60s when the market price for a two- bedroomed house was £4,500 and in the 70s £12,000.

To look into Osborne’s proposals in detail he says any ‘household’ earning more than £30,000 will pay full market rent.

So will a couple jointly earning a below average wage of £24,000 with a child about to leave school and get their first job earning £6,000 now be in the so-called ‘rich zone’? If so they will now have to pay on average an extra £6,500 a year in rent.

Their other option is to evict their own child, who will have to be housed by the council, or tell them not to work.

Another example would be a couple earning £27,000 who get a pay rise taking them over the threshold. They’d have to turn the increase down.

This proposal will split families up and stifle any work progression.

The original proposal was to start this at £60,000, but the government soon realised that there are not many council house tenants earning that and would not bring in much revenue.

By lowering it to £30,000 they have dragged thousands and thousands of less than average earners into paying vast amounts more that they can not afford.

If £30,000 makes you ‘rich’ why does the top rate of tax start at over £40,000?

At the moment someone paying £6,000 a year council rent will be expected to find and extra £6,500 a year to pay the so-called full market rent as Oxford private rents are so high due to the student population and shortage of housing.

ANDY BEAL
Sandy Lane, Blackbird Leys, Oxford