Housing swap scheme could mean forced relocation

Louise Nousratpour
Wednesday July 28, 2010
Morning Star

Council house tenants in properties with more than one spare room could be forced to move into smaller accommodation under the Con-Dem austerity drive.

Announcing the proposals on Wednesday, Welfare Reform Minister Lord Freud claimed the housing swap scheme would tackle overcrowding.

Statistics show 234,000 households in the social tenant sector are overcrowded while 456,000 are "under-occupied" - meaning people have more than one spare room.

Former banker Lord Freud declared he was "putting fairness" back into the system by uprooting working-class families from their home and community because they have a spare room.

Housing campaigners branded Lord Freud's proposals "nasty" and called for more investment in council house building instead.

Defend Council Housing chairwoman Eileen Short said that with 4.5 million people on council house waiting lists, the proposals were yet another "cynical cut" disguised as helping tenants.

"It would attack the poorest, the sickest and the oldest in society," she said.

"If a fraction of the public money used to subsidise private developers and high rents was diverted into building new council homes, the problem of housing would be solved."

Ms Short urged the government to identify the thousands of empty houses owned by property speculators and take them into council control.

Recalling Prime Minister David Cameron's comments in a newspaper interview before the election that he did not know how many homes he owned, Ms Short quipped: "Maybe he can turn some of his homes into affordable housing."

National Housing Federation (NHF) assistant director Paul Rees said the policies would penalise some of Britain's poorest families and tear them away from their communities.

"Higher-income families living in private homes won't be told that their house is too big for them," he observed.

Wednesday's proposals are part of the government's welfare reform agenda, which will also see a maximum housing benefit cap of £280 a week for a flat and £400 for a house.

An NHF report last week warned that the raft of proposed changes to housing benefit could lead to up to 750,000 people at risk of becoming homeless.

"Ministers should go back to the drawing board and rethink the plans," Mr Rees demanded.