Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report Of The Private Rental Sector

Further to my last piece about the Rise of the Private Rental Sector, I have unearthed this Reform the private rented sector and open up access to home ownership and social housing, says JRF | JRF

One of the things it says is:

“………Setting a strategy for reducing the size of the PRS by rebalancing the position of first-time buyers and landlords in the mortgage market and discouraging property speculation. This could be achieved by reviewing the regulations that govern mortgage lending to prioritise lending towards those looking to buy for the first time over landlords alongside fiscal reforms to reduce speculation on property…..”

The PRS is under attack when all we are guilty of is taking advantage of Government policies set over the past four decades. If those policies change then we will have to change with them. We will because those of us that are successful did not become so by waiting for someone else to give us our assets and our acumen.

Some people are born into wealth of course but many of us have not had more money and opportunities through their hands than most of the people that went to the same schools and lived in the same streets growing up. We might have made different decisions, such as buying a flat rather than asking for a Council one. There was a risk there because if you can’t pay for it then it is repossessed and you don’t have the safety net of a Council tenancy.

I only recently discovered that Shelter don’t actually do anything practical to help house people. I wonder if people donating to them know that, if I was running a homeless charity with a comparable budget I would be using my influence to buy up flats/houses and put people in them at lower than market value rent. In other words my motives would not be profit driven. This is the entire crux of the matter. That housing has been incentivised to become a business venture.

It is all well documented and  you can watch the documentary PUSH, here is a trailer PUSH (2019) OFFICIAL TRAILER – YouTube  or you can read the reports to the United Nations here:

OHCHR | Financialization of housing

So, I think we can all agree with what has happened and some of us lived through every one of those policies and took advantage of them. That is the thing about incentives – the whole purpose of them is to drive behaviour!

Incentives work the other way as well and can encourage people not to work. I don’t think that  current government policies are helping poor people because we are getting more and more of them. The reason for that in my opinion is that there is not enough of a differential between what you get for working at an ordinary job and what you get on benefits if you have children. People can do arithmetic and if you can get your rent and Council tax paid and live just as well as you can if you work then why would you? I don’t think anyone should pay tax if they earn less than £20K a year. You must make work pay if you want less claimants.

Also, I hear a complaints from young people about how it is not worth the extra effort to earn more  or take on extra responsibility because by the time they pay fares or fuel to commute, tax, National Insurance, student loan repayments, pension, keep a roof over their heads and eat – the government have the nerve to ask them to make extra payment to their pensions which they are unlikely ever to see because the pension age keeps increasing. They are not keeping enough money at the end of the month to flourish and the cost of housing is beyond their reach unless they can call upon the bank of Mum & Dad.

So here we have two  more demographics for whom  current  government policies are influencing behaviour as well as our own. I don’t have the answers to it all but just like everyone else my decisions and choices relate to what works for me. It is human nature, if something is beneficial move towards it – if it is harmful move away. The human element is hardly ever considered it government planning it seems to me.

There is a huge difference in people with an entrepreneurial nature and others and that is that entrepreneurs play the hands that they are dealt. They do not whine that someone else has more Aces than them because they know that the next deal will be different. For every good decision they have made they have likely made a few that were not as good. It is called experience and you have to gain it yourself. Nobody can give it to you and you can’t give it to anyone else.

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