The claim in your title does not appear in the article. Also, you want “lead”, not “leads”. You’re welcome!

In January, Hammersmith & Fulham introduced something called “Home Buy”. I’m not sure if any other councils have this scheme.

http://www.lbhf.gov.uk/Directory/Housing/Home_ownership/homepage.asp

In a borough where homes are in short supply, this council wants only those who own their own home to live here. This council isn’t interested in building more social housing and the leader made that clear in an unresearched report that he co-authored for Localis (a partner of Policy Exchange).

http://www.lbhf.gov.uk/Directory/Housing/Home_ownership/homepage.asp

Nice headline (“Tory Council policies leads to highest homelessness in UK” – hopefully this will be changed).

However, as all the highest rate of possession claims per 1000 houses (which does not equate directly to homelessness – we don’t know what happens to the owners) are in London – the highest outside is Manchester at 17.2 possession claims per 1000 houses – we can presumably put this down to the fact that housing is more expensive, and therefore repossession more likely, in London.

However, within London, the following figures occur (party controlling council in brackets):

Barking and Dagenham 25.8 possession claims per 1000 houses (Labour)
Newham 24 possession claims per 1000 houses (Labour)
Haringey 22.9 possession claims per 1000 houses (Labour)
Brent has 22.4 possession claims per 1000 houses (Labour)
Hackney 20.8 possession claims per 1000 houses (Labour)
Enfield 20.2 possession claims per 1000 houses (Labour)
Southwark 19.6 possession claims per 1000 houses (Labour)
Lambeth 19.5 possession claims per 1000 houses (Labour)
Lewisham 19.4 possession claims per 1000 houses (Labour)
Greenwich 19 possession claims per 1000 houses (Labour)
Croydon 18.possession claims per 1000 houses (Conservative)

Which means that Fulham and Hammersmith are not even the council with the highest number of possession claims per 1000 houses in England that is not controlled by Labour. I would be careful labouring (sorry) the point you are trying to make here – after all, it took me 10 minutes to point out that Labour councils have higher reates of possession claims per 1000 houses.

Anyway, thanks for keeping me amused over lunch – but if you are going to attempt to lie with statistics, please do some basic checks first…

“New research by charity Shelter has found that Hammersmith and Fulham has one of the highest rates of households at risk of eviction in the whole of the country.”

OK, pace the above, let’s say that is true.

“The research is a damning indictment of a council that has failed to deal with the housing crisis, refusing to build more social housing and choosing instead to sell off scarce assets to private landlords for undervalue.”

That doesn’t follow at all.

Doesn’t matter how much social housing you’ve built, got, sold off or whatever. The eviction rate is an entirely separate problem from where people go after they’ve been evicted.

At which point, yes, how much social housing there is does become important because having been evicted is one of the ways of getting social housing.

But “lots of people being evicted” isn’t even a connection with hte local authjorities housing policies, let alone an indictement of them.

@3 & 4. Stop putting piffling, annoying things like the truth in the way of a good old rant against the evil Tories on LibCon. It’s not the done thing here. Everyone knows evil Tories want the poor/homeless/disabled to die. Painfully. And Hammersmith & Fulham Tories more than most.

And anyway, from the statistical analyses that go up on here we all know Sunny has to take his shoes and socks off to count to eleven…

Tim Worstall and Watchman.

The point being made here is that the policies of Hammersmith and Fulham council will make the statistics worse. They aren’t doing anything in their power to help prevent evictions.

The lack of ocial housing is relevant here because.. and you wouldn’t believe this.. if policies lead to eviction and there’s no social housing, then that leads to.. HOMELESSNESS!

I goofed with second link. Here it is.
http://www.localis.org.uk/article/82/Principles-for-Social-Housing-Reform.htm

@4

You claimed,

“At which point, yes, how much social housing there is does become important because having been evicted is one of the ways of getting social housing”.

What social housing? Bed & Breakfasts? lol

Matt,

The point being made here is that the policies of Hammersmith and Fulham council will make the statistics worse. They aren’t doing anything in their power to help prevent evictions.

Well, that is not actually said anywhere, and there is no evidence about what they are doing about evictions presented.

The lack of ocial housing is relevant here because.. and you wouldn’t believe this.. if policies lead to eviction and there’s no social housing, then that leads to.. HOMELESSNESS!

Indeed – but only if the eviction requires social housing. If all the evictions in Hammersmith and Fulham were of young professionals (hey – there’s a lot of them in Hammersmith and Fulham now you mention it…), this would necessitate minimal social housing as most would have family to fall back on for example. You are making a huge leap of logic without the evidence to provide a bridge here.

This really is a dreadful piece of churnalism, Sunny – a headline that is simply misleading, and a post for which you have clearly just run your finger down the list of councils in which people are most threatened with eviction until you got to one run by Tories and hoped that nobody would bother to actually look at the report.

Dreadful.

I’m amazed that the council hasn’t come up with the line that helping the homeless creates a moral hazard – but perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that in case they hadn’t thought of it.

Not only is this crap, it is crap on so many levels.

Perhaps the question to ask is why the London rate is higher than the England rate.

London is, after all, richer. Houses will therefore be more expensive. But it is also younger. More people will be moving their and buying their first home. That is a very risky situation. Older people will have larger deposits, a lot of money from the sale of their previous home and larger salaries.

All of these factors may explain what is going on better than the usual “heartless Tory bastards” schtick.

Maybe all you have done is show that many first home buyers live in this council.

Matt @ 6

The proportion of social housing in H & K is actually higher than the average for London boroughs.

Also, the council does work hard to help people keep their homes when threatened with eviction.

Ouch, Sunny. Facepalm.

Leaving aside the utter illogic of relating the overall number of private sector possession claims solely to Council housing policy, and Sunny’s manipulated stats, when a possession application to a Court is specifically the only way that an LL can regain possession against a tenant in situ, that this includes rent arrears, ASBOs, tenant in prison, cannabis factorues and all the rest, or for LL to protect themselves from a speculative claim of Unlawful Eviction by a Tenant who has bunked without returning the keys or leaving arrears.

In addition:

a – The figures are for applications made not applications granted.

This is an old Shelter statistical trick to inflate problems by counting the claims, not the proven problems.

Last report they did it to do down landlords by quoting total complaints *made* by Tenants rather than identifying the number of those claims where LLs were actually at fault.

b – These stats include mortgage repossessions.

Hammersmith and Fulham Council must have remarkable powers to affect all of this stuff.