There are few circumstances in which a government can take a citizen's home away; hardly any in peacetime in a democracy. So it is unsurprising that David Cameron's proposal last week to end lifelong council house tenure provoked passionate reactions. "It conjures up the image of the Stasi coming round to throw people out of council flats," said shadow communities secretary John Denham. That was a lurid way of describing the technical difficulties in assessing tenants' income and deciding, in some cases, that they had become too rich for their houses. The obvious problem with that scenario, aside from the sheer thuggishness of eviction by means test, is the low aspiration trap it creates: people would refuse to take well-paid work if they thought it put their home at risk. The other side of that equation is that, as the system currently works, people in the cushiest council homes hang on to them even when they ought to move on or downsize, which prevents properties being passed on to needier applicants. There are 1.8m families on waiting lists for social housing and it takes, on average, six years to get to the front of the queue. Read more of this opinion piece on the Guardian website by clicking on the logo below.
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