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So Here’s An Interesting Question About Grenfell Tower – How Much Was Sublet?

That the Grenfell Tower fire was a tragedy is obvious. That lessons need to be learned is equally so. At which point, OK, which lessons would we like to learn? One that would be useful is to work out how much of social housing in London – for that’s what the evidence allows us to estimate – is illegally sublet. Or, as we might also put it, how much social housing in London is not actually needed as social housing?

For sublets are, by their nature, at something close to market rents, the difference between those and the social rents being pocketed by those doing the renting out.

No, we don’t know and that might be just because we’ve not been paying the detailed attention required. But it’s also something we tend to think will have been glossed over in investigations into the events. Something that perhaps should not have been glossed over – if indeed it has. It also strikes us as being a much more sensible use of resources than this:

The site of Grenfell Tower is to be handed back to Kensington and Chelsea council within days despite local anger at the prospect of the borough’s involvement, the Guardian has learned.

The police investigation into the disaster in west London, in which 71 people died, will come to an end imminently and, with the site no longer designated a crime scene, it will be released to the council, which owns the plot.

Well, yes, it’s a fairly normal part of our system that, after criminal investigations have been completed, property is handed back to the owner. You’d really be pretty pissed off if the police insisted on keeping – or handing off to anyone else – a corpse after they’d jugged the murderer, no?

The site had been to those who died in last year’s fire after the council said this spring that it would put the community at the heart of decisions over its future and had no other plans for it.

And that’s rampant stupidity. The thought that a place, in the centre of London, where we could house – safely perhaps this time – several hundred people not be used to house several hundred people? We have a housing shortage or not?

However, it’s the insight into that larger question that interests. We know that some amount of social (and or council) housing in London is illegally sublet. The very fact that it is shows that it’s not needed. Those who are paying the landlord a reduced rent clearly don’t need the property as they’re not living in it. Those paying the near market rents don’t need social housing as they’re paying near market rents. Thus subletting shows that the entire structure of – at least in that instance – the social rent isn’t necessary.

So, how prevalent is it? We know that some of it occurred at Grenfell. We’ve all admitted it, clearly, for we’ve not insisted that only those on the tenants’ listing are those who should be granted aid for having had their home burned down. So, we know there’s some. So, how much?

It’s unlikely that we’ve as much information on this concerning any other building in the country. Thus this is an excellent place to actually conduct such research. We could also, if we were so minded, ponder on how many of those being housed weren’t in fact legally allowed to be in the country.

It is an important question. How much social housing do we need? That many died, that a tragedy took place, doesn’t detract from the fact that this enables us to find out more information concerning that question.

So, has this been studied? As above we’re entirely willing to believe that we’ve just not noted it having happened. We do though think that rather more noise would have been made if it had. Not so much the findings, we’d expect there to have been uproar at even the suggestion that the work be done.

If you know that this has been done then please point us to it. And if it hasn’t, then perhaps someone knows where the base information might be found which we will then work to collate?

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Spike
5 years ago

Social housing is yet another credit to people thought to be in an unfortunate condition, which as Dr. Sowell says “increases the value of being in that condition.” It also carries the possibility that the recipient will monetize the credit. It is not cash-to-pay-rent but a payment in kind, but as you show, by subletting, the recipient can still monetize the alms. I bet that the research has not been done, despite the availability in this case of all the information needed to study. Grenfell is not a solution to Britain’s Housing Crisis but a monument to it, an eternal… Read more »

john77
john77
5 years ago

There is not a surplus of social housing but a misallocation. That there are unintentionally homeless people placed in B&Bs at vast expense because the council has no empty flats into which to put them is a minor scandal which is a result of the larger scandal that the general population are subsidising many people with above-average incomes living in council houses and paying rents half the open-market level (it’s only new tenants since 2010 who have to pay 80% minus housing benefit) and the smaller in scale but worse scandal of those who are sub-letting their council flats while… Read more »

Rhoda Klapp
Rhoda Klapp
5 years ago

There are neighbouring towers. Pick one and go door to door. No need to pick the scab of Grenfell, so politicised as it is. Call it a safety exercise (which it is) and check every flat. If it’s not safe and properly documented there is good cause, still under the banner of safety, to check all social housing in the borough, all under the banner of safety. What, that was the council’s job all the time? Well somebody needs to be fired. SURELY there is no council employee racket going on????

Spike
5 years ago
Reply to  Rhoda Klapp

Go door to door and ask residents whether they are scamming the system? This is rather more controversial than Grenfell, where the data have already been collected for potential study in private, and whatever scammers there are, are deceased.

Yes, you could survey under the banner of safety, though unauthorized residents who are paying market rents are likely to take better care of the place than the designated residents, who got their flats on-the-cheap by rulebook.

jgh
jgh
5 years ago

So…… we could actually support the JSWs and say: knock it down, grass it over, leave it as open space. As subletting shows there’s a surplus of social housing, and removing 98 units removes part of that surplus.

bloke in spain
bloke in spain
5 years ago

Tut Tut Tut. Every single person in the block at the time of the fire was a veritable saint. How can you question this? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!. THE POOR, POOR CHILDREN!!!

Philip Scott Thomas
Philip Scott Thomas
5 years ago

But we know that in the weeks following the Grenfell Tower fire, the decision was announced, via BBC R4, that the government would not prosecute those who had illegally sublet their flats, nor those who were in the country illegally.

Yet the calls for ‘Justice For Grenfell’…

Bongo
Bongo
5 years ago

http://www.teiccaf.com/protecting-the-london-public-purse-2015/

Page 13 is devastating – basically London social housing acts as an incentive scheme for fraud – not my words.

When the National Fraud Authority still existed they estimated 5% illegal sublets in London in 2013. The numbers have come down since.

bloke in spain
bloke in spain
5 years ago

Tut Tut Tut. Every single person in the block at the time of the fire was a veritable saint. How can you question this? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!. THE POOR, POOR CHILDREN!!!

Spike
Spike
5 years ago

Social housing is yet another credit to people thought to be in an unfortunate condition, which as Dr. Sowell says “increases the value of being in that condition.” It also carries the possibility that the recipient will monetize the credit. It is not cash-to-pay-rent but a payment in kind, but as you show, by subletting, the recipient can still monetize the alms. I bet that the research has not been done, despite the availability in this case of all the information needed to study. Grenfell is not a solution to Britain’s Housing Crisis but a monument to it, an eternal… Read more »

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