Sean Gabb’s comment on the suggesstion that sub-letting council properties should be made a crime:
Chris Tame told me once that a quarter of all the council housing in Lambeth had disappeared from the records, having been privatised by the town hall staff.
MR’s response to this:
There is a certain potential irony here: It would appear that this plan will have to involve evicting the current sub-renters of these homes. This means that there will be at least 50,000 people (i.e. one or more person per sub-letter) made homeless, temporarily at least.
Why should an innocent party, the sub-renter, have their home taken away for something that is not their fault? Clearly they still need somewhere to live, and when the state evicts them it will make them de facto homeless, so why not just let them rent directly from the council?
Just as an aside, I wonder how many sub-renters are received housing benefit for their sub-rented home.
Furthermore, it seems highly wasteful to send the naughty sub-letters to prison. That way the taxpayer has to provide for their housing at an even more exorbitant rate than providing council housing. If sub-letting is a breach of their rental agreement then let them pay civil damages.
Why criminalise something where, presumably, there is already a financial sanction (which can theoretically be gained with a lower burden of proof than a criminal sanction). And, if the financial sanction is not being exercised, why is it not? Is this perhaps merely another attempt to compensate for laziness or inefficiency by criminalising something that does not need to be criminal and would not benefit from being criminal.
And last but not least, if people can afford to live somewhere else whilst renting out their council houses then why are they are council tenant at all!? Surely the moment this is found out then they should no longer be a council tenant since they clearly have no need. There is no need to criminalise this, unless there has been an element of fraud (which still doesn’t need any new laws). And then let whoever is sub-renting the house take over the council tenancy.
In short, it seems to me that if it is known that 50,000 people are sub-letting their council houses, and their identities are known, then something practical can be done about it right now. There is just no substantive reason to invent yet more crimes and create yet more laws to deal with something that can surely already be dealt with.
