[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Stuart

The problem (in London at least) is house prices. They are far too high, but no government will ever tackle them because it would cause voters to lose a *lot* of money, and would pretty much torpedo the ruling party's chances for several elections.

£40,000 a year is a lot of money, but on a 3 or 4 X salary mortgage (which is still, I believe, the standard) will give you between £120,000 and £160,000 to buy a house. This will (at best) buy you a flat in most of London. Not much use if you have a partner and a couple of kids. A friend of mine was in a bloody good job, earning nearly £50k, yet when it came to buying a house, she could only afford one of the rougher parts of Lewisham (which is already rough), and she could barely afford that if she went to the max her bank would lend her (3X salary). This was several years ago.

Now, you can argue that you can move. You can, but what if you need to get to work? It may not be practical to travel too far. For instance, some of my colleagues are on call in case any of our servers fail. The company may not be able to wait for two hours with a major failure while the techs travel in from some far flung part of the country because they could not afford to live in London. There is also the problems of schooling for the kids. It can be difficult to get school places. Particularly where the Government has cut funding in the local area..

What have house prices got to do with it? Many, if not all, councils wouldn't allow you to apply for council housing and the regular reviews, rather than lifetime entitlement, could exclude you in the future.
Eg My local council.

3.5.20 The Council considers £30,000 per annum for a single person household and £40,000 per annum for family household income to be sufficient financial resource to buy a home or pay market rent in Northampton. Except for a customer to whom Northampton Borough Council decide a reasonable preference is to be given under s166A(3) Housing Act 1996, single applicants who earn £30,000, and joint applicants with a joint income of £50,000 a year, or who have assets or savings of £16,000 for a single applicant £32,000 for joint applicants or more are not qualified to join the housing register for an allocation.

It would be just lowering the existing income level.

The expected change - which will cost tenants on average up to £70 extra a week - will build on measures introduced under the coalition government that enabled housing associations and local authorities to charge market rents to those on incomes of more than £60,000.