A Crisis Come Home to Roost.

This is what is happening in the UK at the moment:

The Bank of England is steadily and remorselessly increasing interest rates in an attempt to control high inflation. One effect of this is that mortgage lenders are protecting their position by increasing interest rates to their borrowers to a staggering degree.

So, let us take the case of a landlord who has purchased a property, not to live in but as an investment. He or she rents it to a tenant so that the amount coming in compensates for the mortgage payments going out and the owner has a property which gains value as the years go by.

But now there’s a problem because the higher mortgage payments are not matched by the rent chargeable for the property. He or she is, therefore, financially inconvenienced and decides to sell the property. In order to do this he has to get rid of the tenant, which he does by applying for a Section 21 (‘no fault’) Eviction Order. Once that’s been passed by the court he can then send in the bailiffs to remove the tenant.

You might think that such an action is not unreasonable. Landlords have a right to protect themselves financially, and since they own the property they have every right to re-possess and sell it. That makes sense as far as it goes, but how does it stand in comparison with the corollary, the other side of the picture? People are being forcibly removed from their homes through no fault of their own and made homeless, and at a time when rented properties are like gold dust and rents are rising at such a rate that the lower echelons of society are virtually excluded from qualifying.

This is exactly what is happening to the only family I have – all six of them.

This situation didn’t exist until Mrs Thatcher came along. Before that, local councils had a large stock of modest but adequate housing available at low rents so that nobody needed to be homeless. (I spent the first fourteen years of my life in one.) But Mrs Thatcher – the arch American Dreamer possessed of little intelligence, foresight, or appreciation of any values higher than market forces – put a stop to it. She forced the councils to sell off their properties at knock-down prices so that ‘everybody could be a home owner.’ Those with a modicum of common sense argued that it wouldn’t work, but they were ignored in the face of the mindless capitalist imperative and now Britain has hundreds of thousands of homeless people.

There are more strands to this situation, but I’m writing a blog here not a tome of substance. The point I’m making is, after all, simple enough: The housing crisis in Britain is one of those situations in which a ladder of circumstances exists, starting with the politicians and the Bank of England at the top, and ending with those of modest or sub-modest means at the bottom. And they, as usual, are the ones who take the fall. Does it always have to be that way?