Guido has done a rather nice job of highlighting the hypocrisy of George Monbiot’s latest article suggesting that people should be “encouraged” to make sure as many people live in their house as possible. From his proposals I assume he’s recently discovered the works Harry Harrison, perhaps it was on telly over Christmas. So anyway I’m going to ignore the hypocrisy as that seems to be fairly typical of such pundits suggesting people be made to take actions they haven’t taken themselves.
What puzzles me more is his idea of “housing footprints”, which he describes thus:
“Your housing footprint is the number of bedrooms divided by the number of people in the household.”
Now he doesn’t explain what counts as a bedroom, my house is notionally three bedroom, but one’s now a study, and the other is a sewing room/guest room. So is my house currently one, two or three bedroom? The two rooms which can be slept in both have the facility for two people to sleep in them (a double bed and a double sofa bed) so shouldn’t my housing foot print actually be five? But perhaps even that isn’t going far enough that’s just considering the upstairs rooms, I could easily make the lounge into another bedroom pushing my housing footprint up to seven! Or on the other hand what if I knock a couple of the upstairs rooms together suddenly my housing footprint could be down to one, a couple of movable screens would let me still have guests over. Really the only logical way to work this out is to have government set guidelines on how much living space we’re each entitled to. Perhaps a set allowance per household to cover kitchen, bathroom etc. then each person in that dwelling is allowed a set amount of private and communal space to avoid over crowding? After all no matter what you do to increase the space you have the “the total housing stock is a common resource”, so once it’s built it should be available equally to everyone. Gardens are probably a tricky point as well no one really needs them, and surely again the amount of outdoor space if any should reflect the total number of people in a dwelling.
Now of course George isn’t saying that he expects the state to confiscate private property and reallocate it according to some bureaucratically controlled formula (see update it seems initially he was suggesting compulsion). Nope instead people living on their own should cease to get a reduction in their council tax, is his bright idea. Ignoring that single occupancy generally uses fewer council resources than multiple occupancy dwellings in terms of refuse collection, need for the police etc. (I’m sure someone has decent figures somewhere). In fact I seem to recall that the council tax discount was brought in to address just that unfairness which might otherwise have forced elderly people out of their homes due to the higher bills from living in a house they’d bought when they’d had family with them. But fear not George has a brilliant idea for this as well a charity could vet “suitable lodgers” who could then live with the old person as a sort of unpaid home help – I’m guessing it doesn’t matter so much if the old person wants or needs them, they’ll get to have them or pay higher tax for the privilege of continuing to live in a house they bought from what money they had left after their wages were taxed and on which they probably paid a fair heft of tax when they bought it.
In Georges brave new world* the only reason why this simple solution isn’t being considered is because “none of the major parties wants to pick a fight with wealthy householders”. Wealthy no doubt including all the pensioners struggling to hold onto family homes and flats with a guest room for when family visit** – I’m assuming that he’s not including himself in this category and his under occupancy is fine, otherwise surely he’d already be letting people who couldn’t otherwise afford it stay with him in return for 10 hours a week of chores?*** I suspect myself that the reason why the idea isn’t being considered is it’s somewhere beyond idiotic and doesn’t take any account of how people actually use the space they’ live in. Or is this in fact George coming out in favour of the recent government proposal that council tenancies shouldn’t be for life or inheritable so that they can provide a higher level of occupancy? After all wouldn’t it be fairer to start such a scheme with properties actually owned by the state?
Update I just noticed something odd. in the Telegraph article responding to George they quote him as saying:
“Those who insist on under-occupying their homes should be forced to pay for the privilege, or take in a charity lodger”
a quote which also appears in the comments to his article, and yet seems to have disappeared from both versions of hist article on line. I’m sure he’d not change what he initially said just because some people suggested it was unreasonable?
Also apparently he does already rent out his spare room, though if that is to charity lodgers or otherwise I don’t know.
Update 2 Someone took a screenshot of the initial article where he did suggest forcing people to take charity lodgers. Naughty George.
* Yes I know that’s a different author.
** I can blow a dog whistle as well as anyone else.
*** Sorry said I wasn’t going to touch on that.
