Housing benefit changes - a disaster about to happen

The ‎1980s - the Tories take away the last of rent control laws - saying it will mean rents will fall. Instead they start shooting upwards. (Tories always get it wrong - because they can only think in simple terms - IE they aren't very bright. They also have a nasty mean streak to them.)

They then sold off council houses at knock down prices to renters and refuse to let councils build any new replacement houses with the income.

(A lot of the new home-owners start seeing themselves as middle-class now and start voting Tory. Wooo! Popular capitalism. The working class can own property and buy stocks and shares in the newly privatised utilities - electricity, gas, water, Telecom...)

The result of this is later down the line we have a dire 'affordable' housing shortage. D'uh. Shortages mean house prices start climbing. The start of the housing price bubble. Investors see the new 'buy to let' market - fed by the boom in cheap mortgages, and with no rent controls can get the renters to effectively pay off the mortgage and a bit of extra profit too. Rents sky rocket.

In case you haven't noticed, wages have been stagnating since the 1970s so more and more people have had to have top-ups in the form of Housing Benefit to pay these ever increasing rents.
(Stupid Labour Govt. should have seen this was unsustainabl and brought back rent controls - but at the time everything was booming and feeling good - so they rolled with it. BTW I consider Blair/Brown to be Tories too.)

This results in a massive Housing Benefit bill. Which the Tories are now tackling by cutting benefits and making poorer people move around the country in search of ever decreasing cheaper housing. This plainly is not going to work. Is going to needlessly disrupt many people's lives - fracture communities - put more pressure on already cash-strapped poorer councils as more people have to move to them, increase homelessness - and generally be a disaster all way round.

If only the Tories hadn't taken away rent controls and had let councils keep buying new houses...