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Free Dissertations - Housing Dissertations

The Home Exchange Scheme Is Open To Secure, Or Assured Tenants And Involves ...

The Home Exchange scheme is open to secure, or assured tenants and involves exchanging homes between tenants with the permission of landlords; other schemes include the Seaside and Country Homes initiative which involves the allocation of homes to those considered deserving (not necessarily key workers); the Homefinder Direct scheme which is similar to the Seaside and Country Homes scheme and the LAWN project which makes homes available to ethnic minorities (www.cityoflondon.gov.uk). These schemes are intended to assist all those in need of housing assistance and not always just key workers.
However, how much help do these schemes really deliver? The reality of poverty in London means that many tenants on low incomes are not those who would qualify for the Home Exchange scheme or other schemes, since they may not have assured tenancies. People who receive housing assistance in the form of housing benefit lose their entitlement to benefit if their savings are over a certain threshold, and therefore it appears that poor people in London, who experience housing need and who are not covered by the key worker schemes are in a state of perpetual poverty. It also appears that the government's main solution to the housing problem in London is to suggest that people within London should make an effort to relocate in other areas where housing and living is cheaper. This is tantamount to indirectly saying that low paid workers do not deserve to live within London; indeed the government's failure to acknowledge the problem or to deal with it in any other way reinforces this point and effectively classes poorer people as second class citizens. This attitude taken by government also takes no consideration of the fact that many people who cannot afford to live in London, as they are not covered by key worker schemes, and who the government expects to simply relocate to other parts of the country, may have relations who live in London, and may have spent their entire lives there. To expect these people to abandon their roots is not a realistic solution to the problem of affordable housing in London. Also, given that the government's main approach to the problem of affordable housing for poor people who are not covered by key worker schemes is to relocate, no assistance is offered to those who actually have jobs in London and who are faced with a choice between unemployment forced through relocation, and continuing to experience housing need while being employed in London.


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