jon14

if such rules were implemented faced with eviction out of place they called home, grandparents (of my model family)may decide to kick out their children out to bring the income below the threshold of 100k. Therefore you are not having an empty home and you have another young family which would struggle by themselves to find a home. (Anyone over the age of 20 who lives with their parents would most likely like to live apart, but they can't especially if they have any children). As I understand most rents are higher than mortgages, and the age of significant numbers of first time buyers is now going to late thirties.

Increasing rents to 80% of local private local market, will certainly force many people to move to cheaper areas, one of them being Lewisham. This will bring some more money to the government purse, but it will also uproot and bring misery to many who have no option but to move out of the area.

Over 700,000 long term empty homes in private sector, and how many are there in the public sector. As I understand a lot of public sector homes have structural damages with other problems. As there is no money to make them in habitable state these remain empty. Developers are maximising profits by building less, and hold on to land to wait for higher prices.

This policy would not even begin to solve the problem of rising demand on homes compared to lesser supply. Compare the number (I guess fairly small as 1% earn over 100k although this is not the equivalent measure) of such possible homes created towards the number of empty homes in local housing and in the private sector. Therefore this is something designed to bring the attention away from the real problems. A great sound bite! While we bicker about 50 or 100k limit, we are missing that the loopholes for the rich paying their way are not being closed.