[pjc50]

2) Council tax has all sorts of central govt limits on it, including the banding system. They can't fix the problem of empty property on their own.

3) A houseboat is not a building, and is therefore exempt from all the laws about building minimum standards that were instituted the previous times London had a slum problem. I'm not sure if there even are any standards about living on a boat, only standards about in relation to the river and other water users.

Housing in the UK is weird and broken. This is about 50% due to Right To Buy and the slow abolition of the council house.

[jamesjguthrie]

Right to Buy is ending in Scotland shortly to protect social housing.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Built-Environment/Housing/...

[Doctor_Fegg]

3: The Boat Safety Scheme applies to boats on most inland waterways in the UK. There are a couple of things in that article that shouldn't have passed a BSS examination - "drips coming through to the electrics" is the one that leaps out at me. But yes, it's not intended to enforce minimum living standards. The local authority should be doing this and I believe they have the same powers against on-water landlords as they do on-land.

BSS requirements, for reference: http://www.boatsafetyscheme.org/media/194782/2013ecp_private...

[matthewmacleod]

I don't fundamentally disagree with the existence of Right to Buy, but it really required a comprehensive house-building program to back it up. Now we're fucked.

[twelvechairs]

The requirement for all new development over a certain number of units (12? iirc) to provide a perecentage as affordable was supposed to deal with this but the govt has redefined affordable too. Some of my professional colleagues in their 30s not only qualified for these but struggled to afford them. this is where the system really failed IMHO.

[DanBC]

> Some of my professional colleagues in their 30s not only qualified for these but struggled to afford them. this is where the system really failed IMHO.

That is bonkers. It's just really weird.

The Tower Hamlets evidence pack has some eye-popping statistics. (Tower Hamlets are building more social housing than anywhere else in the UK)

They have 23,500 households on the waiting list for social housing.

48% of those are in category 1 or 2 which means they have medical need, or are homeless or overcrowded.

9500 households are over crowded. 1228 households are under occupied with 271 having 2 or more bedrooms than they need. (I think a bedroom is anyroom that can fit a bed in it.)