Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Private Charity KNOW YOUR PLACE
This story on the web site of the local paper caught my eye, nothing unremarkable you might think.
The Royal Masonic and Benevolent Institution want to “build sheltered accommodation, extend an elderly mentally frail unit, and construct more than 50 houses”. I don’t know much about this group, but the scheme sounds fair enough to me, presumably they own or can buy the land and they sound like a private charitable group applying money to benefit those in need. I would assume that provided there is no problem with the development, e.g. ugly concrete monstrosity etc then planning should have no issues. I would be wrong: “officers were urging the planning committee, … to turn down the scheme because it would provide no affordable housing …”.
Now “affordable housing” is simply socialism in disguise and like all state benefits and handouts, actually contributes to the oppression of those in need. It sounds good in principle, but someone has to pay for the affordable housing, it won’t be the nasty property developer, as they will still make a profit, but rather the price will be paid by the people who buy the “standard” priced properties in the development (these will be ordinary people unable to meet the subsidy criteria), as these of course have risen to accommodate the extra price of the affordable housing, meaning of course that more people will need the affordable housing. Meanwhile those whom otherwise could not afford houses, can now afford them, but if they couldn’t then either the market price would come down to a realistic level, or they would have to alter their economic activity into a more productive line, as it is, “affordable housing” is simply subsidising either an unrealistic property market, or uneconomic economic activity or both.
Unfortunately the charity has taken a “conciliatory view” and yielded to the council, which isn’t surprising as the charity will want to move forward and not engage in a protracted legal battle, which is probably what the council deserve.
A green councillor (i.e. a water melon, green on the outside red inside) Andy D’Agorne, the usual beardy girlie man, makes some cynical comment on how developers can “pull something out of the hat” when told they need to do more, but completely misses that less money will be available for the charitable work of the institution.
At the end of the day, there’s no way a bunch of statist socialists like to see private charities, it reminds them of deficiencies in state provision and of the dislike and distrust people have of them and their “services”. So there’s no way they were voluntarily going to allow the charity to build as they wanted to; additionally you could be sure in any legal action they’d have fought the charity tooth and nail with every last penny of other people’s money just to be sure that private charity knows its place in the socialist scheme.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
The Royal Masonic and Benevolent Institution want to “build sheltered accommodation, extend an elderly mentally frail unit, and construct more than 50 houses”. I don’t know much about this group, but the scheme sounds fair enough to me, presumably they own or can buy the land and they sound like a private charitable group applying money to benefit those in need. I would assume that provided there is no problem with the development, e.g. ugly concrete monstrosity etc then planning should have no issues. I would be wrong: “officers were urging the planning committee, … to turn down the scheme because it would provide no affordable housing …”.
Now “affordable housing” is simply socialism in disguise and like all state benefits and handouts, actually contributes to the oppression of those in need. It sounds good in principle, but someone has to pay for the affordable housing, it won’t be the nasty property developer, as they will still make a profit, but rather the price will be paid by the people who buy the “standard” priced properties in the development (these will be ordinary people unable to meet the subsidy criteria), as these of course have risen to accommodate the extra price of the affordable housing, meaning of course that more people will need the affordable housing. Meanwhile those whom otherwise could not afford houses, can now afford them, but if they couldn’t then either the market price would come down to a realistic level, or they would have to alter their economic activity into a more productive line, as it is, “affordable housing” is simply subsidising either an unrealistic property market, or uneconomic economic activity or both.
Unfortunately the charity has taken a “conciliatory view” and yielded to the council, which isn’t surprising as the charity will want to move forward and not engage in a protracted legal battle, which is probably what the council deserve.
A green councillor (i.e. a water melon, green on the outside red inside) Andy D’Agorne, the usual beardy girlie man, makes some cynical comment on how developers can “pull something out of the hat” when told they need to do more, but completely misses that less money will be available for the charitable work of the institution.
At the end of the day, there’s no way a bunch of statist socialists like to see private charities, it reminds them of deficiencies in state provision and of the dislike and distrust people have of them and their “services”. So there’s no way they were voluntarily going to allow the charity to build as they wanted to; additionally you could be sure in any legal action they’d have fought the charity tooth and nail with every last penny of other people’s money just to be sure that private charity knows its place in the socialist scheme.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
