(no subject)

[winterbadger]

Instead of spamming my friend's separate entry on housing, here's what I found when I went looking for comparative stats about US v. UK rental patterns.

Per the UK Department of Communities and Local Government: Seventy per cent of households are owner occupiers, 18 per cent are social tenants and 13 per cent are private renters.

Per the HUD/DOC American Housing Survey for 2007, of the 110 million year-round, occupied housing units, 75 million (68 percent) are occupied by owners while 35 million (32 percent) are occupied by renters. They don't explicitly break out social housing the way the UK does in an executive summary, but as near as I can tell from the supporting tables, only about 1 million of those rental units (or less than 1 percent of all year-round, occupied housing units) are owned by a government housing authority or paid for by government subsidy (Section 8 housing vouchers and the like).

So, despite what I've been told in the past, the percentage of people renting in the US v. the UK is about the same. It's just that in the US, there is very little public housing, whereas in the UK it accounts for more than half of rental housing (and that's after 20 years of the government trying to sell off council houses to their occupants...) To me that speaks volumes about which country looks after its citizens better...

Comments

[silme.livejournal.com]

For me, the issue is health care. If I visit the US, I need travel insurance in case I'm in an accident or become ill. Americans who visit the UK receive free emergency care in the UK. If you're unemployed here, you still can see a doctor and not worry about paying for it -- and you don't have to pay the prescription fee. (In Scotland and Wales, of course, nobody pays the prescription fee. I don't pay it in England because I'm hypothyroid.)

The NHS isn't perfect, but it's there. Lack of socialised is one reason why I don't want to live in the US again. I'm more than happy to pay taxes to ensure everyone has access to health care.

[winterbadger]

I'm more than happy to pay taxes to ensure everyone has access to health care.

SOCIALIST! Next you're going to be saying that women should be allowed to vote and children shouldn't be forced to work...madness!

[silme.livejournal.com]

You betcha I'm a Socialist. I miss Old Labour. New Labour and the Conservatives are too darned close to each other politically nowadays. (I dislike Brown's government, but I certainly don't want David Cameron's!)

[winterbadger]

Did you ever see The Deal? I don't know how much of it is true, but it seems like a good exposition of how opportunism and a willingness to sacrifice principles for power gave Blair his run in office.

[silme.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think I've seen it. Film? TV show?

[winterbadger]

Film, by the same director who did The Queen. Traces the rise of Blair and Brown from junior backbenchers to Blair's appointment to No. 10. Pretty good, on the whole, I thought.