New Homes / Re- let homes and Affordable rents.

'Affordable rents' will increase costs to public purse

Housing association Family Mosaic has published groundbreaking research into the impact of reletting existing homes on new "affordable rents".

Family Mosaic welcomes the principle behind the government's plans, but commissioned the research because it was worried that rent levels of 80% of market rents would be too high for the people it wants to house in London. So the association asked independent researcher Mark Lupton to look at what would have been the impact had 50 new tenancies granted within its stock in November and December 2010 been relet at 80% or at 60% of market rent.

The research, published in 'Mirror, signal, manoeuvre: Our drive to provide more social housing' found that, had these 50 homes been let at 80% of market rents,  the housing benefit bill for these 50 tenants would have increased by 151%; at 60% of market rents the bill would have increased by 68%.

The research found that the impact on Family Mosaic's tenants will vary by location, with those living in inner London the hardest hit. At 80% of market rent, seven inner London properties in the study would have seen increases of over £200 a week. Outside London, however, these increases would have been less than £50 per week.

In contrast, most of the sample properties in Essex had social rents that are already at 60-80% market rates.

The report concludes that, for those tenants receiving benefits, the proposed new affordable housing model creates, or worsens, the poverty trap, acting as an additional disincentive to gain employment.

Family Mosaic CEO Brendan Sarsfield says, "We are determined to deliver more homes, but this look in the mirror tells us that the new model creates problems for our residents. Market rents per se are not the problem – we have used them in temporary housing for many years. The challenge now is can we make higher rents work as a long-term solution during welfare reform and public spending constraints."

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Comment: There have been many discussions on this, and the extra revenue to be gained by the Landlords to invest into more homes. But if the differential, in the North, Is low between Social Rent and Affordable rent  1)The poverty trap exists even at Social Rent Levels for a LOT of people, and 2) In the North (and many places) The additional revenue would be negligible and the critical mass needed to generate enough to build one extra home would be difficult nigh impossible. This is what affordable rent is supposed to be for. To Generate investment into more homes. It Works in Affluent areas. The poorer or deprived areas are left out again, as the modelling of it requires a base product that frankly doesnt exist in most of the North of England.  - Jules

Take Time out NOT to forget How wonderful people can be....

   The  prize doesn't always go to the most deserving...

   

Irena  Sendler

There recently  was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got  permission

to work in the   Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an 'ulterior  motive'.

She KNEW what the  Nazi's plans were for the Jews, (being German.) Irena smuggled  infants

out in the bottom  of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her  truck

a burlap sack,  (for larger kids).  She also had a dog in the back that she trained  to bark

when the Nazi  soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted  nothing to do

with the dog and  the barking covered the kids/infants noises. During her time of doing  this,

she managed to  smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

She was caught,  and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her  severely.

Irena kept a  record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a  glass jar,

buried under a  tree in her back yard.

After the war,  she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the  family.

Most had been   gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or  adopted.
 Recently, Irena  was up for the Nobel Peace Prize... She was not selected.

However, Al Gore  won, for a slide show on Global Warming and Barack Obama

won for a speech  on peace.

There are Six Life Truths. So SMILE.

Six Truths in Life

1.   You cannot stick your tongue out and look up at the ceiling at the same time, a physical impossibility due to the tendons within your neck. 

 

2.  All idiots, after reading #1 will try it.



















3.  And discover #1 is a lie. 















4. You are smiling now because you are an idiot.   
















5.  You soon will forward this to another idiot. 









6.  There is still a stupid smile on your face. 









I sincerely apologize about this but I'm an idiot and I needed company.

Nasa Style Dog Walk

Please read From The bottom upwards as latest updates were recorded at the top.

Jules_Clarke 

  

Command: we have return confirmed as successful. Chips are now being made. Thankyou mission control. Wonderful assistance. #nasastyle

Jules_Clarke 

Low signal loss of contact. Back now. Command are we ok for a return. Excessive fluid gone. #Nasastyle

Jules_Clarke 

We have to burn some excess energy. #Nasastyle

Jules_Clarke 

Command do we still have contact? Canine is fine. Fluids have successfully passed. #Nasastyle31 minutes ago via Snaptu

Jules_Clarke 

Command we are mid mission. The shit has landed and first bag recovery mission was a success. #Nasastyle

Jules_Clarke 

Go is initiated. Door in 43 seconds.you may loose contact till return #nasastyle

Jules_Clarke 

Count down: Dog Walk here: We are go on your command control.....#nasastyle

Jules_Clarke 

Count down - less than a minute remaining: Stay of door opening requested. Crew ask for extra 1.5 minutes#nasastyle

Jules_Clarke 

Count down Kit and prep problem, Mobile phone retrieval issues. Portabily issue solved. Revised dog walk T-2.5 minutes from now #nasastyle

Jules_Clarke 

Count down Revised. Kit and prep problem, comms issue. Revised dog walk in T-2.5 minutes from now #nasastyle

Jules_Clarke 

Count down suspended. Kit and prep problem. Revised dog walk in T-3 minutes from now #nasastyle

Jules_Clarke 

@MeriLizzie OOOH not my thing hush my mouth. I must coat myself up. Prepare kit and walk dog #nasastyle

A CEO gave this presentation to a company as a rescue briefing. WHAT?????

<^> - - [] [] The international emoticon for: Don't bother coming into work today, aliens are attacking the city.
_______________________________________________________


Did this make any sense? 


One upon a time, circa early 2011, there was a company that sold its goods online. It employed about 100 people and was not making a profit. To turn things around, its CEO got the 100 people together to talk to them about the company's strategy for the coming years. It took one and a half hours (at a cost of about £5,000 in wages).
Tell me, do you think that this counts as strategy? Was the £5,000 well spent? Will the CEO stay in place once the company is taken over by someone who knows what they're doing?


Editor says: Certainly a Value For Money Analysis was omitted for the presentation meeting. So now we get to what was presented to the employees... And i've changed the names, but the essence is there.

Alientrees.Com Spacestation 2011

What is the Spacestation 2011?
It is the business document that relays our strategy for the next 3 years
It is simple, easy to understand for everybody in the company
It explains what we will ALL be focusing on over the next 3 years
Finance
Exceed Sales plan

• Aim to beat all the sales and KPI targets we set our selves 
• Drive the business into profitability
• Do everything in our power to exceed the sales plan

Deliver target gross margin

• One key way to profitability is through gross margin
• The better the margin the more we have to play with

Control overheads

• Spend money wisely
• If we see a saving then we must act on it

Simpler, smarter, cheaper

• We must always look for ways of doing things simpler, taking out costs and complexity
• We must look at what we should stop doing, do more of, do less of (editor says this is confusing)
• Ask ourselves if it does not add value, why are we doing it?

People
Drive ownership and accountability

• We are all responsible for our own careers
• We must not sit back and wait for things to happen, we must be proactive
• We must not blame others, but accept responsibility ourselves and influence

Open and empowered culture

• We can make changes, we do not need others to do it for us
• We are empowered to do what is good for the business

Recruit and retain the best

• We have great people, we need to make sure we keep them
• Each individual can take advantage of what Alientrees has to offer

Develop our people

• Developing skills and behaviors starts with the individual, the company is there to help
• We offer training, coaching and development, make the most of it

Social responsibility

• We will treat people with integrity
• We will make sure we contribute to the community with our time and thought
• AlienLife principles is an important part of what we do

Operations
Cross selling opportunities

• We must make processes simple and efficient to cross sell
• We must embrace all cross selling opportunities

Turning technology invisible

• Technology must be an enabler

Provide business information

• We need to provide the business with robust, easy to read and analyse data
• We need to make business decisions around informed data

Outstanding product quality and design

• Product development is at the forefront of what we do
• We aim to provide our customers with the best

Customer
Outstanding customer service

• We must aim to give the best customer service to all of our customers
• Customer service must be at the centre of what we all do
• We must stick to our USP’s for customers

Customer experience

• We must be the best for customer experience
• Everything we do must make the customer experience better
• We must use new and innovative ways to make the customer experience better

Expansion into new markets (indeed that means planets)

• We must strive ahead with offering new products for customers
• We must move into new markets in order to grow as a business and retain customers

Drive own brand to 50% of sales

• The way to profitability is through own brand
• Own brand is what makes us different from our competitors
• Own brand gives us independence

Build the Alientree brand

• We are a lifestyle brand
• We must stick to our lifestyle brand values
• We must at all times adhere to our brand guidelines to enforce and build the brand

Cross selling into customers

• We have very loyal customers, but they buy too infrequently
• We must aim to give our customers the opportunity to buy other products
• Everything we do, must be about offering and selling additional desirable products

I must say as a rescue mission the above wasn't very employee friendly. It was a bit garbled. The Virtual Gherkin Understands what he was trying to say. But He didnt think - employees. Target Audience. Errr Theyre quite in limbo and want answers and not unpack a load of management speak.