Ahmet Oykener.
The Conservative party has announced that living in a council home for more than five years will be a story from the past.
Naturally, the Turkish speaking citizens, although doing well financially – buying homes, businesses and coming off of government welfare – will be effected by this change. And, of course, many Londoners – Turkish speaking or not – will become victims of this new policy.
“What is the alternative for people who are thrown out of their council homes, considering that housing benefit will be capped,” Said Enfield’s housing councillor Ahmet Oykener.
Ahmet Oykener acknowledges that the system is abused by some: “We had to take back 48 homes from people because they were using them to rent it out to others.”
Having said that, using the abuse as an excuse to rid off the concept of council housing is equally un-acceptable as the abuse. in fact, it may raise such questions of abuse by the ministers who are taking advantage of criminal activity to bolster their own agendas.
If benefits and government subsidise were a cause for a change in policy, we have to assume the same applies for ministers and other members of “society”; ministers have had to pay back money for abusing their benefit system as members of parliament, and such claims still continue – should would rid of the system itself ? I guess not.
Do we – far more justifiably – rid of the banking system due to the countless crimes they have committed; remove all government subsidies for them ? None of that is part of the equation for them.
The conservative party alone cannot be blamed
This gentrification process of turning London into a place for the rich, and thus breaking up communities, making people homeless, forcing them out of their homes, lives, is a process that the Labour party was involved in when it was in power: A process – a policy that began early on in the late 70s, a part of the Thatcherite ideology.