A move in the right direction

In (fG) Britain the government has at least one vaguely sensible person.  Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister, has finally noticed that many of the people living in council housing (originally free or very cheap housing for the poor) own property elsewhere.  He's recommending that that not be allowed that to happen.  He thinks the applicants should be screened and new rules should be implemented to prevent free housing going to someone who already owns a home.  He also thinks that:

council tenants who earn more than £100,000 a year should be made to pay much higher rents or leave the property. Ministers are also introducing new rules that will mean that new council houses are no longer given to tenants for life.

Imagine that, making welfare housing needs based.  He's a revolutionary!  Now if only he wanted to take away the lifetime guarantee completely and make it a very strictly time limited assistance for all who qualify. And make the qualification more than simply being pregnant, please.  Pregnancy is not a disability. 

After the August riots I saw this and was hoping to hear of many more such cases, but was sadly disappointed:

 In the first case of its kind, Daniel Sartain-Clarke, 18, and his mother have been served with an eviction notice as council bosses seek to turf them out of their £225,000 taxpayer-subsidised flat.

Sartain-Clarke is charged with violent disorder and attempting to steal electronic goods from the  Currys store at Clapham Junction, South London, on Monday night

Under housing rules his mother – as the tenant – can be evicted from their two-bedroom flat in Battersea if anyone living there is involved in criminality.

 Be a criminal, support a criminal, house a criminal, and the community won't support you. Another revolutionary thought! How much safer it could have been for the elderly, small children, and those deserving of help living in Cabrini Green had they enforced similar rules. How much nicer it could still be now in the neighborhoods where the former Cabrini Green residents have been relocated. And Chicago is not the only city that would be improved by enforcement of such rules.