Don’t force pensioners out of a family home that’s been theirs for years

• WHY is it often assumed that just because someone lives in a house that is worth more than say £1million, which in the borough of Camden is not that rare nowadays, that the occupants are rich?

I know of an owner who bought a house in Camden Park Road in 1954 for the sum of £800. We bought ours in 1959 for £2,750. “Oh goodness,” some may cry out, “how cheap!” Well it wasn’t.

As a family of five we lived in just two rooms of a nine-room house with no bathroom as such, just a tin bath. The rest of the rooms were rented out to pay the mortgage and utilities.

These properties are now worth upwards of £1.5million but we are far from high earners so giving us and others in our position a huge property tax bill makes no sense, as we wouldn’t be able to pay.

Owners cannot control the appreciation in value of a property they own, yet councils and politicians are quick to jump at the chance to penalise owners just to be seen attacking wealth. Assets are not money until they are sold.

A pensioner who has owned their house for over 50 years should not have to be put in a position where they cannot afford to live in a home they have been in for most of their life because councils have run out of money – and often wasted unnecessarily – but that’s another subject altogether!

D FLOURENTZOU
Address supplied