MINISTERS unveiled new plans to gouge social housing tenants yesterday, starting a six-week consultation on “pay to stay” plans which will hit families and couples hard.

Households living in council or housing association homes earning a total of £30,000 before tax (or £40,000 in London) face being hit by extortionate near-market rents from April 2017.

The government claims that the extra cash squeezed out of council tenants will go towards reducing the national deficit, while housing associations will keep what their tenants are forced to pony up to spend on “affordable housing.”

Tory Housing Minister Brandon Lewis said that tenants who earn average wages — or a couple earning up to £20,000 each — do not deserve to live in so-called “subsidised” housing.

The Star asked the government to explain how self-funding council housing is “subsidised” but received no reply. Housing associations are understood to be funded by bank loans and tenants’ rents.

Mr Lewis said tenants, instead of the government, should foot the bill for housing despite the party recently claiming it was the party for “hard-working people.”

The Tories have already announced plans to extend the right to buy to Housing Association tenants — something which is legally questionable — and build 200,000 “starter homes” which will be completely unaffordable for most people.

Mr Lewis said: “It’s not fair that other hard-working people are subsidising the lifestyles of higher earners to the tune of £3,500 per year, when the money could be used to build more affordable homes.”

But a whopping 60 per cent of 27,108 affected households in London will not be able to afford market rents or buy their social homes, according to research by Savills estate agents.

In the east, south-east and south-west of England the figure is 49 per cent, 43 per cent and 27 per cent respectively.

A huge 86 per cent of the 11,227 households affected in north-east England could purchase their homes through right to buy — which would wipe out social housing stock in cities such as Newcastle, Durham and Sunderland.

Liz Davies, a housing law barrister and vice-president of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, voiced concerns over how the “means-tested rents” would be enforced.

Commentators suggested that tenants could be encouraged to lower aspirations in a “race to the bottom” just so they could afford to stay near their families and friends.

And fears were raised as to whether market rents could push couples and families to breaking point as they scrabble to pay hundreds more pounds a month in rent.

Ms Davies told the Star: “Social housing is currently a scarce resource, but this is because successive governments since the early 1980s have failed to invest in council housing and the stock has been decimated by right to buy.

“Nye Bevan built more than 250,000 council houses from 1945 on the basis that they would be attractive to the comfortably-off, as well as poorer communities, and that council estates would be inhabited by mixed communities.

“The way to ensure that social housing caters for all those people who are on waiting lists, and who cannot realistically afford the private rent, is to build more council homes, not punish existing tenants.”