In thinking if you earn over £100,000 a year, you should not be allowed to stay in council house accomodation?

[Hammy02]

RMT union boss Bob Crow earns this and yet still lives in a council house. Surely he is using a property that should be housing someone that actually cannot afford to privately rent and needs subsidised property?

[expatinscotland]

It might be more profitable for the council instead to increase his rent to full market level for the area.

[expatinscotland]

If he's an older tenant he will just exercise his RTB.

[GypsyMoth]

it was in the news this week...a proposal to move council tenants when earning over 100,000

assume thats what prompted this post....not read it anywhere as yet

[kreecherlivesupstairs]

I agree. I haven't seen the news about Mr Crow but I do think that if you are in a well paying job you should be able to save enough for a deposit on your own house/flat.
I suppose if he is in London, that would take some time but nonetheless, I am certain that there are other more deserving people.
Right to buy makes me spit TBH. I do understand why people excercised their RTB but it was such a flawed plan.

[Hammy02]

I thought the RTB was scrapped? I think the whole system of a property for life should be overhauled. People are losing their homes as they can't afford their mortgages due to redundancies as they don't have the luxury of a home for life.

[pippop1]

He lives near me and there are cheapish houses that he could have saved up for. I think that morally he should have worked it out for himself that it simply wasn't right to live in such a house. Even if it not demanded how can he sleep at night i.e. how does he justify it to himself?

[shirleyshortcut]

frankly i dont think i would want to live in a council house if i earned that salary

[expatinscotland]

'I thought the RTB was scrapped? '

For new tenants it is. And some councils have moratoriums on it, but he's not a new tenant and if he's been there a while or inherited the tenancy he's likely got RTB.

[lubberlich]

Yes - out you go Bob. Be a true man of the people and let someone else more deserving of social housing get in.
Sickening to think that families with kids may be holed up in crappy emergency B&B accommodation whilst he is house blocking like this.

[AbsDuCroissant]

Oh, as it's Bob Crow, I would personally go over there and kick him out on the street myself. I hate that man.

[TheRhubarb]

Why would you live in a council house if you were on that amount of money? Yes it's cheap rent but you can't do what you like to it and I presume he'll be part of an estate? Or are we talking a posh council house in central London?

[expatinscotland]

I'm sure it's a posh house in London or he'd have bailed by now. I'd be out of here in a nanonsecond if I even won an ITV competition :o.

[fedupofnamechanging]

Most people are not going to have much sympathy with a person earning over £100,000 being moved from a council house but lets face it, we are talking about very few people here. This is so the govt can legally end tenancies for life and is the thin end of the wedge. If a government can make this legal then the time will come when all sorts of people get turfed out of their houses and they will make it legal by starting with a section of the population least likely to engender sympathy in others.

[Hammy02]

There are 6,000 council houses occupied by people on over £100,000 a year. Not an insignificant number.

[TheRhubarb]

They won't turf people out because those people will go to the European Court of Human Rights and then it'll get messy and expensive.

Ending the RTB is, in my opinion, a fair scheme. There is a shortage of council houses and a huge waiting list, including families put in separate B&Bs whilst they wait. The more people buy their council houses the less there will be as all the houses being built now are the shared ownership ones and they ain't cheap.

[SardineQueen]

Can't stand bob crow either.

Not surprised about this.

"Why would you live in a council house if you were on that amount of money? "

Because it's near all your friends and family, you've lived there for years, your children are settled there, any number of reasons. Or you're just tight

I don't think that people on huge salaries should be allowed to stay on in council housing either. If we had lots of housing stock then yes, but we don't, and the fact that someone who can easily afford their own property is sitting in a house while a needy family is in crappo temp accomadation or worse - it's wrong.

[fedupofnamechanging]

Okay, I take that back then. I thought it was likely to be a few hundred. I think I'd move if I earned that amount of money.

[ratspeaker]

If he buys it the house it would be out of the council housing stock forever so it wouldn'trealy benefit someone on the waiting list

Its a devisive tactic, point at someone who earns a bit money, has children left home etc and say "they dont deserve a council house" instead of looking at the problems and building more council houses
I know around here all the good areas lost council house stock under the right to buy and was not replaced

[expatinscotland]

What Rhubarb said. That's why I think it's better just to increase rents in proportion to earnings. That way, too, if the person's income decreases the council doesn't have the whole expensive process of homelessness/paying benefit to rogue private landlords to go through again.

I agree with RTB being abolished, but in England so far this isn't the case for many who are not new tenants (and in Scotland as well). Bob Crow is not a new tenant.

[knittedbreast]

people on an awful lot less than 100,000 should be moved from thier council houses.

so what if you have settled there, your children are settled-what about those kids living in b&bs when bob (whoever he is) can afford to live elsewhere.

disgusting

[GypsyMoth]

'moved' to where?? you mean forcibly kicked out?

[expatinscotland]

'people on an awful lot less than 100,000 should be moved from thier council houses.'

I disagree with this until the day, which will be never, that the system of private letting in this country is revised.

I do believe rents should be reviewed from time to time and increased in correspondence with rises in income, and with new tenants agreeing to be moved on once they are over-occupying a property.

[loubie1967]

Big problem with social housing is that it is so much cheaper than private alternative, where families rent privately then receive housing benefit from state. Most councils (in SE anyway) have v little housing stock and what there is, is inhabited by long stayers that only move out when they die.

Not sure why £100k has been used - not sure someone on £75k could justify having a council house, given the real need out there.

Why don't they move over to markets rents subsidised by housing benefit. That'd make tenants realise the true value of what they've got, and the elderly could move to cheaper smaller properties just like private tenants/homeowners do. Richer tenants would also then be forced to pay a realistic amount.

This should allow councils to target those most in need of help.

[duckdodgers]

I live in a council house and as much as I like my house and all the work weve done in the garden at my own expense I wouldnt be living in it if I earned £100,000. Im a Nurse so will never earn this! I also dont believe in the right to buy and if I ever could buy a house I wouldnt buy this one. But I dont think I ever will be in the position to buy and there is little private rentals in the town Im in so Im here for the future.

I agree with karma this is all about ending tenancies for life overall. The Tories should never have allowed people to buy their council houses in the first place but they did. Its just a shame that few new council houses are getting built these days. Rather than thinking council rents are subsidised, people should be more concerned about greedy landlords and inflated rents in the private sector.

[Hammy02]

ILoveTiffany-If you have a decent income, why shouldn't you be kicked out? Stand on your own two feet like everyone else.