Council housing eligibility

Go to a free debt advice agency to get help with your debts. You could go into some kind of debt repayment plan.

could you put a triple bunk (double below/single above) in your/big bedroom and have dd in the top above you and give ds the other bedroom?

For those suggesting porting the mortgage, it's not always as easy as it sounds. You still have to apply to your lender to do this I believe and pass an affordability check before they'll agree.

Might not be ideal but we have 3 kids in a 2 bed at the moment OP and the oldest has suspected ADHD or PDA (will be hopefully diagnosed once I go back to work and have my private healthcare again) and she needs her own space too.

Our bedroom is the biggest so we're going to put a stud wall in to make a wardrobe/storage area for our clothes and then move her into the bedroom section, we are going to buy a sofa bed for downstairs and then the younger 2 will share eventually (youngest is currently a baby)

We've got our fair share of debt between us to pay off before we will be able to buy a bigger property so in the shorter term while we try and sort that out we're having to make do.

Our council wouldn't home us if we sold as we would be make ourselves voluntarily homeless and ineligible

In my area anyone can set up an account to bid on a house but it would only be enough rooms to meet need. If your DC are under 10 they would be expected to share so it would only be a 2 bed you could apply for. Although anyone can bid, there is a banding system. If you don't have a priority band you have next to no chance. Priority banding (A) is for vulnerable people who are roofless unintentionally, band B is for vulnerable people who are sofa surfing unintentionally. I don't know about the bands further down, I only know of these bands as I work with vulnerable people. I do know even these people struggle to get a house. I know as family who were in a hotel for a year, which is against the guidance, but the council had nowhere else to put them. They got a private let in the end so could have been there even longer if they waited for council.
So in my area, I'd say your chances were next to zero.

Sorry - just realised this is an old thread

Old thread

Could you do a garden room?

Could you save for a loft conversion?

It's not council housing that's unfair, it's private housing that's unfair. We either need to build more council housing or have much tighter regulation on private rentals (and yes, that probably would push some landlords out of the market. Whether that's a bad thing is up for debate) so that people renting privately have more security.

You cannot become verified to bid on social
housing even as a bottom band D if you own a home of any type either in the UK or abroad. You would not get past the application stage

You own your own home, you are very very unlikely to be eligible for council housing. Sell your home then you might be

@Namechangetry Thank you x

See here:

https://www.home-link.org.uk/choice/content.aspx?pageid=80

Not all council tenancies but some are now 5 years then review.

Presumably to get away from the 'home for life' era where people moved into 3 bed council homes with a young family then stayed for on 40 more years and single pensioners live in the house they've had for decades and families can't get housed.

Where does it state the tenancies are reviewed after 5 years? Are you able to enlighten please

I think you’d be mad to sell your own home. (I am a housing officer in a large council )
Firstly , Go and get debt advice .
Secondly, you are assuming you’ll get a “house” but what if you get a 3 bed maisonette or flat ?
These often have communal access and endless ASB issues. You might not have a garden , and you’d forever be worried about the noise your own children would be making whilst listening the noise of others in the block .
Thirdly , to be eligible for council housing you’d have to sell and move to rental - and you’d be at the mercy of the landlord hoping he doesn’t end the tenancy during your long wait for a council place.
You potentially could end up having numerous house moves which could really unsettle your children, before you get your council property

In my work I deal with cases like yours regularly and almost always the people found it harder than they thought it would be to get a council house and had made many house moves in the process,
The majority would give their right arm for the security you’ve got - despite the lack of space .
Think long and hard if that’s what you really want .

OP I would be wary of shared ownership, it’s not the silver bullet some people think!

Can you share a floorplan of your house? We could then share any ideas for potential reconfiguration.

This looks a good idea

You’d have to maintain or lower the loan to value allowed by the product that you took out. Ie if your original mortgage was a 80% LTV, if you moved to a cheaper property, you couldn’t suddenly have 90% LTV. You’d have to give some of the equity to reduce the mortgage to within the 80% threshold.

As long as you stayed within those bounds, yes you could do what you liked with the equity (including paying off the debts)

This is only if you are up to date with your mortgage payments though.

Most (but certainly not all) allow porting, so you would need to check.

An Iva follows you for a really long time and isn’t the best solution for most people. They would desperately struggle to get a bigger house if they went down this route. They can also come after them for the equity in the house if it increases in value in the future.

It feels like the issue is the poor credit rating and debt. Selling the house doesn’t feel like a solution - I think it will remove the only safety net you do have. Have you spoken to a debt councillor? Are you still accumulating debt or are you now paying some off. Are you in arrears on the mortgage? If not have you spoken to them about reducing the payment through perhaps an extension. Could you move into something bigger but the same price and port the mortgage that you have (you’d have to be up to date with mortgage payments).

How much equity do you have in the house currently as I think that might make a big difference on the advice, I'm guessing you've been there 10 years? It might be worth posting a mortgage/debt monthly breakdown, as people might have suggestions, as on the face of it considering how many people end up in debt purely from the costs associated with going to a new private rental after a landlord kicks them out, it seems mad to sell

I think your best bet would be to do something creative with one of the rooms so two people sleep in a room that also serves as a living room.

This is your best advice 👍

This really depends on the area and certainly isn't true for Scotland.

I think a sofa bed in the lounge for you and DH is probably the best option here.
You could also put in a sliding door rather than a traditional opening one which would allow you to split the DC’s room.
Or split the larger bedroom? There has to be a way around this without selling which sounds like a terrible idea having read the suggestions on this thread.

Talk to StepChange-if you enter a IVA you will have repaid an agreed proportion of your debts in 6 years, the rest are written off, and you can start to repair your credit history.