Council houses owning brand new cars?

I work as a nurse, I live in a housing association house and I have a 24 plate car. We were homeless for 18 months before we got this house

By law local authorities are required to give reasonable preference to people in certain kinds of housing need when prioritising housing applications. Each local authority can decide the way it prioritises housing applications as long as they give reasonable preference to those groups. As demand continues to outstrip supply, some social landlords are looking to review the way they allocate housing to refocus on applicants with greater housing need and local preference rather than also including other local priorities. But fundamentally the purpose is to provide housing assistance to people who cannot meet their housing needs in the privacy market. That doesn't just mean they can't afford it - there are various kinds of need.

Not to further derail to derailed thread, but I didn’t know there were subsets of social housing and I wouldn’t know that because I didn’t know they existed. It’s not like I google “how many worlds are there of which I am not aware so shouldn’t even be conscious enough of to be googling this”.

But a poster comes and makes a thread and oh, it’s a troll etc. “Educate yourself, snob!” You can’t win. I’ve never set foot in a state school before…so I could ask a question and then get called names, I could then offer to go into a state school and then I’d get accused of “poverty porn” or other such nonsense.

The absolute chips on shoulders

Agreed if more resources were available all the needy should get what they need. But we live in the real world, sadly.

So we give people council houses then if they earn a good living throw them out and bring in someone poorer?

Nobody's suggesting an emotive "throwing them out", @Coconutter24

If such a policy was adopted it would take so long to implement that people would have plenty of time to make their own arrangements, and even then those considered no longer in need of help would hopefully get a grace period after the assessment

Public resources should be more widely available so they don't have to be reserved for the most needy. This is more likely to be facilitated by more people paying rent to the local authority thus increasing its revenue, than by pushing them to line the pockets of private landlords as soon as they have money to spend.

No requirement to reply should you not want to :)

Precisely

Yep.

Proved it.

You’re exhausting.

You don’t know what you don’t know

@XenoBitch

"They don't own them though."

True but it doesn't stop them being parked on people's driveways.

Equally 80% of cars that are not purchased through Motability are bought on Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) where technically the buyer doesn't own the car either.

Why is it expected that OP should have googled the difference between various types of social housing that OP didn’t know were distinguished before posting?

Why should the most needy get allocated the public resources?

What’s your point?

You sound exhausting.

Agreed re first point. But let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Public resources should be expensed on the most needy, is that fairly straightforward? Of course there should overall be way way way more affordable homes… rent and home ownership for sure too expensive (but at least with the latter you are accumulating equity… in the long run.

And (as you probably know), that's because the Tories brought in legislation decades ago that sold most if them off - the actual cause of the massive private rent inflation we see these days.

Renting, OP, used to be relatively a lot cheaper because of the greater availability of council housing. Please don't begrudge people council housing.

Not the original post though?

There needs to be more affordable housing, the answer isn’t to kick people out if they can afford a nice car. Most people in council houses work full time, they shouldn’t be punished because there’s someone currently less fortunate than them

They don't own them though.

Meant to add a link:

www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-03-04/how-auto-sales-giant-motability-cornered-britain-s-car-market

The answer is Motability.

1 in 5 of all new cars bought in the UK is through people on PIP allowances.

I believe Marx was describing a model to be applied to everyone within a society, rather than to shame the slightly more fortunate working classes into sacrificing what they have to help those worse off, while others continue to live a life of wealth and luxury. Certainly the idea that a person who could afford rent should pay it to enable a private landlord to profit, rather than return it to the public purse via SH rent would not align with Marxist principles, so its an odd choice of quote to illustrate your argument.

Earlier on she said:

plans say housing association. are they not the same thing? So was querying a difference between a council property and a housing association one.

I know the latter is true but, as well as that, there are many many thousands of families in temporary accommodation…

My point is that it absolutely should. Net income minus essentials (food, transport, electricity etc) should be considered as the ‘real’ disposable. Fancy cars shouldn’t be considered ‘essential’