Private renting so much more than housing association!

[Generationrenter]

Just moved to a new build and the rent is £1300pm, neighbours are HA tenants and paying £500 for the exact same house. We both earn around the same amount.

I’m not saying their rent should be more and think HA properties are great (I’ve been on a waiting list for 6 years as renting is bankrupting me so certainly not knocking it!) but surely efforts should be made within budgets that make HA rents so low to reduce private rents?

I know private renting has become so unaffordable but is there anything that can be done? £800 difference a month for the same house just seems insane!

Guess it is just a vent but it doesn’t make sense to me!

But according to you, we should be grateful that people get lifelong HA properties while we get up every morning and spend 11hrs a day at work and commuting, to come home and study to improve ourselves using all our annual leave on exams and study...

I do all of that only I often work 16 hours a day (not including commute or study time) and I can't afford holidays because I pay rent on my HA house. I will never see that money again. I can't sell my HA house to fund my retirement or leave it in my will to my kids. If it's value increases I don't get any benefit, I do get charged more rent.

@haroldssocalledbluetits You know that landlords pay tax on rents received? And if all landlords decided tomorrow that they were going to stop accepting housing benefits, where pray tell would you like their tenants to go? Would you expect the government to create a tent city? Or perhaps you’d like to confiscate the properties from the landlords as ‘ill gotten gains’? Landlords do provide a service - housing. Not everyone wants to buy a house, they might move countries regularly fir work, they might wish to upsize and downsize at will, they may not want to be responsible for DIY and maintenance.

@generationrent if I had my way, the highest income in an organisation (CEO etc) would be tied to the income of the lowest paid employee and all working tax credits would be abolished. An employer should provide a living wage, and why they should be rewarded for their skills (and in the case of business owners particularly SMEs, the risk they’ve taken), equally the lower paid staff shouldn’t be exploited. A surgeon may make the life saving cut, but the porter cleaned the floor of the theatre.

@frequency And it’s fair that you don’t get to leave it to your kids because it’s not yours. If you want to own, you buy it.

From the link OffWithThePoxies posted:

the net government loss, after recoveries, is £2.5 billion, or 1.4% of benefit expenditure

Fairenuff, if you completely.ignore:

1.0% of total benefit expenditure (or £1.7 billion) was underpaid due to fraud and error

So 1.4% lost, 1% underpaid for an actual difference of 0.4%

And... Well just totally ignore than none of that breaks down how much was due to unemployed people. It refers to all benefits and the welfare bill, which is covering all benefits, including pensioners.

So a 0.4% loss due to error or fraud.. error or fraud, that's 2 things so that 0.4% needs dividing.. 0.2% on a bill of £217billion..

What was your point about fraud again?
That it's a tiny fraction of a massive figure that works out to less than 0.2%

@OffWithThePixies Pay my rent for a while so I can afford to save for a deposit and I will buy a house, assuming I am not outbid by a buy to letter who already owns ten properties.

@frequency I would but I’m already paying my own mortgage because I scrimped and saved for my deposit while paying full market unsubsidised rent. I could possibly consider giving you 20% of my net wages but I’m spending it on my monthly medical bills which aren’t covered by the NHS

@weetinkermonkey again, it’s 2.5 BILLION which again would pay for three hospitals with change it doesn’t matter if it was .0000001% - any level of fraud is unacceptable

again, it’s 2.5 BILLION which again would pay for three hospitals with change it doesn’t matter if it was .0000001% - any level of fraud is unacceptable

I'm very simple language...

No it's not 2.5billion in fraud, read your own link...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39980793

So in 2015-16, the government overpaid benefits to the tune of £3.3bn, of which £1bn was recouped, while claimants were underpaid £1.7bn.

It all means the Treasury was £600m down due to fraud and error in the benefits system.

600m due to Error and Fraud

So how is fraud responsible for 2.5billion..

Please explain .

Lifetime tenancies need to be scrapped, annual reviews brought in to assess both income and need (eg too many/ too few bedrooms), and compulsory programmes to help HA tenants improve their lot in life

So what programme would you be putting my paramedic ex neighbour on. How could he improve his lot in life?

You mentioned teaching assistants Well we have them on our estate too. They cant keep taking time off whenever the HA wants to do yet another weekday visit. Lol just imagine the AIBU from the disgruntled parent when their DCs classroom assistant keeps taking time off to please their social landlord.

oh and worth posting again.

sarah piper says: (from a blog)
December 14, 2016 at 5:21 pm

I’m posting my complaint to sanctuary in the hope someone can tell me where to go…they cost me my job in jan 2015 as i was in a new job on probation and had to take 6 days off work in a month as they left me and my daughter with no hot water for a month because they kept not turning up or sending out wrong people to fix it, then took me to court for eviction in feb as i couldnt pay rent!

SHE HAD A FUCKING JOB!

In very simple language the net loss was 2.5 billion

But you enjoy giving out houses with lifelong tenancies to people like soyayi

There was a we in your post about working (the same as lots of HA tenants work) so you and your husband scrimped and saved from two wages. My husband otoh turned to alcoholism and emotionally, financially and sexually abused me so I divorced him. Now there's only one wage to scrimp and save from. It would take me about 20 years to save enough for a house deposit on one income with two kids to feed and clothe and rent to pay.

But that's by the by. My point was you have a long term benefit from going to work to pay your mortgage. You're not paying money for a place to stay with nothing to show for it once you move. You get a house at the end of it that you can sell or leave to your children. A HA tenant is left with nothing to show from all the money they spend on rent.

If you'd rather not have a mortgage you're welcome to sell up and move into HA accommodation instead.

Off, just cap rents. The economy clearly cannot support rents charged with wages alone. If actual market forces really were at work, this wouldn't be necessary because rents would be lower, reflecting what wages in the economy can support and no need for housing benefit. However, as we've had years of rents being artificially inflated by housing benefit top up payments, the only answer is to cap the amount that landlords can charge, and benefit payments will fall accordingly.

The alternative is that the bill just keeps on getting bigger, because there is no check on what landlords can charge.

OffWithThePixies

Lol... In your own handy picture, read the bullet point below the one you've handily highlighted...

I know it's difficult...

As I posted above:

So in 2015-16, the government overpaid benefits to the tune of £3.3bn, of which £1bn was recouped, while claimants were underpaid £1.7bn.

It all means the Treasury was £600m down due to fraud and error in the benefits system.

I'm not sure why you are struggling with this..

Also in 25 years or less your mortgage will be paid off, probably before you're retired. You don't have to worry about paying it from your pension. If a HA tenant decides to stop paying their rent once they retire or after they've lived in the house for the term of the average mortgage, they'll be evicted and made homeless.

I think that offwiththe is not very good at sums

Just to be clear on how housing benefit works, it's set at a rate determined by the local authority who look at all rents charged in their area. So if rents go up, the housing benefit rate goes up. When this happens continually, it becomes a self perpetuating cycle. There is no other way we can get the housing benefit bill down other than to cap rents. And I think, at £10 billion a year, it needs to come down

To the OP (and others with the same thinking) suggesting that the introduction of a means test for HA/LHAs tenants would improve housing access for all, I have a few questions:

Should tenants be means tested every tax year?

Would a 'high income' tenants rent decrease again in the event that they lose job?

How much would it cost a HA/LHA to administer the means test of social housing?

Your suggestion is simply not a good idea for a number of reasons - many of which have already been pointed out to you by PPs.

But even if you only stopped to answer the last question I posed above, you would see that there would be no extra money for HAs to build more houses, as you suggest...
Why? Because the extra rental income would, undoubtedly, be swallowed up by the administration costs of means testing every damn tenant.

Yes, if they lost their job the rent would go down, of course.

There are clearly many people who are on very high incomes enjoying low rents while others struggle paying high rents in private rented accomodation. This is morally wrong.

The person I know has a very lavish lifestyle simply because his rent is £60 per week. This has been the case for the 20 years I have known him.

There is only so much social housing stock. I think people on high incomes should have to leave social.housin.

I was doing some research and the scheme was suggested for earners over £60k. It was withdrawn and is now at a HAs discretion.

researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06804/SN06804.pdf

Figures cited by the Government indicated that the economic subsidy provided by sub-market rents for social housing was worth, on average, £3,600 a year per social rent.16 The total subsidy, therefore, for those earning above £60,000 was £122.4 million per year if the higher estimate in the table above was used. For those earning above the £100,000 threshold it was estimated at £21.6 million per year.

Sheesh - generation rent that’s a big subsidy. It’s right that it should only go to those who need it. We do need to build more houses but allocating those already built better (or recovering more of the market rent) is also part of the solution to the housing crisis.

Also I don’t have a problem with private landlords being part of the mix of housing. I certainly don’t have a problem with their tenants receiving benefits (housing element of which which is limited). It is of course not a “subsidy” to landlords - it’s people paying their rent. The majority of landlords actually don’t accept benefits (usually due to insurance/mortgage conditions).

There are many reasons why people may prefer to private rent and it tends to be a more flexible option. The issue is that people usually don’t have any other choice.

The problem is there is an overall shortage of housing and particularly social housing.that is what we need to address. But fairer allocation when we have a housing crisis is worthwhile too.

I agree the problem isn’t that social housing is too cheap but it’s that private renting is too expensive.

I rented privately for years, a nice 3 bed semi in a reasonable area cost me £950 a month. Last year I bought my own house. Now I have a 4 bed detached in a very nice area and my mortgage is £720 a month. Granted I have to cover maintenance costs myself now but even so I’m much better off.

I can’t understand how those who can’t afford / don’t want to buy end up paying much more than those who can. Unless the demand isn’t there or people refuse to pay such inflated rents I don’t know what the solution is however.

There are clearly many people who are on very high incomes enjoying low rents while others struggle paying high rents in private rented accomodation. This is morally wrong.

FFS. The number of high earners in social housing won't be any where near as high as people think.
Instead of twisting yourselves up into knots thinking if ways to punish a few people for doing well and bettering themselves, why don't you think real hard about ways to help the millions living in properties with I really inflated rents thy have been driven up through greed?
There will be a damn sight.more private renters struggling to pay high rents than there are high earners in Social Housing..

Exactly tinkermonkey. I agree with all of your points so far, btw.

OP, your own link shows that even the highest government wotireckonry figure puts the number of higher earning social housing tenants at 50,000 and also says that the number could be as low as 13,000. So even the highest figure is around half the population of Brixton. There are 4 million households renting from a social housing provider in the UK. At most, according to the government's own figures, 5% are higher earners and in fact the government says that this could be as low as 1% of social housing tenants. There really are not swathes of rich people occupying social housing.

£1300pcm?! That's absolutely insane!
Our mortgage is £428 a month, but we live very rurally and I'm guessing you're living in more of a city, surely?!