Council housing in the seventies

[rattymol]

In the seventies one third of people in Britain lived in a council house. Council houses were built because of the terrible way private landlords behaved and the poor standard of housing many people lived in. We are returning to those days
4.5 million households privately rent with 23% of that housing deemed not to meet the decent homes standard. We need council housing again.

For those asking, the idea would be

You have nothing. Kicked out home/ arrived on small boat / made redundant etc.....
You get the council house for 2 years allowing you to get a job, save a bit of income etc...
After 2 years you go into private rental or buy if finances allow
Then the next person with nothing gets a punty up.

No I wouldn't throw current pensioners out but. I would only apply it to people new tenants
Many people aren't getting the chance of reduced rent to get them on their feet currently

It would be lovely if everyone could get a council house for life
I don't disagree with that. But we need to be frugal and sensible not emotional. We only have so many council houses and need to use them in the best way possible.

I think they should be offered the opportunity to move to a more suitable place.

however, if we had adequate social housing this wouldn’t be an issue.

and people being able to stay in their home - near their families and with neighbours they know well - would actually help massively in social care terms.

I was brought up on a fabulous council estate in the 60s/70s. All big 3 bed Semi detached houses with massive gardens and garages. It was lovely, gradually each home was purchased through the right to buy except a couple of houses. One of those homes is occupied by a single disabled lady who will not move even though the HA have offered her a modern one bed flat with on site support. She was lucky enough to inherit her tenency when her parents died many years ago.
She cannot access the upstairs of her 3 bed house so sleeps downstairs, she has 3 care visits a day and no longer leaves her house. The massive garden is neglected as she is unable to maintain it. No matter how many more suitable properties she is offered, she refuses. It's so sad, the property is ideal for a family.

Council housing is only part of the issue though- in fact it papers over the cracks of:

not enough homes being built
stagnant wages
non U.K. domiciled people being allowed to buy U.K. homes
no repercussions for men who don’t pay for their children
the north south divide of industry and wages

Wrote about this recently.

1980s mates mum buys zone 2 council flat c60k
Stops work (illness) govt pays mort.

Mid/late 2000s mum sells to DC to buy surburban x3 bed outright, c£250k

Mate rents house back to council, housing benefit most likely paying.
proceeds pay for BTL mort + his residential mort in part (pre Truss).

Now, flat worth circa £400k I think. House worth £500k

They've made a killing on RTB, I don’t blame them but this should never have been able to happen.

In London you‘vehousing benefit paying £1000-£1500pm to landlords for ex council flats that a door down might be paying c£600 to the council as it was never sold.

In the 1980 when I was a teen it was generally understood that selling off council housing was a terrible idea that was going to cause future generations misery. It is horrible that this was deliberate Tory policy and unethically gave one generation a windfall at the expense of all taxpayers, past, present and future. It’s no surprise or mystery that the housing/rental situation has become so dire, it was totally predicted.

It did. There’s a huge London overspill estate where I live, it was built in the early 60s. We most definitely need proper council houses again.

What happens at the end of the two years when they haven't saved up any money and, like in my area, there are no private rentals available?

As an FYI, council rents aren't reduced. They cover the costs of the property and any profits get reinvested, social housing more or less pays for itself. Private rents include mortgage/interest/costs/profit so are inflated.

Social landlords were given the option 12 years ago to issue fixed-term tenancies rather than assured tenancies.
I remember a lot of talk back about five-year tenancies and how then tenants' income / circumstances would be looked at again at the end of the five years to decide whether or not their tenancy woyld be renewed.

ive just googled this now and found that " ... a growing number of housing associations are now opting for a return to the lifetime tenancies of the past ..."

I couldn't read on to find out why this is without signing up to the site, which is really aimed at people working in the sector, but I'm sure there are good reasons.

If any of you actually have access to this, perhaps you could enlighten us.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/why-are-so-many-housing-associations-turning-their-backs-on-fixed-term-tenancies-61200

How would they manage to save enough for a deposit and 1st month's rent or a mortgage when they are paying rent, bills, costs of furnishing the council place (you do know that a council property isn't furnished and is just an empty shell when anybody moves in, right?), all on a probable NMW job, in the space of 2 years.

WTF?

We still have council housing and a lot of it is a much lower standard than private rentals. It’s not even necessarily cheaper and (in Scotland at least) it’s not any more secure. I do think we need more social housing but it’s not that simple that it will solve all the issues in the housing market.

You're right @rattymol

They should be offered smaller homes not just moved.

Of course they should. But it seems that social housing tenants aren’t viewed as people in some quarters. And there’s a huge shortage of one bed houses so there are no smaller homes to be offered.

Social housing doesn’t pay for itself at all. It’s actually a very expensive and inefficient way to provide housing. We fund social housing every year to the tune of billions and billions of taxpayers money from both central and local government. It is costing us from public resources and we are right to question how it is allocated.

It was irrelevant in a New Town in the 60s and 70s. The Deputy Head of my school lived in a council flat. There was no stigma about it. A couple could apply for a house when they got engaged.

Why should public money be used to allow some people to stay in large houses when others are desperately overcrowded?

One of the best things the HA round here did was build no one beds and a shit load of two beds.

Lots of the older people who did move were happy to do so knowing they could still have a relative to stay if they needed looked after. Could still have people visit who’ve had to move away.

They initially got a lot of criticism from some camps because they build basically a whole street of little two bed bungalows with wee gardens - compared to the last lot of building that had two blocks of one bed flats. A lot more of the older folks in bigger houses moved to the bungalows as they felt future proofed for care needs than opted for the one bed flats (which have no lifts so no older person is going to volunteer to be on the second floor over a house!).

What do they do with the people who don't have a council house and can't afford private rentals now. It is no different.

Of course social housing pays for itself. The building costs are probably covered in the first ten years. After that it more than washes its face. The cost dwarfs the taxpayers’ money that goes into private landlords’ pockets via housing benefit.

So your solution is to kick people out of secure housing and pay more in housing benefit for them to have insecure private rental?

That makes zero sense whatsoever.

Fuck! I meant is dwarfed by!

They should be offered a smaller home if such things exist, not a high rise, and help with moving. People shouldn't just be kicked out to fend for themselves in old age. There is value in stable, established communities where people can support each other.

Most of the people I knew who did right to buy or were paid by the council who bought their own homes, moved away to buy cheaper non council properties.

Later, the son of one of these families said another reason his parents moved when he was 16 was that the area was crime ridden, which it was, with petty crime, and his parents didn’t want him getting into that. The area has now significantly improved and is very desirable.

Right to buy or being given money to move did give people a chance to think of better futures for both themselves and their families who otherwise had nothing.

I’m not saying I disagree with social housing but it’s very easy to be against RTB or be given money by the council to move to another area, when you yourself have your own mortgaged/owned property.

When people were rehoused from council flats to new council houses there was distinct pride in having a house with more than one floor, a proper garden, and even not a downstairs bathroom!