Social housing on new build estates

[pangeapanda]

I’m absolutely not looking for a bun fight on council housing tenants, we’re classed as living in affordable housing (shared ownership).

We live on a new build estate, it’s a mix of outright owned/mortgaged, shared ownership & social housing. From what I understand, a certain percentage of new homes have to be allocated for affordable housing or council housing. I imagine they’re moving away from building entirely socially housed ‘council estates’ now?

Half of the estate is houses, a line of part owned properties then quite a few blocks of social housing apartments. I guess my question is, why do they segregate the council tenants from the home owners? I thought they’d be more likely to pepper them throughout the estate now to avoid pockets of antisocial behaviour.

There’s a clear divide between the estate and one side is noticeably less nice. At the same time, some of the houses sell for nearly 500k so people might be apprehensive, rightly or wrongly, about buying where there may be a lot of turnover or perceived antisocial behaviour.

Is there a reason they lump all the affordable housing together then? And should it be considered a good thing?

Not where I live. Developers simply aren't interested. Most of the recent new development has been small groups of large, luxury homes built for maximum profit. On the single large estate that has been built, the social housing was thrown up as cheaply as possible at the start, crammed into a small space at the back. The £1.5 million houses are situated at the front, beautifully landscaped.

All the social housing on the new build estates near me tend to use the social houses to block poor views (motorways, parades of shops, high schools, business parks etc) meaning the people in those homes put up with a lot more noise/light pollution. Figured this out when we were house hunting.

TBH I don’t know why councils don’t order SH tenants to clear up their rubbish, and modify their behaviour. When a dd was house hunting we looked at quite a few ex council properties, and it was really sad how areas that would have been very nice, with perfectly nice houses, if not for the few evidently anti social neighbours - rubbish in front gardens, over-loud music playing, shouting and swearing. It takes only a couple to spoil it for everybody.

The house she eventually bought is in a road of nearly all ex council, a few are probably still SH, but everyone looks after their property, and during the nearly 10 years she’s been there, there has been zero trouble or AS behaviour.

Drug dealers unfortunately have a system of cuckooing vulnerable social housing tenants so even if it's not the tenant themselves, it can become present in the SH homes. Happened to my next door neighbour and ruined the street.

Because we were on a mixed (I say mixed lightly, we are the only 2 SH houses on this street), it wasn't the norm, everyone complained and reported, and now things have massively quieted down.

That's a benefit of mixed estates; with a wider variety of social demographics it's less acceptable for this behaviour to occur, and even though it's a nightmare it can be tackled more effectively.

Yes - the ones on the estate I mentioned were situated immediately adjacent to the motorway.

There are shared ownership schemes from the developer themselves, which generally require a greater owned share (60% ish) than the shared ownership houses offered by the subsidised companies. These houses are exactly the same as the privately owned houses and nobody would know if they are SO or owned.

The other type of SO houses tend to be grouped together, are cheaper houses in general and the rental element which can be as much as 75% is also heavily subsidised. The downside of those is they often have cheaper kitchens/bathrooms (including a locked kitchen cabinet as in fully rented houses)) and lower spec double glazing etc. The upside is they are carpeted and in a move in state. The ones near us even had coat hooks and a shower curtain included. You can tell which houses these are because of the position of the door numbers and outside lights although they are nice looking houses. Apparently the shared ownership houses on this particular estate are sometimes next to the private homes but the fully rented ones are in between these, and never positioned next to private houses. You can’t tell the difference between these SO houses and the fully rented ones.

Ha ha carpeted? Nope. No flooring is provided when you move in apart from kitchen and bathroom. And if you leave your SH property you are not allowed to leave any flooring you put down so you have to pull up carpet/tiles/laminate/whatever, remove curtain poles, blinds, shelves etc incase the next tenants complain or injure themselves! You are not even allowed to leave any flooring lampshade or they will chase you for the money it cost having someone remove it.

You shouldn’t shy away from the truth because it’s unpleasant. This is people’s lived experience. I believe them because it’s also been my experience.

So I couldn't buy a high spec property and then rent it out?

Nope. They rent in the high end area and are a nightmare.

I don't know why you're saying "nope" like those 2 things are mutually exclusive - I'm sure drug dealers rent themselves lovely properties and deal from there but they also absolutely do expand their reach by taking advantage of vulnerable people like people in social housing with substance abuse problems. I have seen it first hand and had to live next to it for 18 months.

These are good points.

Vulnerable people exist in high end properties. That's the money shot.

@Dappy777This is so true. People who deny this reality have either been very sheltered and not experienced it for themselves or are being deliberately disingenuous.
We used to live in an area with a lot of people like this. There was loud music in the gardens all day, drug taking and dealing, domestic arguments spilling onto the street, screaming at 3am, people stabbing each other, sex offenders and all kinds of other criminals being housed after release from prison. Someone had some kind of breakdown and tried to blow their building up with gas, it was a massive emergency incident and was a miracle no one was killed.
People like this are far more likely to be SH tenants as realistically they have nowhere else to go, private landlords will throw them out and they can’t hold down a job for long, if at all, so won’t be able to get a mortgage.
Of course not every SH tenant is like this but enough were to make it unbearable to live there.
It’s a shame because it was otherwise a nice city neighbourhood with lots of lovely houses, parks and shops.
People will go for all kinds of whataboutery and try to claim home owners are just as bad, but it’s not true and we all know it. Some might cause some problems but it’s nowhere near the same scale.
I feel so sorry for the nice, decent SH tenants who have to live among that chaos and can’t buy their way out.

I was talking about shared ownership housing not social housing.

Again, I'm sure vulnerable people exist in high end housing but in my case and in many documented cases, they take advantage of vulnerable tenants in social housing, co opt the place and use it to deal, which brings a host of ASB issues.

Just because drug dealers make a lot of money, it doesn't preclude them from frequenting and making use of social housing.

Cuckooing | Oxford City Council

Shared ownership is a foolish purchase.

Council housing tends to have very close ties.

New estates house all types of shysters.

Absolutely agree but this is well known. The unknown is the new estates.

In your very nice estate there'll be several sex offenders and most certainly drug users. They don't tend to dump sofas on the lawn, which is an old trope regarding social housing.

Get real.

Can a developer on here answer a question for me? I moved into a new estate and have spent 3 years watching 8 different house builders build estates in the area. ALL of them sell their houses as soon as they are fit to live in, even if the road isn't complete finished. All are concrete block and brick.

Except one, Castle Green. They're building two estates, both huge, on each side of a main road. All the properties are timber frame. The right hand side is shared ownership, the left hand side is fully owned. The estates are more than half finished. There are habitable looking houses which have been standing empty for months. It looks as if they are going to complete the whole estate before they sell any of them.

What's going on?

It's so the mighty home owners don't have to mix with the poors.

Spec building.

Shared ownership is a foolish purchase.

It absolutely isn't. If you never buy a bigger share, it gives you a level of security that can't be achieved in a private rented house.

If you can buy more over time you can end up owning your own property in stages that you couldn't otherwise manage.

You have at least a part share in the best performing asset available, a situation which will continue until the housing shortage ends and that's going to be a very, very long time.

It was the poster in sh who didn’t want to live with other riff ‘raft’ in social housing not me. Oh the irony.

All very well if you're single and have no intention of moving. Not so much for the socially mobile and wrong partnerships.

Try selling a co ownership house belonging to a 70 year old relative who has died.