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?

And I’m not whining and don’t have a dog in this fight I rent privately in the “old” side of town.

Im just saying my mums house is housing association lovely big house rent a third of what it should be. Then some (not all) of her fellow ha neighbours are complete cunts. I’m just saying IF I spent 400k on a house and had to put up with people opposite me being given identical practically for free and then proceeding to trash/terrorise the neighbourhood I’d be pissed off too. In fact that’s an understatement I’m suprised someone hasn’t started a petition against it tbh

They should do what they can to minimise the effects of deprivation in their area. Resenting others for having a home isnt the way to go about it. Particularly when theyve lived there all their lives and you haven't.

I would be interested to hear your suggestions as to how exactly to address the issue of substance abuse, people hitting and screaming at each other and other antisocial behaviour in an area.

I can see that I might offer to pay for the council to pick up the old mattresses, sofas and other trash in my neighbours’ front yards. But I am not going to challenge the local drug dealer/user and his pit bull (which shits all over the pavement) as I suspect he would either hit me or get one of his kids to lob a brick through my window. And challenging couples who are fighting is likely to lead to a similar reaction.

The police and council are useless.

If you spent 400k and chose to buy there, it woukd be because that's what you could afford. So again, you'd be exactly where youre meant to be with the people you're supposed to be with.

Nobody says you should do that. You can promote and assist on any schemes that are oriented around promoting equality basically. What you do would depend on your skillset and experience. It could be anything from coaching a sports scheme to meals on wheels to facilitating AA or NA meetings. It won't change much in your current neighbours but builds towards a better future.

Are you fucking with us? 400k is a huge amount of money I was honestly being kind of hyperbolic when I said that figure more like 300k.
Very very few people consider 400k a cheap house .
normal people paying huge amounts for their homes shouldn’t have to put up with the bs from others getting the same shit practically for free

It's relative. No nowadays 400k isn't a huge sum of money. It isnt life changing money and probably won't buy you a comfortable family home near your job and/or family.

@SquishedpassengerYou’re being ridiculous. The police, council, social services and various services haven’t been able to get on top of crime and anti social behaviour so how exactly am I meant to do it?
Also things like blasting music at night, fighting and shouting, dealing drugs etc are not “effects of deprivation” but choices people make. Some of these people have more money than me and everything handed to them, what deprivation are we even talking about.

If everyone took steps to lessen inequality, we would get somewhere. Your other option is to accept this is all you can afford and put up with the fact that means you'll be living among people with lots of issues.

And actually those things are directly associated with upbringing and education. That's why you could have a very quiet cokehead next door who goes to their very important job everyday and you never see them screaming at their girlfriend.

And how exactly will these schemes - many of which already exist - resolve the real problems my immediate neighbours present? What I care about is being able to live my life in peace and security, not having to walk past dangerous dogs, and wade through dog shit and rubbish when I go out. I don’t care about building a better future for the world as a whole. I want a better here and now in my street.

Social housing is a scheme to promote equality. These people - many of whom have never worked a day in their lives - have benefitted from that scheme. The Council offers a number of free rubbish collections. These people cannot be bothered to phone up and ask - and the Council offers access in many local languages and has staff from those communities so there is no language or culture barrier. There are existing AA and NA schemes. These people are not interested.

Pretty sure from your responses that you have never had to deal with these situations yourself. You might find that some of the idealism wears off.

You are totally missing the point.

society is what it is. You have to live in it. You might like whinging about people dumping sofas and being druggies but that is the society we live in. And if you live in a mixed estate, you may find yourself next to that. That’s life

feiw I live in a mixed estate, in a £800k house no less, and we have no issues with anyone. It’s a highly desirable neighbourhood and I can sell my house with ease because people do want to pay £800k even to have to live next ti social housing 😱😱😱

Many of those schemes have been cut. Why didnt you buy a home where you weren't neighbours with those types of tenants?

Oh and I live in Tower Hamlets and work for the NHS locally so I think I am more than familiar with everyone who frequents our society.

I have lived in my home for many, many years. It used to be quite a nice area. But the Council and HAs bought up properties and built new social housing in the area which has led to a steady decline. Not all Council/HA tenants are problematic but a disproportionate number of them are because of the way the Council allocate properties. Low income, large families, domestic violence (where the offending partner remains a regular visitor or moves back in) etc etc.

I would love to move, but I cannot afford to.

It's got nothing to do with inequality. It's the fact that shit, antisocial behaviour isn't policed or punished, just endlessly tolerated, to the detriment of everyone else.

Most people aren't snobs - if social tenants genuinely behaved no worse than anyone else, on average, people wouldn't care about living next to them (beyond perhaps the understandable resentment that they have a mortage of £2K a month and someone else is getting the same house with their rent paid by the taxpayer). People just genuinely don't want to live next to noise, crime, weed smells and antisocial behaviour.

Why is there this expectation that people should put themselves last? That they should happily accept living next to people with undesirable behaviours because it's better for those people's children to be in a mixed community? They're human, they give a shit about their own children first and foremost.

Police officers know which sort of crimes are happening in which sort of areas.

So you will be in a well paid middle class kind of job I imagine.

On the other hand, people like your/ my grandparents and parents used the step up of social housing to become lower middle class 😁 what an amazing success story!

There are people who are still living the life that social housing offers but their children and grandchildren might be just like us, £400k mortgage and all

What in the NHS? 😭😂

£400k a huge amount of money? It’s really subjective. When I was house hunting I would not have been able to buy a 1 bed flat with that budget. A 3/4 bed family home in the area of East London I was born in starts at around £800,000. The house I eventually bought cost considerably more than £400k and is probably the cheapest on my road. I couldn’t afford my childhood area and moved further out and am just still in London but on the border of Essex.

I love the peace and quiet where I live now. I was previously in a flat I bought outright via Shared Ownership in Hackney and unfortunately, as many have described, the level of anti-social behaviour from SH tenants was off the scale. The week I put my flat up for sale coincided with an uptick in criminality and my drug dealing neighbours car was burnt to the ground and left outside my property with a warning about “speaking to the fedz” spray painted onto his door.

Miraculously my flat still sold immediately as it is in a desirable area, close to the city. I cried with relief the day I handed keys to my buyer.

I often met leftie, idealistic in-comers in Hackney who waxed lyrical about the benefits of mixed development housing although they almost always lived in £1 million+ terraced houses within their little enclaves of gentrification. It’s so easy to accuse people who complain about SH tenants of snobbery when you personally don’t have to live amongst the chaos and misery anti-social residents inflict on others.

And as I said, crime is not the only thing (or even an important thing) that dictates housing policy .

@SquishedpassengerYou philosophise a lot. The bottom line is nobody wants to live with anti social neighbours and crime, regardless of background. Even the most left wing, bleeding heart’s sympathy and patience will wear thin if they have to live next to that.
As it happens, I was able to buy my way into a nicer area, so it doesn’t affect me anymore.
But people shouldn’t have to do that, and not everyone can. I really feel for the good people in my old neighbourhood who are stuck there. You’re basically saying poor people deserve to live surrounded by anti social behaviour and crime.
Have you ever lived next to anti social neighbours? Did you just accept it?

Loads of NHS jobs are extremely well paid - especially when you factor in the pension schemes (which most NHS employees conveniently forget when moaning!)

I dont want to either. To the side I have a private care home for teenagers and behind me the guy smokes weed in his garden all day.

the houses are all privately owned, so what do I do about that?!

have you ever thought people just ring fence SH anti social behaviour because they expect/ notice it and believe they should be able to control it (which goes back to the notion of the deserving poor”)