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?

we live in SH, our street is a row of 8 terraced 2 beds, then a carpark, then a row of 3 bed terraces. and 2 flat blocks next to the 3 beds. full mix of owned outright and SH.

from the outside of the houses, you'd never know which ones are which. not one house has rubbish strewn everywhere, etc.

my ndn is owned, and our houses look exactly the same, the only difference is now she has a new front door, she replaced it a couple months ago

But what if you had to move somewhere and that is all you could afford? What’s the alternative?

Take A Break?

The new build houses near me are very expensive. More expensive than my house! They are no less than £300,000 going up to £550,000. Then attached to them, down one road are the council properties. The council properties are built differently so not as nice. My neighbour sold his home on that estate to live on my close. He said the council tenant teenagers were antisocial and the police were always called. My friend also lived on that estate, a detached and high spec. He also moved because of the teenagers behaving badly.

🤣 it’s tempting 🤣🤣

I hear what you are saying but I am asking what if, for any reason, that was literally your only option? You have the privilege of choice that SH don’t have - so what if you no longer had that choice?

I'm one of those people you describe at the end of your comment.

on benefits (all be it due to health conditions), i smoke, well vape, i definitely swear, and I'm sure my kids can be a little feral sometimes.

however...if you walked past my house you'd never know any of this.

its clean, well kept, looks identical to my neighbours. there's no rubbish left outside, paintwork on my window ledges and outdoor cupboard aren't chipping (i actually repainted them about 2 months after moving in, because they were and it drove me mad, that it looked scruffy), and if you saw my children you wouldn't think they were a bit poor or neglected, always clean, well dressed, in nice well fitted clothes.

i'm the old school kind of social tenant (despite being only 31) you'll find sweeping leaves off of the steps to my house, or stood on a chair cleaning my windows and front door.

i promise we aren't all nightmares.

I grew up on a council estate. I loved it wjen I was small, didnt know any different. But once I got a bit older I hated it. I've worked my arse off to get away from it and theres no way I'd be buying a house on any estate that had SH mixed into it.

If someone doesn't have a choice then they have to accept that they live there, until they save up enough to buy a home. I do have a choice which is why I'd never live on a new build estate.

I think it's because they're aware of snobby attitudes of the people going for the full ownership houses. I'm in a Facebook group for new builds and there's often people posting pictures of the development plans and saying 'we want to buy plot 20, but plots 15-19 are social housing and that puts us off' and the comments will be a mix of people saying they're snobs and that people in the affordable housing are just as nice as they are, and people commenting that they'd never live near social housing as it's awful, noisy, messy, horrible people etc.

I live on a new build development in shared ownership, for us it's dotted around and everyone seems to get along just fine.

I haven't read through all I pages of comments but got to yours and thought I would repeat a really good observation I had seen articulated on here - because the provision of social housing is so woefully inadequate these days, in most areas it really is, without wanting to sound dehumanising, mainly for people who struggle the most in society and basically have no hope of securing accommodation any other way. To fall into this category that even massively overstretched councils can't turn away, they usually will have some complex needs, and so that is what's driving this nightmare social housing tenant perception.

Compare that to even 10 years ago, and especially 20 + years ago, where the amount of social housing available meant that fairly normal families who were just on a lower income could get a look in.

The rules keep changing to further and further restrict entitlement as the stock just isn't there. Councils do anything within their power to put off anyone who has any chance of standing on their own two feet in a private rental, and so yeah, you're only left with people who are quite vulnerable.

Why are mixed developments ideal? Ideal according to whom? Because many people would think the ideal is to have fully owned estates separate from social housing estates. That would mean there wouldn't be the issue of owned houses being worth less because of being near SH and the likelihood of trouble from antisocial neighbours would be reduced.

I rented a room lived in a new flat development in London in 2018 and it was very obvious. The social housing had a different entrance, which looked like a back door to the same lobby whereas owners had a big prestigious entrance with a concierge, sofas, fireplace, etc Different lifts to different floors. You’d stand for the lift next to them and I certainly felt like the intention was for them to feel othered, a bit like a servants entrance. Whenever I spoke to any of them I always sensed they were surprised. It struck me as really strange way to design it making everyone feel awkward.

TBH the most complaints about behaviour are cars and parking, this is across the board - not just council and social housing

There’s a new block of flats near me where social housing tenants are on different floors with a separate lift and separate entrance so the private owners never have to encounter the great unwashed.

Quite - "ideal" to someone living in an ivory tower with no idea of the day to day reality of ASBO neighbours.
I remember learning all about how ideal this was in my geography degree.
Then getting out into the real world and realising that I did not want to get half a million pounds in debt to share a street with a drug dealer, some abandoned sofas and a stolen car.

Just to clarify, I am a housing association tenant so I don't hold any negative judgement or stereotypes to the demographic of people living in social housing, but equally I was moved twice by my housing situation after begging them because of other awful social housing tenants 😪

I am really lucky though because I was able to move back to my first little house and me and one neighbour, the rest of the properties are big owned detached houses mainly populated by older people so it's a very quiet, peaceful estate. But yeah, even one bad tenant in an entire estate can cause so much pain for people nearby 😕

People deserve homes though. There has to be an alternative solution, a middle ground between segregating social tenants who are more likely to be ASB perpetrators, and posting someone with known issues on every street corner.

What’s happened to our society?

Standards in the UK are sliding fast—run-down housing, neglected neighbourhoods, rising antisocial behaviour, and barely any sense of responsibility. Law and order feels stretched to its limits.

Maybe it is time to look seriously at community enforcement officers—people with the authority and support to keep local areas safe, respectful, and accountable again. Even someone who is able to tell people to tidy up their mess!

My point is that there are some jobs that are essential in society but will never pay enough to enable the worker to be a homeowner. So don’t look down on SH tenants because of a minority. Likewise - you never know what tomorrow holds or where you or children will end up.

Anti social behaviour tends to fuel anti social behaviour.

So if people around you have sofas in their garden, you are more likely to put a sofa in your garden.

And vice versa. If your neighbour looks after their property you are more likely to as well.

Large council estates are the other end of the scale and end up with problems because you have a group of people who have no stake in their property so no investment in looking after their gardens.

Once you start on a downward spiral it tends to spiral down.

Mixed estates also mean the schools tend to be mixed so this benefits kids in the sense of removing the stigma of being in a social house too. And it tends to drive aspirations. As well as making the better off kids more aware that not everyone is loaded.

Because it's not any more fair to subject all social housing tenants to live in close proximity of the antisocial ones either.

It doesn't feel fair that especially children who are already statistically more vulnerable should be forced to grow up in segregated off estates just so home owners don't have to catch sight of a council tenant.

When building phased developments the selling off of the initial phases will fund the later phases. The developer often has to provide a certain percentage as affordable houses to be able to get planning. Although often these get reduced once building starts as the developer says they can't afford to create so many affordable houses.

They do it because housing providers want to buy it in bulk for ease of maintenance. Also they tend to share the same shared area to reduce service charge, as your social housing client probably wouldn’t want to pay for a concierge for example. Visually you shouldn’t be able to tell the difference but the build is quality will be different.

There is a site near me that got planning permission for about 60 houses, mixture of private and social housing - from looking at the plans the social housing was all houses on slightly smaller plot sizes.

The builder was taken over before any construction started and the new builder resubmitted the plans with more units squeezed onto the site. Now the social housing is just flats in a 3 storey block, rather than houses.

@IAmKerplunkNew builds are frequently not the cheapest. The builders profits and payments towards schools and doctors’ surgeries are in there. There’s usually cheaper but work might be needed and people don’t have the time.

In the expanding town 5 miles from me, there’s social housing allocated within the very large estates but it’s not obvious when you drive along the roads. The old council estates are definitely less attractive but only on certain roads - depends what’s been sold.