To think if all your children have grown up and left you should give up your 5 bed council house?

[dilemma456]

The housing list are so long and especially for bigger properties.

I met someone who lives by herself in a 5 bed council house last night. Her children have all moved out. There are people who really need that house crammed into much smaller properties.

AIBU to think that if you're massively under occupying social housing you should be under an obligation to move out into something smaller and that the council should offer you support and encouragement to do so?

Fortyplus, can you please explain the following to me? I believe there is something very fishy about this or a big lie behind it but...

Is it possible for a lone parent of 2 boys, working for the city council, to buy a £500,000 5 bedrooms luxury new build for £20,000. She says she got it at such discounted price as she had been in housing benefit for a couple of years.

She is now letting 3 of the rooms to students, and apparently there's nothing wrong with it.

Been in housing benefit as in the department ?
The right to buy only includes the council property you actually live in and the discount is usually around 40%
sounds like she's got a backhander from the builder or she's telling fibs.

RunawayWife Sat 18-Sep-10 22:37:38

My mum lives alone in a two bedroom council house.
She is in a wheelchair and can not get up the stairs so does not use half the house, the council will not move her though

Runaway, does your Mum know about Hanover housing???......google it, & then check your area, your Mum should easily qualify, as mine did for similar reasons, though they were in a flat already, so your Mum would be even higher up the list...........it didn't take my Parents long at all, though I don't really understand why they seem to be some sort of best kept secret, they are exactly this sort of housing & work on rent, part rent part buy, & buying.

as I sayy parents have just moved into 1, & have gone back to renting as they needed an extra care bungalow, which are all rent only, but the back up there is amazing, they even get a 3 course meal a day as part of their rent, served in the complex own restaurant, & its nothing like an old peoples home, & has turned out, that what my Mum & Dad thought was the weekly rent,,,,was per month, they love the place, my Dad described it as like living in an AI holiday village

Thank you I will check it out

Mamatomany, tell me more about "back hander from the builders", I really need to find myself one of those..

It's far more likely that she's just plain old lying I would say.

Agree with Mamatomany, though around here there is a scheme as I mentioned earlier....ALL new builds, pretty much all of which are luxury apartments, in order to get planning, have to hand over a percentage of the flats to the council via a HA, I'm not sure of the exact figure, but its quite high i "think" %20.....

its the LAs way of getting around the housing shortage, without actually building themselves....I did wonder if its country wide, or maybe just certain areas???

Do you think its possible that she has managed to get something similar, & is lying about owning it?? ..........I know that our friend who was in a HA property, that was too small for her family, managed to get a lovely 3 bed, in a new build luxury block under this same scheme isn't always open about not actually owning it, though I think in her case is more out of people presuming as they are private, she owns it & with some people just not wanting to own up

You know what? They don't 'hand them over' at all - the housing association pays for them and the builder still makes a profit - just not as much as on the ones sold privately. The percentage varies according to location, size of development and whether there are high infrastructure costs involved in developing the site. Typically in my area the 'affordable housing' element will be 20 - 35% but social housing for rent will comprise only a part of this.

TheMotherOfAllDilemmas - short answer is no! She will have needed to be a tenant for 2 years to qualify for a discount - this is not connected with whether or not she's receiving benefits.

Discounts used to be anything up to 70% of the market value after a number of years, but these days central govt. caps the available discount. In the region where I work it's £34K.

thanks for answering that fortyplus :), though I didn't mean "literally" hand them over for free, more a turn of phrase, as in give them up for rent out to housing list/social housing tenants.......interesting to know that it is a national scheme though, I had always wondered :)

She could have got it via a shared ownership scheme, if she was working in HB she could have got priority as a LA employee. You can get on the housing ladder with a low deposit/salary, but only own a percentage of the property and pay rent on the rest. You can increase the percentage that you own as your salary increases.

It wouldn't make any sense for me to do something like that, as I'd immediately become liable for repairs/maintenance etc, and vulnerable to repossession as soon as I bought. So you get the burden of ownership with none of the advantages of renting. I'd rather continue renting from the council, I might not own it but I can stay here as long as I like, and I'll never have to fork out for major repairs and I even get major works like double glazing and kitchen/bathroom refit at no extra rent.

If it wasn't for Thatcher & her merry crew there would still be masses of council housing, wouldn't there? Maybe there would still be a shortage but it wouldn't be as critical as it evidently is.

How about if those who bought their council houses at knock-down prices & then sold on for a massive profit were to be taxed retrospectively, to help fund the building of new rental property?

Council housing always was for life - I don't know how tenancy agreements are worded, but I have a strong suspicion that making people move would actually be illegal, hence incentives to help them decide to agree to move