that there is a huge problem with housing at the moment?

[superv1xen]

i have noticed loads of threads recently discussing council housing / social housing and who deserves it and who doesnt, and i think that all this arguing and debating is missing the point of the main issue here which is the massive problem with housing in the UK at present.

the problem is private rents are scandalously extortionate and also landlords are incredibly fussy about who they rent too (it should be illegal for them not to allow tenants with kids - wtf?). And no one on a modest income can afford to buy in the present climate and i dont think houses will ever come down to realistic prices. both private renting and paying a mortgage are vastly disproportionate to the average wage.

plus with private renting it is not secure at all, most tenancies are only for 6 months or so AFAIK. therefore a family with kids could potentialy be having to move every few months, what impact will that have on the kids, having to move schools all the time, leaving their friends behind, having next to no security in their lives. plus finding approx 2k every time a LL decides to turf you out, for deposits, admin fees, agency fees etc, who can afford that on the minimum wage? it makes me so

has no one noticed that it isnt that HA / council rents are cheap, they are just realistically affordable compared to private renting! in my area an average 3 bed HA home is £380 a month before council tax which if a family is on 15k or so they have still only got about £500 left after paying rent and council tax. not exactly a fortune!

and 15 years ago a person on £15k could buy a modest home (of similar standards to a HA / council home) for about 30-40k. therefore they would be only paying £300 a month or so mortgage. but now the same house would be about 120k which means that the price of buying a home has gone up to a disproportionately high level compared to the average wage. and it would only be a shitty tiny 2 - 3 bed terrace or something, who would want to bankrupt themselves for that?

in my opinion, EVERYONE should have the right to a secure home, not just those that are lucky enough to either afford to buy or are living in social housing. a lot of posts on the other threads just seem intent on casting aspersions against people who live in social housing! but they are not the issue, the lack of houses is.

Agree with others that if you didn't buy around 2000 then you got left behind. I have friends that made 30k easily buying and selling flats in a few years. We panicked and bought a flat for 75k with a 100% mortgage in 2006. Used all the spare money we had on furniture and paint.

We have very little in the way of a deposit for a bigger place so we are likely to be stuck here for a while. It is a crazy situation but people can still buy houses and flats, just not 3 bed semis in a good area on low wages.

agree 100% with stuck re programme of social housing. and that we have a bunch of cunts toffs in charge

Yip. There is.

I earn a decent salary, so does DP. We were (pie in the sky type way) discussing buying property in London (where we live), but it's totally unrealistic. All the people I know under 30 (many professionals) cannot afford to buy - as a first time buyer you need min. 25% deposit, and then you're tied to a massive-o mortgage. The only people I know who have been able to buy have either:

• inherited or
• had generous/wealthy parents who pay the deposit/some of the mortgage and/or act as guarantor

or all of the above.

It makes me very glad that I bought my house in 1983 when I was 20. 3 bed end terraced for £21k. Unbelievable now, really.

i know 2 people that had their houses bought for them in their early 20's by their rich parents, makes you sick

and i know a girl who is a single parent whose mummy and daddy bought a lovely new second house for rental purposes, she gets housing benefit which pays mummy and daddy's mortgage. again

(although, if i had the means when my kids are older i would prob do the same TBH)

I am with you SUPERV1XEN. when I became a lone parent I had a 2 year old and no job. No private landlord wanted anything to do with us, even when my parents stepped up as guarrantors! The only places I could afford within the ridiculously low levels HB would pay were too small for our needs and many landlords refused on the grounds that the flats were too small for us. In the end I became homeless and the council had to put us in B&B, eventually we got a HA flat. It was Horrid and I felt judged as some kind of worthless scum that no one wanted! Even a woman from the local church I used to go to refused to rent out to me when she realised I would be claiming HB. She professed to be a born again christian... just goes to show her priorities!

In the long term we are better off. A couple of months after settling into my new flat, I got a steady full-time job which I have been doing for over 4 years now.

The problem is that there isn't enough social housing and private housing is proportionately expensive.

It's a disgrace in a so-called civilised society!

YANBU

But 15 yrs ago 15K was considered a pretty good wage.

I can't see housing costs every coming down. More council houses need built but that will not happen because there just isn't the money.

The Tories aren't going to improve anything (not surprising for them) but it is scandalous that the Labour party didn't in the 12yr it was running the country. It had plenty of cash to do it but they don't really care about poor people either.

choufleur yes, thats my point, you just put it a bit more succintly.

saliz i am so glad you and your DC were given somewhere eventually. awful and so scary isnt it when you face being made homeless, esp with kids, i dreaded being put in a hostel / b&b, luckily it didnt get to that stage for me.

a shitty 2 or 3 bed terrace? well they go for much more than a shitty 60s or 70s 3 bed semis where i live so i think that depends on what you call quality housing, so well worth the hassle of you ask me!

the cost of renting where i live is more than the cost of an equivilant mortgage for that property, problem is you need a 25% deposit. not possible if you are privatly renting at the same time.

do you know when i had to move out of my house due to relationship break down i applied for the tenancy deposit guarantee scheme they were taking ages and really dragging their feet. in the end i threatened to turn up at the coucil and refuse to leave until they offered emergency housing. The lady from the council said she strongly advised me not to as if i was deemed unable to provide a roof over the heads of my children then social services would be called and the children could be removed from my care! fucking bastards. they also said that if the children were sent back to live with the father they ould no longer have any need to sort my housing out as i would no longer be in care of a child and so would lose my "points".

nasty bastards. you wonder why some people use and defraud the councils when they treat people that way.

YANBU, BUT £380 for 3 bed house??? I'm in Hampshire and pay £400 for a 2 bed flat thats HA. I couldn't find any LL who would accept me private rental as I get HB (1/4 of current rent is paid by HB) and despite job etc it was turned down. Its true that even if I rented privately and stayed after 6 months its was £2-300 to renew the contract Think thats how the estate agencies make their money from rental business.

Thankyou for highlighting this with this thread OP.

I live in Herts and it's £1,000 to rent a 3 bed house per month here. £750 upwards for a 2 bed flat instead. It's crazy amounts.

it probably varies with different HA's mumbar. but thats about the standard for where i am (midlands) does seem steep for HA though...could it because you are more down south?

Probably is because I'm dawn sarth!!!! Property is generally more expensice south of London, rediculously so in London and then cheaper North of London.

teaandcake its probably about the same here, Maybe a bit cheaper but not noticably so.

@ teaandcake ...how the hell do people afford to live paying those kind of ridiclous amounts out, and with council tax on top, bloody hell :(

I think there are a number of issues, of which a shortage of social housing is definitely one.

However, it's compounded by the fact that the economy of the UK (and hence the population) is hugely concentrated in the south east, so although only 8% of land is built on nationally, the majority of land available for building on is not where people want to live, for the simple reason that people want to live where there is employment, and attempts by the government to spread employment around better, have been, at best, only partially successful. What you have in many regions are a lot of towns which are very vulnerable to the whims of one major employer.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure of the south east (roads, hospitals, rail, schools) is already creaking under the strain of the population.

teaandcake, I dream of those prices!

We pay £650 a month for a 2 bed flat(HA) and that is about a third of the market rent for this area- and that's in Tower Hamlets, not Knightsbridge!

You rent a room. Or rent with a partner a small place. Probably why I'm only on an interest only mortgage here in a 2 bed flat with both my DCs sharing a room. It'll be fine until they hit puberty (as it's a boy and a girl), then I'm not sure what I'll do Money is tight, very tight. Especially now dear old H has left me for a 21 yr old.

I did see a study recently (but no longer have copy - sorry) that said that England was the third most densely populated region in the World. I can't remember what was second but Bangladesh was first. The UK as a whole is quite sparsely populated though, so the sensible thing to do would be to put in place incentives to move even more public sector jobs to the North of Scotland and Wales, then build housing there as it is currently depopulated.

Building more housing in a lot of England is going to be an environmental and social disaster - there is already far too much housing built on floodplains, despite the objections of the environment agency at the planning stage. A lot could be done on brownfield sites and with empty properties though.

Tenancy law needs changing to make private tenancies more secure and end discrimination against families and people on benefits.

I havent read all the posts but I work with homeless/ rough sleepers and therefore to some extent in housing. The problems I have experienced is the lack of housing for single people and the points system. There are hardly any 1 bed apartments and therefore a lot of single people waiting to be housed or living in bigger houses than they need.

The housing trusts I have worked with are fantastic - they are getting more and more landlords signing up to let their properties through them.

Also another problem with the system is the way housing benefit is paid- ime when it is paid directly to the lanlord both parties are happier. However- when someone who for example does temporary work doesnt recieve it for a couple of weeks this is where problems can occur.

I do aggree that prices of houses/ private rents do need to come down.

oh no teaandcakes :( xx

I thank maud every day we didn't buy in Ireland between 2002 and 2006, despite EVERYONE telling us we were crazy not to 'get on the ladder' Prices have dropped 40% plus since then, and still falling. In a few years we hope to be getting a small mortgage on one salary, rather than a ginormous 35 year mortgage on two salaries . Everyone I know that bought since 2000 is in negative equity. Maybe the bubble wil burst in the UK too? Although I wouldn't count on prices droping in London, I think there will always be high demand there.

It's just a small point but part of the reason for the housing shortage is that more of us live in singleton households than in the past. The population hasn't risen as fast as the demand for houses....

Another factor is the South East concentration of the population, jobs and so forth. House-prices are not universally high but relocation to a cheaper area makes no sense if there is no job to go to. If there was a determined effort to push more business and government departments out into the regions then the population would follow and prices would be more even than at present.

There are a lot of empty properties. Councils are being asked to cut spending at the moment but an Obama-style project of empty house renovation would be good for job creation and also free up more social housing.