In thinking if you earn over £100,000 a year, you should not be allowed to stay in council house accomodation?

[Hammy02]

RMT union boss Bob Crow earns this and yet still lives in a council house. Surely he is using a property that should be housing someone that actually cannot afford to privately rent and needs subsidised property?

Yup PeppaKew. Same applies to homes for the elderly too. You may well end up having to sell your home to fund living in a home while in the room next door will be someone that hasn't worked a day in their lives. Sucks.

Rhubard I agree. Developers like to build on greenfield sites as it's cheaper when in fact the empty housing, brownfiled sites etc should be used first.

They did try to do something about it I think - and gardens got classified as brownfield for some reason - and there has been a lot of trouble round here with infill, with everyone up in arms.

It's all rather complex.

They were also talking about freeing up the legal framework for councils to be able to force the sale of unoccupied property.

I also think, if the farming industry is collapsing, maybe it's not the end of the world to use some up as housing. I wouldn't have said that 10 years ago but... I don't know.

Something has to give.

I vote for expat's plan of letting well off people stay but paying market rent, only I'd make it market rent plus x% to make up for them house blocking. I'd make it the rule that any profit gets put back into getting more houses.

I suspect the £100,000 is a household income, and yes that's a lot but if it's mum and dad on £25,000 each and 2 DCs on £25k each and the 2 DC are due to move out any day then it is harsh to make the parents move on based on household income.

What EricNorthmansMistress says, exceept for the bit about her family not being entitled.

You would be entitled to apply for council/HA housing but you would probably have a looooong wait.

You CAN afford to rent privately on £31k! We will be in this position when I go back to work in two months, earning £30k while DH stays at home to look after our two daughters. We will live in North London and have just found a flat for £1190 per calendar month. It will be a stretch but we will manage. DH will go to work after a year. We would never qualify for a council flat and I would never expect to!

For me to move out of my council house and buy house i would need a deposit i have got no way of getting. I am entitled to my council house, waited 8 years for it and went through the same procedure as everyone else. Love the people who are saying people who have council houses have cushy lives. Well get yourself on the list and go through the bidding process like everyone else. Only half the stock are for the homeless. The rest are for the people who have waited the longest and meet the criteria of which theeir are many..o forgot council estates are full of scum. It boils my piss it does.

Rhubarb0 - oh yeah I am sure that was the thought processes they went through before pissing off down the bookies with their giros.....

Wind your neck in lubberlich you sound like a fool

Rhubarb0 - yeah yeah - get back to me when you have lived and worked on a council estate.

The problem you have happy2bhomely is that the London rental agents are taking the piss. Proof of over £38k is absurd.
I was brought up in a council house for a good few years. I don't think that anyone in council housing has failed in life. But I do think a natural desire to get the fuck out of it ASAP should be fostered rather than enabling people to settle for decades - which is what the system has been doing.

Love the people who are saying people who have council houses have cushy lives. Well get yourself on the list and go through the bidding process like everyone else.

See what I mean about entitlement? They just don't get it. Not a bloody clue.

Or rather that should be:
Love the people who are saying people who have council houses have cushy lives. Well get yourself on the list and go through the bidding process like everyone else.

See what I mean about entitlement? They just don't get it. Not a bloody clue.

lubberlich - been there done that got the t-shirt and not everyone is a sponger.

That's like me saying that all the rich are tax dodgers. It's a foolish comment to make.

IloveTIFFANY, We are looking. We have to factor in the cost of diesel if we move that far out, so it doesn't really make it much more affordable iyswim. The homeswapper sites are not for us-No one wants to move into a flat on the 8th floor on a council estate! I know this sounds really naive, but I just don't understand why an average house cannot be afforded by someone earning an average wage! If homes were affordable then social housing could be used for temporary housing for people who need it when they hit hard times. It should be a safety net, to help people get through a rough patch and then they should be made to move on.

Yanbu... anyone earning tha much can go out and buy their own property.
Surely ??????????????????????

"I do sympathise with elderly people being told to move out of their homes to make way for families. One elderly woman I spoke to in our old area had lived in her council house all her life, brought up her children there and took great care of her garden, which was her hobby. She's now on her own in a 3 bed house and in danger of being moved on which would break her heart as that house holds many memories for her and that garden is immaculate. She'd probably be moved to a flat with a shared communal garden."

I find this just unbelievable, that someone should be allowed to stay in a council house which is much too big for them just because they have always lived there, have memories and have done up their garden! And the horror of having only a communal garden I have never had any kind of garden, communal or private and have paid a lot of rent!

Where do you suggest i live then lubberlich?? I havent got a deposit and i lived in private for 8 years. Should i not have took my coucnil house. Should i have continued working lateshift in a pub to pay most of my wages out on private rent and lived on fresh air.

Why do we want people in social housing to have it as shit as we who are in private?

That baffles me, too. The government love crap like this. So much easier to have the proles fighting among themselves than to actually look at the real reasons behind the country's housing crisis - to ask why private housing (both mortgaged and rented) is so bloody extortionate, and to ask why the is such an utter dearth of affordable housing.

I don;t think that someone who earns well in excess of £100K will be having it "shit" wherever they live TBH

It all comes back to the banks in the end. And we just accept it, take the cuts on the chin, make the best of our lot and watch as MPs and bankers quaff champers (billed back to the taxpayer), have 3 homes, send their kids to private schools and look down their sneering noses at us.

Revolution anyone?

Agree with Knitted and Lubberlich.

The upper limit for family incomes in council owned accommodation needs to be far, far lower than £100K!

Lubberlich, I told 3 separate agents that we would be willing to pay 4 months in advance as a deposit but they insisted that they would have to see wage slips and bank statements showing an income of over £38,000, for a 3 bed and over £30,000 for a 2 bed. The only alternative was to have a guarantor, which is not an option for us. Do you think that letting agents outside of London would be more willing?

"It all comes back to the banks in the end. And we just accept it, take the cuts on the chin, make the best of our lot and watch as MPs and bankers quaff champers (billed back to the taxpayer), have 3 homes, send their kids to private schools and look down their sneering noses at us."

Really? Incidentally, I work in a bank. As does DP. Last time we had champagne was .... can't remember. I've never met an MP, let alone quaffed champagne with one. I don't own one home, let alone three, and DP and I have been looking into buying, but can't afford it. We couldn't afford to send our DCs to private schools and I don't look down my nose at people.

happy2bhomely, we had to go through the same process to rent our house and we are well outside of London.

And, incidentally, the City of London contributed £53bn in tax last year.

So did you get a bonus this year?

However working in a bank as a cashier is not the same as your top level bankers who are the bastards who caused the recession and are the bastards who are adding on sly bank charges, refusing mortgages, giving pathetic interest rates for savings and penalising customers left right and centre.

this tax contribution you mean?

Sorry, the link to the City of London tax haven is here.