to be fuming at my Housing Association and also worried at this rise in my rent

[MistyMountainHop]

am in housing association and have been for nearly 3 years

the rent has gone up very slightly every year i have been here, which is fair enough, but only by about a quid a week which over the year is about £4 or £5 a month, not really noticeable.

this year, we just got a letter to say that its going up £5 a WEEK

may not sound a lot to many of you but it IS a lot to me. and i actually think that is a big rise, i worked out i will have to work a day to earn what the extra rents going to be.

i am fuming

and wtf is going to happen next year, will the same thing happen again? we are already being squeezed to breaking point with the cost of everything else. don't get me wrong, i am very GRATEFUL to be in a HA house as the security is fantastic, but i am worried the rents heading towards the rip off territory of private rentals :(

do they not see that all this will do is INCREASE the benefits bill as those on benefits will get it paid for them anyway and those that work on low wages will need housing benefit top ups to be able to afford the rent. the state of this country is beyond a joke.

It wont be long before this thread turns into a bit of a fight and someone comes along saying you should be grateful living in your social housing and paying peanuts in rent compared to private rentals mind you

i know duckdodgers, and i would agree with them in that yes i am lucky that i am stil paying less than private rentals. but IMO what i pay is not "peanuts" its about right for the type of house it is and proportionate to an average wage

we dont claim HB as we work and earn above the threshold to be eligible for it. but only just.

Ours as just gone up by £80 a month - housing association in London.

Mines gone up by £3.50/week. I get £30 HB so I expect I'll have to change all that, which will also be affected by childcare increases and tax credit changes, wage increases (which will be minimal!)

So I doubt nothing will change in the end!

Any rent increase is difficult to cope with especially when finances are so squeezed at the moment. I really hope that your HB will cover it. However you are very lucky to have a Housing Association house. My family is in private rented with no hope of ever getting a mortgage.

Private rents are astronomical and we are being chucked out of our house next year as the landlady wants to sell it. Since we moved in 4 years ago private rents have gone up by 25% in our area which will mean we have to find at least £60 a week extra. My husband works full-time, I work part-time, we have 4 children (including twins) - one has Aspergers and one is deaf. We have been on a housing association list for SEVEN YEARS and I can't see that we'll ever get a house with affordable rent.

The private rental sector in the UK is out of control - there is no stability and we have barely any money left over each month after the rent and bills are paid. The stress of all this is half killing us. On top of all this my husband is due to lose his job in 6 months time (for the 4th time in 7 years).

I know it's all relative but I just wanted to put some perspective on this.

You should be grateful and instantly start rimming any taxpayer within licking distance of you at any given time.

Round here I'm sure I've seen that you need to earn £30k per year to apply for "affordable housing" - wtf sense does that make?

Just got a letter from my council today to inform me that my rent is going up by 6.1% + £2, which is an actual increase of 8.3%!! So my rent and my council tax will take 43% of my take home pay. Not moaning at the moment at least I have a council house - and private rental is much more - but I did wait over 8 years for it!

Mine has increased by about £6 a week as well. Think it's something like 8.2% increase.

Still, beats paying the silly amounts for private rents eh? (no offence intended to those who do)

Housing Associations are now being compelled by the government to make their rents 'affordable' - I know of one family who has had their rent go up a third from £500 a month to £750 a month for a three bed semi.

Mine went up £5 last year so i expected £5 again this year!! £5.67 to be precise!

per week!!

Mine went up by £5 a week last year.
This year it's gone up by £8 a week.
Not impressed.

The government wants social housing rents to be around 80% of what the same property would be available for if rented privately. It's called 'Target Rent' and social landlords are mostly aiming to implement it by 2016.

YANBU it is awful that this is happening right at the point when people can least afford it

and how predictable that you have already been told numerous times how grateful you should be to be in HA housing!

dreadful stigmatising of social tenants. how boring some mnetters are

OpinionatedMum

Bibbo so who on this thread do you think is 'stigmatising social tenants'?

I live in HA house, but I am not lucky to have one.
we of this house as it was wheelchair accessible, so to get this house we had to have a severely disabled child, that needs a wheelchair.
so lucky .............no

We have a private rent that was found VIA council they paid our bond LL sent them a letter stating rent increase - not to us. Council sent us a letter 10 days before rent day stating the new amount we would need to pay.

Mine is going up from £77.83 to £84.15 so £6.32 increase a week.

Mines going up £11.60 a week god alone knows how we will affort that :( its scary

Yanbu op. On the flip side, the cost of borrowing ergo mortgage payments are going down. So the people with more are paying less. And then encouraging fighting for those struggling. Divide and rule.

And I say this as someone with a mortgage less than rental. That's crap, housing should be affordable to all not something for people to make money out of.

CoffeeDog - I work in Housing and that's absolutely not my area of expertise, but it doesn't sound right to me. I would get on to the council and ask for advice - it doesn't sound like reasonable notice of rent increase. Check your Tenancy Agreement first to see what's set out in there. There are various tenants' organisations who might be able to help too.

You can also go to a rent tribunal if £50 doesn't seem a reasonable increase for your area - landlords can't just impose excessive rent increases.

AliceHurled - I'm not sure that I agree with you. I also have a small mortgage (currently less than £500 per month on a large 4-bed property). But over the years we've also had to invest £000s in repairs and maintenance. The benefit of social housing is not only that rents are low compared with the private sector but also that the right to repairs is enshrined in the tenancy agreement. If you live in any kind of rented housing and the roof leaks or the boiler dies you don't have a sudden huge chunk of money to find.

The benefit to me of buying the property is not the equity that we've gained over and above what we've paid - but the fact that our former financial struggles now leave us in a position where one day we'll be able to live rent and mortgage free. Some people buy as an investment but for me it was about having choices and security for the future.

My point was that in a time of 'doom and gloom' 'we're all in it together' 'prices must go up' my mortgage goes down whilst rent goes up.

I too have paid money in repairs, bought my house as a home not an investment.

Doesn't change that government policy means my mortgage goes down whilst rents go up. And that isn't fair.

AliceHurled On the flip side, the cost of borrowing ergo mortgage payments are going down.

Well, no. RBS have put up their SVR and Halifax are going to do the same within the next few weeks, despite no change in the Bank Of England base rate. Once one bank starts to put rates up, the others will inevitably follow, so it would be foolish to think that mortgage costs are going to fall further.