for being annoyed that our tax is paying for people to buy wallpaper.

[suzexxx]

I saw a post from a girl on facebook asking whether the social could help her buy things to do up her home e.g wallpaper and paint. Alot of people commented that she could get some vouchers to use on a certain paint brand and B&Q etc.

AIBU to think this girl should save some money or attempt to get a job for extra luxeries before expecting the social to foot the bill?

I'm moving house next month and the whole house will need decorating. However i am realistic in the fact i won't be able to afford to wallpaper the whole place at once, instead doing a bit at a time as and when i can afford it. My partner earns a moderate income and i'm currently on maternity leave, so money is tighter at the moment, but would never expect someone to pay for something i could manage without like wallpaper.

I completely understand people using the social to buy essential items such as a cooker or fridge, but not non essentials.

suze I think social housing would be a much more attractive option if the landlords ensured the properties were fit for purpose when let but they don't and a measly 'token' for some decorating materials doesn't touch the state most are in.

I work ft (on mat leave like you) but before moving into my current property, I lived in a social housing property.

I paid full rent, yet for 5 years I fought the landlords over the dampness in my property. It got so bad that I had mushrooms the size of footballs growing in my kitchen. I couldn't/ wouldn't use the kitchen as a place to cook and feed myself and my DD. Then the slugs moved in. I had them in my kitchen, utility and bathroom. The landlord maintained the property wasn't damp and I just needed to open my windows to circulate the air. My windows were always open, so that was a load of shite.

I have photos of the state of the property, that I'd happily share for all to see.

I took the photos to my local MP and she got on the case but I fought for 5 years before anything was done and I moved soon after.

I also think you're making sweeping statements about why people are out of work. A very tiny minority of people don't want to work.

The majority of those who are unemployed are desperate for gainful employment but there are less and less jobs to find.

Not that I actually got any such vouchers. But I do love how people assume that you get everything for free if you're on benefits.

One of the lovely things about being employed is the ability to exercise some choice so you don't have to take a shit/blood smeared flat with scary neighbours and burnt foil wrappers in the stairwell when the council offer it to you.

delboysfileofax people on benefits are expected to pay something towards the cost of decorating. The vouchers they are given are a drop in the flipping ocean given that many (not all) social housing properties will be rented in a condition where there is no flooring, walls in a terrible state, often utterly filthy, and obviously unfurnished too.

YANBU people on benefits should live in squalor. Next thing you know they'll be wanting clothes instead of sackcloth and ashes. Ungrateful entitled bastards.

Westie

OP, I think you have learnt some hard facts in a hard way on here. Your family growing up was lucky to have the council sort out your housing that way. Nowadays, many of the places some people get given, or continue to live in, are really not fit for human habitation, or, at 'best', are bloody vile. That someone who is being rehomed that way needs wallpaper and/or paint and has to do it up on their own for a pittance, should disgust you because of how unfair that is on her, not on you! And even if she was getting luxury wallpaper for a massive, swanky home, it still wouldn't have any bearing on your personal situation. You wouldn't have a higher standard of living if every benefit in this country was suddenly withdrawn (although I'm sure the Tory spin doctors are working on how to spreaad such a lie, even as we speak).

You are outraged at thinking some people are suggesting that you shouldn't have had a child if you are hard up - well, can't you see the colossal irony there?! It is the exact same sort of rhetoric that people who moan about wallpaper being a lixury for benefits claimants use! It doesn't feel very nice to be told that you don't deserve something because you aren't well-off, does it? Well, that's exactly what you're saying in your opening post. Making yourself feel better about something that frustrates you, by judging someone you see as lower than you is very nasty.

PS I don't agree about you not having the baby if you couldn't afford it, btw. Just making a point that needs to be made.

Weird, i was thinking either Mrs Cameron is planning a no10 makeover or it's a benefits thread
Sigh. In both cases, should be essentials only imho but home decoration bit of grey area in terms of making house fit for purpose.

I am in a HA house, i have just paid for a decorator to patch up my walls, so they can look reasonable.

I fought for three years after moving in to get basic repairs done. The repairs are certainly not carried out to the professional standard that i would of been happy to pay privately for (i have owned my own homes).

Perhaps we need a website so that we can post the crap conditions that we are expected to live in because we have the cheek to be in need of help with affordable housing.

None of the houses in my area could have painted walls, they all need knocking back inches and re-doing.

I was lucky enough to recently get new skirting boards, thanks to the rising damp that i have lived with for years. It got bad enough for enviromental health to finally agree that it needed sorting out. So i lived upstairs for months, whilst again and again appointments were not kept to lay a complete new floor and plaster half way up the walls.

I cannot plan to put a hanging basket outside because it would be vandalised or stolen. The area is very quite, though, thanks to the regular shootings that we had had, we now have nightly Matrix patrols.

I am also lucky to live in a area were there is an abundance of men willing to do "cash in hand work", thre is no way that most people, especially single Mums, could afford to lay out for drills and ladders etc.

Which you take for granted if you have a "handy" dad/brother etc.

OP, you don't live on a moderate income, compared to benefit rates. Mos people save via the Credit Union and only to give theri children a decent Christmas, or allow them to take part in school trips etc.

I sort out benefits as a welfare advisor in my volutary work, please do quote me the benefit that allows the recipient to save. I have yet to come across it.

JakeBullet, if you look on FB selling pages you might find someone whose not-quite-a-joiner, who'd be able to build you a built in wardrobe cheaply. It's the kind of thing my Dad sells on FB and he got the idea by searching FB selling pages for things he might be able to make., however it' still not exactly cheap, unless you want to go for the rustic 'found it all on the beach' look he has in the DC's spare room, you still have to pay for the wood, paint, equipment, time etc, so you'd still be looking at a few hundred quid

OP YABU, my friend moved into a council place, iirc the HA gave her £150 in vouchers, even with my Dad's help (ex builder) in doing the work for free for her she still could barely finish two rooms, he said himself if they'd given her cash instead of vouchers for one the "most expensive for poor quality shite" places he'd have been able to do a lot more for her, but as it was they were stuck shopping where 'the social' told them to and because of restrictions placed on them they couldn't even use his traders card to get discounts.

Landlords have to pay something towards maintainance of a property. Giving a council tenant some vouchers is hardly professional dectoration. The amounts quoted on this thread are tiny compared with what a decent private landlord shells out.

We were given our housing association property in a disgusting state after being told it had been checked and was just in need of a lick of paint. They offered us £150 of vouchers to do it. When we got the keys we were in for a massive shock. It took two solid weeks of cleaning by four people (me, DH and my parents) to get it to a state where we could even begin to think about decorating.

In one of the rooms there was something rotting on the floor that the housing association had just covered with newspaper. I still to this day do not know what it was for sure, but there was bones in it.

We spent over £50 on bleach and cleaning products alone and then needed to do 4 - 5 coats of paint on the walls to cover the yellow smoke stained walls caused by 30 years of chain smoking. To get it done took 7 weeks in the end to get it to a liveable state.

So the money they gave us was not enough by a long mile, and there certainly wasn't enough to buy wallpaper. There was also no chance we would have sold the vouchers and used the money for anything else. Before you comment I would think about the state they give these properties out, it was pretty horrific.

If people are suggesting i shouldn't have had my son when both of us work fulltime, not sure what you would say to people who have never worked and still have children. Disgusting.

When I was growing up in our 'Cooncil hoose' Where my Dad still lives today, my Mum coveted wallpaper but we could only afford to paper one wall (and always with a gap at each end.) Fast forward to now and it's called a 'feature wall' pioneering my Mum was!

So the council paid for AND did the work on the house you lived in as a child, and yet you begrudge someone being given a voucher for a small amount of money and having to do the work herself? Unbelievable, talk about entitled!

When we moved into a HA hom we got a small amount of money that covered paint for it, which we had to do ourselves. The floors were bare chipboard and had to stay that way for years until we could afford flooring! And guess what, when we moved out we had to rip up and dispose of all the flooring, blinds, curtain poles, everything before we left.

I can't see how you could even possibly carpet a one bad flat for £100-£150

Suze, I think the people who are saying that to you are trying to make a point - you saying she shouldn't be given money for wallpaper is no different than others saying you shouldn't have a child for whatever reasons to do with money. Can you really not see that? You are saying she shouldn't have something because of her money situation, they are giving you a taste of your own medicine by showing you how nasty and unreasonable it is to say someone should be denied something because of their finances.

Cloverer- my mum obviously was very lucky i realise since reading other posts in the fact that her house was almost new and it was clean and tidy when we moved in. It could have been a lot worse for us. I just don't agree with people being given vouchers or money to do their house up when they haven't contributed and just expect it. The council or private landlord etc should make sure the house is fit to live in, which obviously isn't happening and is quite shocking.

Rolls eyes . . .

But it would cost more for the council to do it themselves, don't you see that?

Yes, I agree the councils should make sure the places are clean and habitable with basic decoration such as clean flooring in place, but that would cost more of the 'taxpayers' money that you are so annoyed about this girl getting.

I also don't see why people on benefits shouldn't expect their homes to be of a certain, basic standard. Why can't they have some pride in where they live?

"I just don't agree with people being given vouchers or money to do their house up when they haven't contributed and just expect it."

You are not listening are you.

What a spiteful narrow minded world you must live in. I assume you would like it for workhouses to be reintroduced for the feckless.

It's just as disgusting for you to suggest that someone else shouldn't have help with a fairly basic requirement.

You seem to be assuming she doesn't work. Maybe she does. Maybe she's in an essential job on a low income with every penny accounted for and nothing to spare for decorating.

Like you.

But unlike you, she can't afford to buy a house and is therefore trying to make the best of what she can afford.

You don't know what state the house is in. You don't know whether she has children coming home to a shabby, inadequately finished house. You don't know anything about her except that she wants some wallpaper or paint.

Unlike you, that wallpaper won't increase the value of an asset she owns - it will just make things a bit nicer while she lives there.

The utter cowbag. How dare she!

OP, whose to say that they have never contributed?

Where you absent during the the non-judgemental module on your Degree, as well as for how people's mental wellbeing affects their physical wellbeing and if we don't as a society look at the whole person, then we pick up the bill eventually somewhere else?

You work in the NHS (with waste and mis management all around you)and you worry about people being given enough income so that they have a reasonable standard of living?

Really?

X-posted.

How in the name of arse do you know she 'hasn't contributed'.

I know some people who have been very high earners and paid vast amounts of tax. They will be signing on in the very near future due to financial problems entirely beyond their control.

They'll probably want wallpaper too.

suzexxx, if the council did it themselves it would cost more money - can't you see that? Giving tenants a small voucher and making them do the work themselves saves money.

By the way, it is unlikely to be tax money that is funding this - social housing is self-funding once it is built, rent money covers maintenance and staffing costs.

In fact, many HAs and council make a big surplus on housing - they get more money from tenants rent than they spend on maintenance and admin.

Complete waste of time, this thread. When the OP's family gets something, that's fine. When someone else gets something,it's just nooooooot faaaaaair. Waaaaaaah!