to ask a question about council houses?

[Pipbin]

I'm not wanting to get into the rights and wrongs of benefits etc but I just have a honest question about council houses.

If someone is granted a council house, is it like renting a private house, but the landlord is the council that they pay rent to, which may be covered by housing benefit?
If they then get into a position, for example finding work, where they are no longer entitled to HB, do they cover the rent themselves or do they lose the house?

I have no reason for asking this other than curiosity. I've claimed HB in the past but I was in a private rental then.

Well said Mistress - best post I've seen in ages.

I'm not sure why chloerose has got bit of a hard time on this thread. She isn't saying that there shouldn't be council housing or that all council rents are cheap, she's making the point that in a country where - overall - there is an acute shortage of housing stock, meaning that many vulnerable people have to rent sub-standard properties from a private LL.

I think we can all agree that more council house stock is needed, but even then I don't believe that a council house should be for life with no further assessment of need relative to others who are trying to get a council house.

I have no problem per se with a millionaire keeping their council house, except when by doing so they are denying someone in greater need the sort of security and better T&C that council housing usually offers over private renting. I think that is unbelievably selfish, and the "system" is wrong if it prioritises someone who clearly has no need of assistance over someone who desperately does, just because through some quirk of fate the millionaire got their foot in the door first.

From this year my HA is now only offering 5 year tenancies and reassessing the tenants need at the end of the 5 years.
Thankfully we were one of the last tenants to be given a lifetime tenancy last year.

I sort of agree with what chloe is saying but I think the tenant needs to be earning a big big amount before being made to give up thier council/HA property. Certainly to be earning enough to afford to get a mortgage (and deposit) for a similar property. Not just enough to go out and private rent.

My dp is on a low income but with career potential, he could certainly be earning a nice amount (30k-ish) in the next 10 years. I'm planning on training as a midwife which means in the next 10 years I could be earning a similar amount if i worked hard enough.

I wouldn't bother doing that though if it meant I could potentially lose my secure tenancy. Even if we were both earning £30k we wouldn't be able to afford to a) save a deposit and b) a mortage on a similar sized property in our area.

The number of millionaires living in council houses is minuscule...and if you try to force them out they could quite simply purchase under the right to buy at a huge discount, thereby reducing the stock still further. A far greater part of the problem is that a lot of ex council flats are let by private landlords at much higher rents than council rents... that is a perversion of the right to buy and means that we are all paying out millions more in housing benefit every year.

Everybody deserves a secure home and council housing was for years (until the Right to Buy and a sustained failure to replace lost stock) the generally agreed way to provide this... It still could be

It is a vast oversimplification to say that councils set their own rents. There is a national policy which says how much local authorities are allowed to raise the rent by each year and a target rent which they are expected to raise it to over a period of time (it's more complicated than that, but that the general idea)

families but there are a vast minority of "millionaires" living in council houses. Why penalize everyone else for a handful? The issues and the lack of communities which would arise from chucking people out once they earned a over thirty grand would be terrible.

The problem with Council housing is that there is such a difference between the "Have"s and the "Have Not"s.

And at any one time no guarantee that the "Have"s are the most "deserving". (Not sure that deserving is the right word but what I mean is that I would prefer a 3 bed house to go a young family who are earning minimum wage than a couple of 50 something empty nesters who now earn £60k between them. Even if the empty nesters got in first.)

Someone earlier suggested building loads more council housing, putting the rent just below market rate and so making it profitable for the taxpayer and possible for everyone to have a house. This sounds pretty great to me.

5 year tenancies are another idea - with one year notice period. I get the point that 5 years is not long enough to see a child through school but as someone who lived in 3 rented houses in the first 19 months of their marriage (first house - landlord split up with boyfriend and wanted it back, second house - hot water broke and landlord didn't fix it for weeks) - 5 years doesn't sound too bad.

Not sure about the impact on career ambitions though...

has anybody threw in the subsidised by the taxpayer yet?.. people can't seem to get their hands around that as those in charge would have us believing the taxpayer subs everything

how about (again) looking up.. because i would hazard a guess.. second homes and other expenses that taxpayers are ACTUALLY paying for in those bods in charge outnumber the amount of 'millionaires in council houses'

man.. people really have been suckered in to stamping on the heads of their peers.. whos the puppet masters.

its amusing in a way.. people are doing to those who earn a reasonable wage exactly the same as what the government is doing to the same people.

They want to kick people out of secure tenancys just to make it 'fair' .. rents that were paid for by the tenant.

Then then want to fill those houses with low income families.. where HB will probably come into play so they are thenactually paying for them to live there.

Is that so they can then genuinely bitch about free houses and junk because it makes no sense to me?

Ingeniously worded OP, but it was still yet another turgid thread aiming to re-hash whats been done to death here. Picking over what people do and don't have, and judging them for it

I am not judging anyone. It is pure curiosity on my part as, although I have claimed benefits I have no knowledge of council housing.

There is such a shortage of council housing that unless you are deemed to be in need you just won't get one. Even if you did it is likely to be on a rough area somewhere as they are the only ones to become vacant. The good ones have either got settled tenants or they have been bought under right to buy.

Home ownership is the normal aspiration for working people now. Back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, working class people just couldn't get mortgages so good quality housing stock was needed. Loads of housing estates built after the war. I lived on an estate built in the 50s. Big house, solid, big back garden. Most of these houses have now been purchased under right to buy as is a desirable area with good schools. When I was a kid they were all council tenancies.

Several people are referring to private rents as the market value but it is council housing that is the rental market value that is why hb is capped where it is. It is capped at the market value of a local authority rent. So that suggests that private rental is too expensive not that council rents are too cheap.

Council housing can afford to be cheaper than private rents because there isn't an individual that needs to pay all the insurances, maintenance and possibly mortgages that come alone with private rental. It seems pointless to argue that one is market rate and the other isn't when they are operating in completely different markets and with different economies of scale.

I think it's clear that more council housing needs to be built, but if it's main purpose is to provide secure housing for people, then it doesn't need to be 3/4 beds with gardens. There's nothing wrong with bringing up children in flats and apartments, and it would be better to have more housing available for people that want it than have fewer but larger/more desireable properties.

It's shit that people have to be practically on the streets to get council housing nowadays, that is not how the system was intended.

On the point about long term tenancies, most landlords who have property that lends itself well to it would prefer long term tenancies. It saves them money because they don't have to keep looking for new tenants, they can allow people to do their own decorating, and they don't have to keep replacing things due to wear and tear as long as the same tenants are there.

Lots of landlords would offer longer term tenancies if they could also have the security of knowing that if their rent isn't paid they can get a tenant out and recover their money or that any damage to the property would be paid for. Landlords often stick to shorter term tenancies just because it's the only way they can protect their property if they get stuck with a bad tenant, or because they need to know that if they hit financial difficulties then they can sell.

If landlords were given better protection and it didn't generally cost them thousands or tens of thousands to get rid of bad tenants, then I'm sure they would be more willing to let long term.

but there are houses being built.. as far as my knowledge extends.. every patch of land sold to developers has to build a percentage of social housing to give back to the council.

The area next to mine has done that.. built a batch of new builds for council tenants.

It might not be enough in some parts of the country where there is a shortage (there isn't here) but it's still happening.

Didn't that rule get chucked out along with the labour government?

I could well be wrong, but I thought that rule was scrapped in an attempt to get developers building again?

well not here it wasn't.. I can plainly see them with my own eyes and its still being built on so very recent.

Developers don't seem to have much problem getting round those rules.

wouldn't it negotiated in the price if it's council land?

Yes. Then renegotiated..

but the houses have been given to the council... they are bungalows though so obviously for the elderly mainly.. I wonder if a new build is an attempt to free up under-occupied houses?

I mean I wouldn't mind a council house that has solar panals, alarms and a decent shed in the garden like these ones have.

For the record my husband has always worked. We were put in temp accommodation when dd1 was a baby. The rent (on a one bed, council owned, temporary flat) was £93 a week. This was over a decade ago. We were there five months.

We then got a two bed housing association flat. The rent was £85 a week. Most councils sold all (or 95%) of their properties to housing associations who do not necessarily keep rents low.

We now live with my mother in a four bed house with large gardens. Our mortgage is less than our rent in the HA flat was! So the arguments about social housing being cheap is a bit disingenuous.

Wow, thanks agapanthers, fascinating reading. It's tough, I sympathise with them but the bitter core in me is saying, 'and? I'd love to live there too, so would most people. At least they are actually there.'

I'm glad people on lower incomes can get fair rents and secure tenancys in CH.

I so actually agree usual But, at the same time, it is human to feel jealous of something you want but can't have. I have a fantastic housing deal where I am. I live in a home counties village and my housing is subsidised by my job. So many people would be wildly jealous of what I have. But because my passion is to live in/near to Covent Garden I am jealous of those who can get cheaper tenancies there, whether it's because they've lived there for 50 years or because they're overcrowded. Those people have done nothing wrong and they shouldn't have to change a thing. But I can't help but wish I was in that position. And many of them would probably swap places with me in a heartbeat!

yawn, here come all the ill-informed, playground-jealous landlord haters.

aren't council houses maintained by the council, which is paid for from everyone's council tax? So they are subsidised. And that is how it should be.

if there's a problem with the house that I rent out, I pay to fix it. Oh, and all of you whining that tenants can be thrown out at a moment's notice - nonsense. I know tenants who have signed up for a tenancy of several years, suits both them and the landlord. My tenant only wanted six months but if he wants to stay until he is carried out, that's fine with me if he continues to be the decent tenant that he is now. Why would I want my property empty?

I'm in a council house, we pay approx £84 a week and consider ourselves very lucky.

It is illegal to use council tax to repair council houses. Rent pays for that. There are occasionally grants from Central Government to do large repairs to council houses to make sure they meet reasonable standards e.g. new heating system. But everything else is paid for from rents.