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.

That's where the (understandable, imo) jealousy comes in SaucyJack
I imagine you must live in a very desirable area?
I believe you are absolutely entitled to live there. I do not think you should have to give up your house. I do not think you should be given a time limit to earn more and move out.
But am I jealous of you? - if it's London then, hell yes, I am! grin

I live in a suburb on the outskirts of Brighton. The area might be desirable, but anyone who would be jealous of our unmodernized flat (NOT house) or indeed the circumstances I endured to get to the top of the list in the first place quite frankly needs their head read.

Yes, it's dirt cheap. But for very good reason. No heating/drug dealers/broken glass in the "garden"/yadda yadda.

christ sake.

Googie.

Private landlord = takes rant and is responsible for repairs
social housing = takes rent and is a landlord responsible for repairs
ownership = you are the landlord and responsible for repairs.

I really don't get what your beef is about.

all the same potatoes just different gravy.. there is no entitlement anywhere aside from everybody is entitled to a roof over their head.

and you're seriously telling me you are raising a family in your house if it's as bad as you say it is just so you can say you're a home owner and look down on others?

Goggie. Everyone living in a rented place is entitled to repairs etc free of charge. Private and council rentals.
The downside to owning your own house is that you have to pay for stuff like that.
Council housing has nothing to do with it.

It's not free! Even social housing, you get rent hikes every year.

And googie as previously mentioned, many people in council houses pay rent (this is what I have learned and the reason for my question), they do not live for free or have other people paying for them.
What they pay in rent covers their repairs.

googie, as an ex home owner I am MORE than aware that circumstances change for people with mortgages too.

This is WHY we need social housing,

For some ex mortgage payers life will never be the same again and they will need a secure tenancy.

If you or any of your family were to be in this position (and I hope you never are) do you not think you might feel grateful that the safety net was there to support you? That the one thing you did not need to worry about was a roof over your head.

I think about this a lot since DS, he might never leave home and the ONE thing he has is the consistancy of this house.

Have you read ANY other posts on this thread? Some of us will never (or are unlikely) have mortgages or be able to afford private rental prices.

Incidentally many of these private rented places are ex council houses....bought at a massive cut prices initially. Tell me again about "entitlement".

I don't think googie is going to accept that social housing charges rent

googie I live in social housing. The only people paying for me and my family to live are.....guess who, yep, me and my family. And we work fucking hard for it thank you very much.

oops I've been saying 'google' and not 'googie'...

so, googie, what would you do if you lost your job?

My dm works two jobs, 12 hr days, 5 days a week to be able to afford her one bedroom council property. It's £450 a month.

If they turfed her out because she's not entitled to benefits on her way I don't know what she would do. A one bed private rent would likely cost around £500 a month here. Not much difference but too much for her. She is nearly 60 and would be terrified of constantly moving.

However the council speak to her like Shit and refuse to fix things that are wrong.

< waves at vampire > one "scrounger" to another. pmsl. :o

wages

i love my council house and we have spent a lot of money and effort making it habitable, yes, habitable, when we first moved in it was in an unbelievable state, think piss stained filthy carpets, plaster hanging off the walls, nails sticking out of bare floorboards, broken tiles, filth on the walls, overgrown garden. none of the council house enviers on here would have wanted to live here let me tell you.

HOWEVER, despite all I have done to it, and I really do love the house and the area now, I would far, far rather have a mortgage than live in my council house, and I am very envious of people who are fortunate enough to own

so dh and I are going to try to buy later in the year, because every time I read threads like this and stuff in the papers about "social" tenants earning over a certain amount should lose their houses, I worry that one day the powers that be will have our house off us anyway :(

thats my fear as well balenciaga :( have spend a large amount of cash on this house and ready to give the garden a makeover this year.. what would be the point if somebody could pull the rug?

Another question, sure to inflame again, but as I said before, this is curiosity so I can put Daily Mail readers straight.

Imagine a couple with a baby, both out of work and entitled to HB and a council flat. A few years later both are working and there are two more DCs. Clearly the one bed is too small. What happens then? Would they still be entitled to a council house? Would they go on the list and start from the bottom again? I assume the rent that they pay would go up?

(Lights blue touch paper and retires to a safe distance)

yeah I kind of get the impression that's what youre doing pipbin

How do you get to be an adult in the UK and not know any of this? Have you never met anyone who lives in social housing?

To answer your question, you go back on the housing list. What priority band you are depends on many factors - partly how overcrowded you currently are, partly whether your DCs are all same sex or a mixture. Plus many more complex things.

How long you wait for a bigger home is very much regional. It is not uncommon for a couple with 3 DCs to need to stay in a 2 bed flat for many years, whilst they wait for something bigger to come up.

Oh, I hadn't noticed you had added that both adults were now working - which is irrelevant BTW.

If a family in that situation could afford to private rent or, better still, buy their own home they probably would because the wait for a 3 bedroom house can be literally years!

What would happen is they would be classed as overcrowded and go on her list for the appropriate sized house.

The rent would be more in he new place but the HB entitlement would also be a little higher now they have more children.

I don't think councils look to favourably on tenets who 'deliberatly' make their situation worse, but I don't think there's anything they can do about it, who's to say the pregnancy wasn't unplanned?

I speak as a council tenant with a lifetime tenancy who pays all my rent but will never earn enough to private rent or buy and like the PPs live in fear of the rules changing and us losing our home for some reason. When we are retired, what would happen to us if we couldn't stay in this home? We have no assets to sell to fund a care home for example.

Thanks for the answer Santa
I have never needed social housing. Just like I haven't got children so I have no idea how stuff like child care works, I have only every claimed JSA and HB. I know many many people who have never claimed anything and therefore have very bigoted ideas, mainly fuelled by the DM.
And, yes I do know people in social housing, but it would be odd to ask them questions like they are some kind of strange animal in a zoo.

googie i am sorry you have a leaky roof but that is nobody elses fault you are your own landlord why can't you accept that and move on or repair it why won't you accept people live and pay for social housing not everybody can afford a mortgage you clearly can't sadly your family is suffering I actually think you might be entitled to benefit of some sort if your income is so low dont be stubborn and bitter and critical of other sort yourself out where you can

Balenciaga - that sounds like our HA home when we moved in. Apart from we had no carpets, curtain poles etc. at all. Our back garden was literally a mound of earth mixed with builders rubble.

We have spent thousands on this house and it is highly unlikely that we will ever afford to buy our own house - the amount we could borrow on a mortgage combined with the amount of deposit we could pay would barely buy a decent rabbit hutch .

The thought that some people think that the HA should be saying "oh, look, you earn a smidgen above peanuts - now go and private rent" is quite scary really!

Thinking of the people I have known, who have been living in a small flat with multiple DCs whilst "on the list" for something bigger, they would pretty much all have told anyone and everyone about the situation because it is a pretty stressful process & they have needed to vent on the subject .

Or maybe that is just my friends.

IT is quite scary santa i agree with you why should anybody private rent if they dont have too and why should people land themselves in debt with a huge mortgage if they dont need too,