Council House Envy - it's a real thing

[LuisSuarezTeeth]

To be fair, I thought I'd only seen it on MN. I've now experienced it in three different scenarios and it's depressing.

Never mind all the misconceptions about "free housing", "subsidised rents" and all that. People who live in council houses seem to be the envy of the rental community with an automatic black mark against them because of the way they might have secured their tenancy.

*Private rented Ffs

Not pirate rented!!!

Sorry links wouldn't work.

3 bed house - www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-31988079.html

Double room - www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-47723231.html

Oooo arrrr

Pirate renting sounds about right really.

I think envy is fine but its when it spills over to pure jealousy and resentment its horrible.

I agree redshifter, and as Gary says, the council rents are only cheap when compared to "market" rents. They are, actually, what rent should be, given the level of current salaries.
When people say "my neighbour is in a council house but earns ££££ as a plumber, that is focusing on the wrong thing. A person should be able to live in social housing, pay their reasonable rent, and have the opportunity to earn a good wage. That was always the whole point.
The fact that the plumber's neighbour is being charged three times the rent (in the SE anyway) for the same house, and struggling is the fault of the diminishing housing stock, the crazy housing market, no rent controls etc, not the system of allowing people to have a secure tenancy and make the best of themselves.
It is totally understandable to feel envy of someone with a secure tenancy and reasonable rent (and it is reasonable rent when you think that £400 a month is still £5800 a year, so over the 50 years or so you might live there you will have paid £290000) but this envy has to be converted into a force for change, rather than bitterness.

Ifnow YY to absolutely everything you just said

I wanted to say all that but I'm rubbish and not articulate at all

A person should be able to live in social housing, pay their reasonable rent, and have the opportunity to earn a good wage. That was always the whole point

Exactly, that was the point. And if your income increased you could afford to buy your own place if you wished, because there was more supply. By this I mean buying a private property not your council house. Selling off publicly owned housing diminished the supply and messed it all up.

but this envy has to be converted into a force for change, rather than bitterness

I agree but I doubt it ever will.

Like many posters have said of course it's real. We privately rent a small run down house and almost all our wages go to our landlady who refuses to fix anything. We have no security. My sister has a lovely council house and pays quarter of the rent we pay, has a better standard of living ect. Of course it's not my sisters fault and I don't blame her but we are envious.

It's shit how so many private landlords don't fix anything

My old house had mould, broken window frames and a front door that wouldn't lock. When i asked ll to fix it he kept fobbing me off and started to get the arse so i didn't dare ask him anymore

"pirate renting"

Freudian auto-correct at its best.

Of course it's a real thing. Especially focused towards those that got secure tenancies in Central London in the 70's, had reasonable blue collar jobs and so reasonable income, took up tight to buy for a pittance and have some up or are living in a mega expensive flats/houses which they don't 'deserve'.

Can't say I've really found people jealousy of current day council tenancies because in Central london it's so hard to get one now you must really need it!

And another point, right to buy in London now gives £100k discount to the market value. ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND POINDS. Which means it is incredibly difficult/impossible for local authorities to replace housing stock.

Right to buy is a fucking joke.

Did you know that since January 2012, New tenants moving into a Housing Assosiation or Council properties have to pay rent at 80% market rates. So they are not actually that cheap anymore

That was what I thought, so I was confused when the woman in Tower Hamlets in the "How to get a council house series" was think of rejecting a brand new flat at 200-and-something pounds a week, when the estate agent (I think it was) said it would get 400-and-something pounds a week as a private let.

whois I think the London council stock that people can afford to buy is dwindling. Whatever cheaper flats hadn't gone in the 80s sell off, have been snapped up in the last 18 months.

The friend with the malfunctioning loo I was discussing upthread was laughing about it. She has this right to buy with a £100k discount but no hope of using it because the house she lives in has shot up to somewhere around the half a million mark. It's nothing special.

She just wants a functioning loo. Meanwhile she's slowly saving a deposit to buy a flat outside London when the kids leave home. I don't like to share my pessimistic thoughts about her optimistic plan. She'll probably have to relocate to the North East.

Yes, its a very real thing and while I understand the envy ( I was envious myself when paying private rent) what gets me is people looking down on me and my family because we are council tenants.
:-(

Did you know that since January 2012, New tenants moving into a Housing Assosiation or Council properties have to pay rent at 80% market rates. So they are not actually that cheap anymore

Oh, and about subsidies: if council rents are 20% (or any other percentage) below market rates, then the tenants are being subsidised by that amount, and the person doing the subsidising is the landlord, the subsidy is the portion of the market-rate rent foregone.

When I'm dictator:-

1. There will be reform of the private rental market to make it a reasonable and attractive way to live. This does not mean controlling prices though.

1. There will be massive inner city building, nice high-rises mostly. I live in Tower Hamlets, there are plenty of places within walking distance of the City where property could/should be redeveloped for this purpose. (Sometime it actually happens without government intervention, the former Times print plant in Wapping is becoming 1800 flats. However I would look what government can do to encourage more inner-city land to be redeployed. I think it must be a planning issue that so many crappy commercial buildings are sitting around not doing much, as far as I can tell.)

1. Social housing will mostly be abolished in the long term, in the short term rents will rise to 100% of market rates. People who need subsidies should get them explicitly through housing benefit (which will increase to pay the increased rents) and not through below-market rents, which are a subsidy that also goes to those who no longer meet the criteria for state support.

1. If people with or without the aid of housing benefit cannot afford to live in expensive places like London, they will have to move away. When employers of low-paid workers discover they can no longer get employees, because some of the hidden subsidies that enabled them to live in London have been removed, they will have to raise wages if they still want that job to be done.

The first part of my previous post was addressed to the "subsidy" word police earlier on the thread, not the person I was quoting.

Right to buy was the central plank of the first term of the Thatcher government - and like it or not it was popular. In 1983 her government (with some help from one Galtieri, an Argentinian general) got more votes than any party before or since. The swing was particularly high in constituencies where the councils had been trying to make it difficult for their tenants to exercise their right.

RTB appealed to those who intended to buy their current homes and to those who aspired to buy later, and that's a lot of people and they are people who vote.

Which may explain why no government has dared abolish it.

Maybe Andrew but Gordon Brown cut the discount so hard it was effectively non-existent and there are many areas where council housing doesn't exist any more, having been sold to Housing Associations wholesale. So the 'leaking away' of social housing via RTB is slowing and will continue to slow.

Fairy cat council houses are not subsidised it's the private rents that are inflated.
Anyway good to know you will never be in charge of the country.

Yeah my sentiments exactly fraidycat

Fraidy not fairy!

I mean soontobesix

Ffs

Clearly my previous posts indicate I would not agree with any part of fraidycats post

I thought was a dramatic conversion