£55000 to give up my council house?!?

[Edenviolet]

AIBU to be in complete shock that the council offered me the above amount today to buy a home in the private sector if I relinquish my secure tenancy three bed council house?

It seems like an awful lot of money? Just for one house. Why don't they just build more social housing instead of paying out grants like this?

the bitter envy directed at those in social housing in affluent areas

Its true, and its amost a knee jerk reaction to be honest. I wrote my post and then realised that maybe OP does not want to move to Neasdon! I can see it in myself.

And----its very hard as some people have it, some dont. I live on a primarily council street and the raging that goes on!

why is she in a 3-bedder
why do they get such a big house when their kids have left home
how come that the council come and fix their stuff
how come she got a property so fast?
how come she only pays 600 and I have to pay 1500
how come they have TWO council flats (this is true, until they got caught my ex neighbours used the house as a weekend/holiday flat!!!)

and you know what? Its not the fairest system, some people are deserving
and some are less so

OP might not be lucky with her families health but she IS luncky to have a secure council house. OP- stay put!

Yep stay put OP. They do seem to have a bit of an unhealthy interest in getting your home. You don't have to go anywhere.

I find it rather bizarre on these threads that there are people still linking social housing to low income. I also find it especially bizarre that people think bigger house than your needs means paying extra.. jobs a good Un.

Except people who pay full rent don't pay extra for their 'spare' room.

I'm glad I'm not on the dole, I'd be hammered for 2 bedrooms and more glad I don't live in an area with much of a shortage of council houses.

I think its anybody in this area with a secure tenancy. MIL lives round the corner in a three bed and she gets a lot of letters offering incentives to downsize.
All new tenancies are now reviewed every few years so I think they just want to get rid of the remaining secure ones if they can.

OP might already live in neasden for all we know!

A new road of housing association homes have been built in my village. To get one you need to be working.
Not all council/HA tenants are unemployed. These homes are homes for life and the tenants pay full market rent.

My home is also HA and I wouldn't give it up for all the tea in china. I work full time and pay all of my bills myself. Same for my neighbours too.

Most of my elderly neighbours have lived in their 3 bed homes for decades and some would like to down size. We have no pensionor flats or bungalows in the village so where do these pensionors go?

Don't take the offer OP. It's not worth the risk.

I think if you don't need the council housing you shouldn't just stay there because it's cheap.
We need a lot more council housing but as things are at the moment I think only those that need it should use the small amount of housing there is. It shouldn't be for life it should be until you are able to work and support yourself.
Move to a cheaper area and buy it'll be at least 50% of the mortgage so monthly mortgage will be cheap. If you both work you'll be able to afford it. I'd want that security of owning my own home.

OP does NOT live in Neasdon thats my bet, as she said that houses cost 500K

But this is why the system is such a mess, comment such as "MIL lives round the corner in a three bed and she gets a lot of letters offering incentives to downsize"

is she is in social housing? then why shouldn't she be incentivied to move house? why are the taxpayer funding a 3 bed house for a single couplee? I dont get it!!!!

shit like this is why people get annoyed

itsbetterthanabox - I'd want that security of owning my own home.

If you have a secure tenancy, then you have exactly that without all the issues that come with private ownership.

Someone else said a house would cost £500k didn't they?

The bedroom tax was designed to balance over crowding issues but unfortunately pensioners are exempt and they're usually the ones over crowding (and also the ones less likely to take an incentive to move)

All I meant about MIl is that she also has a secure tenancy and gets the sane amount of offers as I do regarding incentives to move.
If I was her I probably would downsize to a more manageable property as she does struggle alone in a big house, hence why I mentioned earlier that in the future when dcs are grown up we will downsize if we are able to.

Eltonjohnsflorist

The thing is, pensioners vote. Poor people don't to the same degree. So even though the people most likely to be in social housing too large for their needs are pensioners, that is not going to be a hot topic for politicians. But poor people/people on benefits can be demonised/targetted easily.

To be honest, I don't see why people should have to move even if their house is to big- the answer is more social housing and more security for more people, not trying to wrest the security some people have from them.

Council housing was designed to give secure and good quality housing to people, to save them from slum conditions. It was designed to keep a social mix in areas. It was designed to give people a secure roof over their heads and also to keep people in work building and maintaining houses.

If housing associations/councils were properly able to offer more housing at a rate tapered according to income and able to reinvest in more housing, then we'd have, over time, a solution to the current housing crisis (provided of course that sufficient land was cleared for building). We would get:

1. People in secure, good quality housing (e.g. kids wouldn't have to move schools due to a lease being up)
2. Reasonable housing costs (as the supply of social housing would have an effect on the cost of both buying and renting privately too)
3. Steady work supporting the building trade (not the current boom/bust cycle with construction inevitably being the first casualty)
4. Stable employment for people working in an a expanded social housing sector, from office employees to surveyors to plumbers to painters.
5. There could even be schemes where tenants in good standing could offset rent previously paid against purchase should their circumstances change- as long as monies realised are ploughed back into building more housing.
6. Some subsidy would be needed, but look how much we currently spend on housing benefit? The current approach to reducing the housing benefit bill (penalising young people etc) will lead directly to more homelessness and people on the streets vulnerable to drugs, prostitution etc.

For a long time the problem has been that money from right to buy sales cannot be spent on building new housing.

And economically as a society we are so tied to high house prices making us feel prosperous, it is difficult for any political solution that might dent that (false) sense of confidence to gain ground. But a gradual increase in social housing coupled with some more regulation of the private rental sector (longer leases, some rent controls) could be a gentle way to rid ourselves of the boom/bust cycle in housing whilst gentling deflating the over valuation of property over time.

A lot of council homes are not funded by the taxpayer. We pay full rent as do many other families we know living in social housing locally.

Full rent is subsidised though. It's an indirect subsidy.

I think it's a little remiss to mix up housing associations and councils moustache- HAs could
Provide more social housing, if sufficiently incentivised and previous governments have done this reasonably well. Very little incentive at the moment except that social housing is very very low risk, so HAs & their funders (they're private companies) do like to provide it to some extent. Not to the extent they lose money or anything though.

There is a lot of resentment where we are. Private rents are horrendously high which makes social housing rents look as if they are cheap.

Flame me as much as you want but I don't think council tenants should have the 'right to buy'.

Agreed! I've just become a HA tenant, and am shocked to learn I'll have the right to buy after 18 months. It's just constantly funnelling public money into private hands, and it makes me mad.

Silver - As others have said, social housing isn't meant to be an emergency stopgap for the homeless. It's that way now because we, the public, have handed so much of our jointly-owned housing stock to financial institutions, one way or another.

Hedge - £55k to swap your secure home for a large debt, living in property owned by a bank? I wouldn't.

Very good post, Moustache.

Social rents are cheap. That's the point of them
they've always been below market rate

I think right to buy is awful. It shouldn't exist.
But in the state we are in now with the amount of council housing there is I think that if you can afford to not live in council housing you shouldn't simply as there isn't enough and there are people who desperately need it.
Ideologically I think all housing should be council housing but as it stands that isn't realistic and the primary concern should be housing those in most need.

Yes, they are lower than average private rents but in an area where private rents are extortionate (most 3 beds are over £1000 a month) social rents appear even cheaper

Social rents are generally set at the level of housing benefit for the appropriate household. Therefore, they're around the 30th percentile of private rents for supposedly comparable properties.

For every two private tenants paying more than a social tenant, there will be one paying less.

... again, I think it's mad that the private sector determines the level of LHA. If this were changed, councils could do a lot to restrain prices in their areas. It would be politically unacceptable, though.

Some may be surprised to hear that there are actually jobs outside London, even in the areas where some of these cheaper houses are. Some of these places are even good to live in.

so it is an incentive to get the OP to leave London. For some people, that would be brilliant. For others, it wouldn't work at all.

I bet that if the OP takes the offer, that house will not remain a council house.

I also see that some on here can make this all the fault of private landlords.

Do look up what rent controls actually DO.

as long as everyone wants to live in the bottom right-hand corner of the country, no-one will get anywhere with this.

Eh? No, it's all the fault of a political ethos that generates the appearance of growth by moving taxpayers' money out of collectively owned assets and into privately owned (by banks, ultimately) funds.

You can't blame private landlords individually for taking advantage of this, but you can perhaps blame large-scale ones for influencing our governments. More to the point, our governments for being suckered.

Rent control the whole country!