to wonder what this means for social housing long term.

[HelenaDove]

Does it mean all tenants will be offered the right to buy their homes. Or face higher rents. It sounds like the council housing sell off of the 80s.

www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/apr/01/slow-death-social-housing-affordable

I read more about this subject last week when one of the newspapers ran an article about the refurbishment of one of Erno Goldfinger's towers that were built as social housing.

the tenants were moved out to allow work to proceed and are now being told that they canot all move back in as some of their flats have been redined as affordable housing, for which they are ineligible.

It struck me then that it was quite odd that the very tenants from whom the tower blocks had been designed could no longer afford to be housed in a well-designed, iconic piece of C20th century architectire that had far reaching views and was only one flat wide, allowing dual aspect across the capital. You know, the sort of flats that the rich would apy a forune to live in.

That, and other snippets over the months have led me to believe that social cleanising is taking place on a large sacle with the 'prime' sites that are currently occupied by social tenants being requistioned for the more lucrative "affordable" tenancies.

It will of course all backfire when the number of people available to do the lower paid work drops below a critical level after theyve all been driven out of their social hosuing in one of the world's most expensice capitla citiies.

Quite disgusting

There's clearly already some legal framework to force HAs to sell though, because of right to acquire. The discounts are much smaller, but they max out at 16k iirc and in some areas that's a significant percentage of the value. In my area, for example, it would be 10k on roughly 80k properties. There are places where houses are worth even less- I should imagine in eg the north east or Welsh valleys, lots of the stock is only worth about 70k if that.

LadyCath the right to acquire doesn't apply to all HA properties - only if they've been built since 1997 using Social Housing Grant'.

Theoritician I have no words. What hidden subsidies are you referring to?

It would be far better to introduce rent control and spend the money saved on benefits (which benefit the Landlord) on building decent social housing

womanfrom the wilds I would dispute that 'affordable' rents are inevitable to funds more traditional social housing. If HRA borrowing caps were lifted many more homes could be built

Josh- grant subsidy is drying up. The method of calculating the worth of a HA for funding purposes (aka gearing) means that less grant = less loan. More intermediates at a lower grant level give greater lending ability as (in our case, not all Ha's) the number of properties receiving grant is the factor the bank considers not the level of grant. So in our case, the same grant amount spread over more properties gives us better wriggle on funding and therefore the ability to build more homes- it's a juggling act because there isn't much money in social housing, once you've built, paid interest on loans and maintained (yes, I know some HA's are crap, but we do try and stretch the budgets as far as possible) money's tight!

Oh, I grant that under the current regime you need 'affordable' housing to fund the rest, but it doesn't have to be that way. Social housing could easily be a public asset that pays for itself

Joshua I was under the impression RTA also included properties transferred from council to HA post 97?

www.gov.uk/right-to-acquire-buying-housing-association-home/overview

Says here most HA tenants would qualify. I realise it may not be a particularly sweet offer in a lot of areas though.

My friends who are in HA flats have RTA. They are all very new builds (last 5 years). But they must be very expensive - the private flats in the block (built as private sales from the start, never been social housing) sell for about £700k. So not sure what the HA properties would be valued at, and the RTA discounts are almost pointless in London (about £16k I think). One friend has moaned about the fact she'll never be able to buy her flat, but when bidding on properties she turned up her nose at older council flats like mine which does have more favourable RTB conditions/prices (although still far too high for me to consider buying).