To think segregation In new build estates needs to stop!

[FourFiveSecondsFromSmiling]

I live on a new build estate built about a year ago, 15% of the 500 homes are social housing.

The biggest problem we have on the estate is parking, the parking spaces are not allocated, it is generally considered that you park in a space near your home. I could not find a space near my home (social housing) so I parked on the private part of the estate and walked.

So I go to take dc to school the other day and a women rushes out saying I stole her space. I explained that parking spaces were not allocated and that she as am I are free to park anywhere. She then started ranting about how she works to pay for my house and called me council estate scum (infront of dc). I stated crying after I dropped dc off.

The next issue is that the residents association is generally hostile to the social tennants. I went to a meeting and could feel the hostility after I said my road.

We are constantly blamed for any crime on the estate because many in social housing including me have teenagers when the private homes tend to be 50+ .

I don't want to live in a community that has segregation (we are pretty much separate to the other homes apart from by the road). I don't know why because you pay £250,000 plus for a house you deserve to be treated better (or look down on others)

Aibu?

There was no need for her to be so nasty especially with your LO with you
However, I can understand why the private owners may be disgruntled. They've paid out for their new homes where as people not so far away get their new houses for free / reduced rent.

I wonder if this is less about snobbery and more about jealousy.

SH tenants are in an enviable position, especially in newly built nice areas, and that combined with human nature is going to lead to jealousy. It's no excuse to be rude of course, but I think it does explain the 'us and them' thing.

YANBU OP.
There's a planned redevelopment of a site right next to me - the scale of it would overwhelm the area (blocks of flats 2 storeys higher than anything else).

I went to the planning meeting to help object and got chatting to some other like minded people. We got on really well. Until they asked why we hadn't met before and where I lived - gave the name of where I live (which is all social) and they gave me a look of disgust and walked away.

People are so prejudiced about HA tenants.

Oh and there's no way HAs pay market rate for new builds. They pay cost price plus a bit for the developer.

Home owners have to pay the market rate hyper inflation of prices. Which I don't agree with by the way, but all the time an essential thing remains an asset it will be ever thus.

Oh and no, HA tenants don't all get houses for free or 'at a discount'. My house is at 70% of market rents - enough to cover costs without profit. HA tenants are not responsible for artificially inflated rental costs.

In my case I was an owner on the private side- I wasn't complaining about the vinyl, it actually looked better than our disgusting carpets, which needed replacing before there was enough surplus from our ridiculously high service charges. I actually believe it was all the same (identical carpet) when I first moved in, but four years later the ha side had been replaced with vinyl and our side was the original dirty carpets

Of course I cant be sure as the fire door separating the two halves was kept locked

kvetch - usually in social units you don't get any form of flooring.
When we moved in here we had concrete on ground floor then fibreboard on upper levels. Entirely usual.

So the only time I saw the other side was when I tried to use their lift from the garage one day early on as ours was broken, but couldn't get back to the private side upstairs so never tried after that. Their lift was working though! The next time was four years later when the managing agent took some of us over specifically to show us the vinyl as an alternative to carpets.

Yanbu. I feel your pain, this happens on my estate too. One side of the close is privately owned, the other side social housing. In the middle there is a patch of green land, the homeowners were reporting people's children for ruining the grass by playing football when in fact both sets of children play on the land so it is almost impossible to distinguish who's children it actually is, it is automatically assumed that it is children from our side of the street as we are in 'social housing'. This resulted in everyone having letters from the housing association through the door.

People wrongly assume that people in social housing do not pay there own rent when in fact 70% of tenants on my street go out to work and do not in fact claim housing benefit. People do not know that there is a such thing as AFFORDABLE housing and we are not the benefit scroungers that we are perceived to be. Not everybody in a housing association property is on benefits so they are not in fact 'paying for our house' ffs.

A new estate like this is being built right now a 5 minute walk from me, i am interested to see how it will work out. I live on the council estate with a new luxury estate which was built about 3 years ago up the road, massive houses. The new mixed estate is in between the luxury and the council estate. What happened on my estate was they built 5 new eco friendly modern houses and filled them with people who just didn't appreciate them 3 have since been evicted and new tenants have moved in but all last summer it was nightmare, domestics, drinking and fighting in the street, 2 of them decided they didn't like each other so windows were going through, i just can't imagine these on the new mixed estate with people who are in the mortgaged houses. The council should put into the houses people with established secure tenancies then free up the older housing for new tenants so there are less issues with new unsecure tenants.

by the way op YANBU, even on my council estate the older people in bought houses tend to complain about the families with kids playing out when i remember clearly their kids playing out and doing the same stuff, football, tag etc only their kids are adults now so they want peace

Singing, on my estate the tenants were chosen very carefully and most have waited a long time to be offered a property, I waited almost 10 years. I never have any bother from any of my neighbours at all they are all very civilised people. It may be the same on the mixed estate near you.
There are a variety of reasons why somebody may be in a social housing property, one lady on my close is a single mother with a disabled child. She cannot work for obvious reasons so claims housing benefit. Nobody knows other people's circumstances and for this lady to just judge somebody on the fact that they live in 'social housing' is vile.

Although there are many decent people in social housing, a lot of people (including me) would never buy a flat in a block with social housing. Unfortunately it's often obvious which blocks are social and which are private due to the state of the flats/balconies/gardens that some social tenants have. Just being honest.

I owned a big house on a private estate until recently. Lots of people would whisper to me about the social housing and the problems they cause.

Unfortunately for me shit happens and I'm now privately renting and I'm now on the wrong side of the whispers. I'm still the same person, earning as much as I did before but I'm now a single parent in rented housing.

Luckily for me such blatant snobbery really sorts out who your friends are when you end up losing your big house. Now I just have friends with the kind of outlook on life that doesn't judge people by their home owner status. So that's better.

What a vile woman op. I agree with Dora earlier that the government are doing all they can to stigmatise poor people and people who need any help at all and creating a them and us society.

I work in the industry. The different finishes for the affordable / social / private houses are because each have different budgets, not because the developers want everyone to know which is which.

We all know that pepper-potting the units is much better for everyone than having the affordable dumped in the least attractive corner and the private nicely separated, but then you have the conflicting pressure of needing to achieve the highest sales values possible which means pandering to people's misconceptions about social housing tenants. I'm not saying it's right and if it was up to me the profit would be sacrificed to have PROPER mixed-tenure housing, but that's how it is.

Most of my neighbours work, I work part time. That lafy has just put up a certain parties poster in her window no surprise their.

Thanks again for all the lovely comments and support.

Singing, on my estate the tenants were chosen very carefully and most have waited a long time to be offered a property, I waited almost 10 years.

This makes more sense to me putting or say people in 2 bed's on a secure tenancy into the 3 beds on the mixed estate or people who are on a secure tenancy who are wanting a different area then this free's up there house for an unsecure tenancy so it will cause less grief as no doubt there will be people who won't look after there houses. Obviously there are people on the list who have never had a council tenancy and would look gain a secure tenancy and never pose a problem. I always remember 2 friends being moved in next door to each other into flat's, they had a party and knocked down the wall making one big flat, took the council months to repair the damage. If you are on the social housing list for years like i was then i wouldn't be bothered really if i got an old or new house and the council have no way of knowing if i will do something like the above unless i have gained a secure tenancy. I know people in 2 bed flats on secure tenancies who would have killed for the 3 bed houses next to me and looked after them, would still be there now.

If the new estate wasn't being built the people on the list would still need to wait for one of the older properties coming up anyway so i can't see it being that big an issue moving the secure tenants into the new houses and freeing up the council estate housing for non secure tenants

With my HA you aren't awarded a secure tenancy until you've lived there 12 months. It's designed to weed out issues but in reality I know of one family (so I'm acknowledging there's a minority problem) who kept their noses clean for a year than let rip.

What I really object to is all social tenants being lumped in with a minority.

What I really object to is all social tenants being lumped in with a minority.

Exactly, as if all owner-occupiers are great neighbours and members of the community! There's only one family on my road that cause any kind of neighbourly problems, and they are owner-occupiers.

What gets me is that home owners are only a couple of months from homelessness so why judge a single mum like me who was homeless.

Oh gosh, DH and I are looking at shared ownership houses in some new build developments atm. Is there anyone who hasn't had any problems with snobiness or 'us and themness'?