To think that if private landlords make profit from rentals..

[TheoriginalLEM]

Then why can't local authorities do the same?

People bang on about social housing being a drain on the economy. Well yes, ok, if everyone living in social housing was on benefits then it would be i suppose. People say that these houses then need upkeep. Well yes, they do, people are paying to live in them.

To me this is a no brainer - make social housing work. Make houses that people WANT to live in. Encourage people to maintain them themselves to a degree, provide maintainance and offer updates and charge a reasonable rent.

There is a profit to be made? NO? or alre all private landlords philanthropists?

Even if folk are on benefits, surely the cost to maintain a LA owned property is less than what is being paid to land lords?

That is the answer to the housing crisis - not building substandard houes and charging some poor sap a quarter of a million pounds to buy it. What first time buyer can afford that? You haven't thought this through Dave no surpirse there then

"Our local authority is spending 8 million this year upgrading council houses with new bathrooms, kitchens, heating etc and an additional 5 million....."

And how much money has that particular council raised in rent since the kitchens and bathrooms were last updated?

If it's less than 8 million I'll eat this shitty nappy I've just taken off the baby.

What cruikshank said.
And also this: I pay approx 4 k a year to the council. There is no mortgage on my flat. That money DOES go towards maintenance.
If I live in my flat for 50 years, I will have paid 200 k for a place that is already paid for many times over and will then go to someone else.
This is fine by me, and means that since my flat was built approx 50 years ago, the council have already made a fair bit on it.
Of course all profit made from social housing should go back into housing. The current system of private rents where most renters have to claim housing benefit to survive is very expensive.
I don't know any council tenants who don't also mantain their own housing. I know people who have done major work, landscaping, flooring. When you move into a council place it has no carpets, cooker, curtains fridge. It is accepted that you fix the place up yourself, albeit gradually.
It's not like council tenants just sit around on the dole in heir "free" houses generating no wealth. It's just that we pay fair rent. If I still lived in a private rental I would be a housing benefit claimant. As it stands, I am not because I can pay my rent out of my wages, which is a nice feeling.

Grazia The rent does include a service charge. You really think its right that people should be left for months on end with a broken boiler. The guy who wrote that blog....his wife was ill and with the stress she was under could have easily ended up in hospital ...the NHS picking up the pieces. Where the elderly couple were left without heating and hot water for SEVEN MONTHS one of them DID end up in hospital with pneumonia.

Either tenants are tenants and dont have the right to make changes in the rental or if you expect them to act like owner occupiers and replace boilers themselves then they should get other owner/occupiers rights too. You cant have it both ways.

He did write an update.

mikesivier.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/more-home-truths-about-social-housing/

That Mr Mike is so amusing. It's a like a comedy sketch of entitled benefits claimants. His wife sounds like a fishwife, absuive, shouty and they seem like total takers. Does he really think his blog would get him sympathy? We all deal with damp and leaks and workmen who don't turn up except that most of us have to pay for it and he doesn't!

Interesting Loki, thanks. Never heard of this before.

Grazia you get to CHOOSE which workmen come into your home. Tenants dont.

From the link

While he was going through the floorboards with the hammer and the screwdriver, boiler repair man burst a gas pipe. He got me to switch the gas off, but of course if he had caused a spark I suppose that would have been “Goodnight Vienna” for all of us!

If the government has not, or cannot, properly regulate employers and landlords to prevent injury or harm to physical or mental health, then it should not penalise people who exhibit the symptoms of that harm.

In other words, why are employers and landlords allowed to get away with dangerous practices, and why is it that the government’s only response is to label the victims of these situations as “scroungers” when they claim the benefits that cover these situations, for which they have paid their taxes?

Most damning, most dangerous of all, is the fact that our house wasn’t the only one to get a new bathroom last October/November. Who knows how many other pipes these people have hammered holes into? They must have been to dozens of households. That means dozens of little time-bombs (or rather, water-bombs) all over this estate, ticking – or dripping – away

Grazia his wife was ill And whats with the misogynistic terms ......oh wait i forgot Its totally allowed in white middle class feminism land.