to think its a disgrace that Cameron is going to stop lifetime council tenancies

[sparklesandglitterxx]

and think that that is NOT the solution to the housing crisis?

the solution as far as i can see it is, lots and lots more council houses need to be built, regulation in private renting needs to be improved, and GENUINELY affordable houses to buy for those on low wages that wish to or are able to buy

fed up of seeing the great things about Britain being chipped away. Why punish renters? The whole Tory attitude towards council housing being a last resort for the destitute disgusts me. council housing needs to be brought back to what it was originally meant for...which is a decent secure home for anyone who wants one. i live on a council estate which is a mix of council, HA and bought. People stay here, they build lives here, generally it is a lovely community. i have never been happier or more settled anywhere i have lived, I have done well in my life and been able to have a big family. my children are happy and thriving at school and have lots of friends. My point is if these changes go through, they will end up DESTROYING communities like ours and so many others. The Tories just seem to want everyone either paying their landlord mates every penny they earn or pushing up house prices by buying. But not everyone wants to buy, and more importantly not everyone CAN buy, (I have friends on good money who are still priced out the market) and hardly anyone would actually CHOOSE to be in insecure, expensive private rented !! I also think that if more people are in secure housing, it will help peoples mental health (hence cutting costs in mental health services), it will improve childrens chances in life, as they wont have to keep moving schools and away from friends etc, it will encourage people to better themselves, it will cut the HB bill, and also with people spending less on their rent they will have more to spend in the economy, thus boosting it!

I also suspect it wont end here....while it will be for new tenants only to start with, i would imagine it will end up being everyone in council / HA

I think it had to happen unfortunately. Same as final salary pensions, absolutely great idea but totally unsustainable seeing that life expectancy is so much higher now than when these things were introduced.

What I find hard to believe is that people DON'T think it should be possible for everyone to have affordable and secure housing! Why?
Also, some people will have lower wages than other people. They're probably the ones who are looking after the elderly or learning disabled, or have cleaning jobs or retail jobs. These are all necessary but low paid. Why should these people suffer and have to fork out a greater proportion of their wages for private rented accommodation? Maybe people who object to social housing would be better or protesting about employers who pay very low wages, instead of running their hands with glee about vulnerable people being made even more insecure and even more vulnerable

Same as final salary pensions, absolutely great idea but totally unsustainable seeing that life expectancy is so much higher now than when these things were introduced.

they are different problems. One is a demographic problem and one is a supply and demand problem.

It's true, people think SH then think the south. There is a MASSIVE difference between the north and the south when it comes to housing. You would think it was 2 different countries. There is no shortage of SH here

What I find hard to believe is that people DON'T think it should be possible for everyone to have affordable and secure housing! Why?

not enough housing?

I know people who rent places where not only is the living room a new bedroom, but so is the kitchen.

If you are relying on the state to the extent you need a council house then you should have the empathy to know that a lifetime tenancy would be denying someone else the use of that property if you no longer required that level of space and you should be happy to take an alternative more suited to your specific need at that time.

No one in the private rented sector is guaranteed somewhere for life?!

no but try telling people on mumsnet that gamerchick i got my house within a year no priority whatsoever could have had one sooner but i didnt like the area but when you try and point that out on here people ignore it and start rambling on about London and the waiting lists .

Yep it's all about London, it's weird.

The saddest part about this is that there's people in full time employment who have to rely on council properties / housing benefit as a result of bad politics. (Low wages / high house prices & rent)

I am very far from being a Tory voter, but I genuinely don't understand why anyione should have a lifetime tenancy, because during a lifetime a person's needs change so much.

In my ideal utopia, there would be a mix of social housing types - everything from 1 bedroom or bedsit flats to family houses. And depending on each person's circumstances, as long as they kept meeting the criteria for needing social housing, then they would have a series of 1-5 year rentals within this mixed economy. So a couple might start in a 1 bedroom flat, progress to a family house when they have children, and move back to a 1 bedroom flat once the children have become adults (the children would then be assessed for their own separate needs).

I do realise that this is utopia, and doesn't match the reality anywhere in the country - and that there would most certainly be issues and perverse incentives around the edges of eligibility.

But while I am wholly supportive of the idea that 'we as a country should have some kind of decent housing available in the short to medium term for those for whom paying market rents will be difficult', I don't think it equates to 'people who at some point have met the eligibility criteria for council housing should be able to live in exactly that same building forever, regardless of their changing needs and position'.

as a result of bad politics

It's not just bad politics. The planning regs (in Scotland anyway, not sure about the rest of the UK) are skewed completely and utterly in favour of the developers. Rather than building what we need, they build what nets the largest profits for them. We're the most densely populated country in Europe - we should be using the land we have available far more wisely than we do.

x2boys But this thread is (effectively) about how SH should be allocated in places where there is a shortage. If there isn't a shortage then allocation is:-

"If you want SH you get it"

Which is great but not really anything to debate.

Where there is a problem is areas like London where Every Last Inch has been built on. The options then are:-

1. Make people move areas. (Always goes down well on mumsnet!)
2. Make people who no longer need SH move out.
3. Accept that some people in real real need of SH will not get it.

Are there any solutions I've missed?

But while I am wholly supportive of the idea that 'we as a country should have some kind of decent housing available in the short to medium term for those for whom paying market rents will be difficult', I don't think it equates to 'people who at some point have met the eligibility criteria for council housing should be able to live in exactly that same building forever, regardless of their changing needs and position'.

Teacher This is exactly what I think (although more eloquent!)

I think it is entirely reasonable if you live in an area with a shortage of social housing that you get periodically reassessed to see if you still need SH. If something is a scarce resource then it should be allocated according to need.

In areas where there is no shortgage of SH then lifetime tenancies or multiple 5 year terms might remain the norm.

Reversing the decision to pay HB direct to the tenants and back to the landlord would surely improve the confidence that LL would get their rent.

When I got HB years ago it went direct to LL. Much easier and worked better. Why change it?

The attitudes to people on low incomes on Mumsnet are appalling sometimes. Those of you who want council housing to be a short-term last resort, do you think it is ok that this will result in lots of families having no security, moving schools, losing friends.

Britain is full of people that work hard but don't make enough money to buy a house. Why shouldn't they have the security of a lifetime tenancy?

This ^^

Why should they be punished for "not working hard enough to get a mortgage"?

There are 2 types of people that are bitter about people who live in council properties:

1. The people lucky enough to have a mortgage who think that people in council houses are beneath them/ don't deserve security because they haven't "worked as hard as them".
2. The people who are living in private rented houses who haven't yet got a council house/ don't meet the criteria for one.

I think its an absolute disgrace that there are people sitting in council houses with lifetime tenancies when there are families waiting for housing

I personally think you should only be entitled to a certain type of house ie 3 bed when you have the family to fill it. Far too many people have familes that move out and then a couple sit in a house with more bedrooms that they need...I thinks its a disgrace.

There is a problem though with suitable accomodation to downsize too

Trouble is, and Cameron won't know this as he has never even met a person from a council house, the people getting to the top of the lists now often have ASB issues - druggies, alcoholics, etc. House next to me became void after bedroom tax - my old neighbour was, like me, a proper local and had lived for 20 years in her home, was settled, and a good neighbour. The council spent £10,000 doing up the house as they have to restore it to how it was when they become void, and my old neighbour had put in a French window, and made part of the house open plan - which they had to reverse.

Then they move in a family kicked out of another area's social housing for ASB. Yes. They are that stupid. And not only that, these people were underoccupying from day one - the woman told me herself she pays £11 a week bedroom tax (that my old, decent neighbour couldn't afford). Look on forums for people with ASB neighbours you see this pattern over and over - old, established tenants kicked out and replaced by people with drug and drink problems, who contribute nothing to communities. £10,000 spent on next door - down the drain. It would have been cheaper to have no bedroom tax and let the original tenants stay.

Two years on and we have had to cope with endless problems, essentially acting as care in the community (unpaid), ringing police and SS every time something kicks off. Again - had these people been left in the neighbouring city - that would not be at the expense of the tax payers here.

This is happening all over the UK. And these idiots were given a secure tenancy even though we had already flagged up to the council they had been evicted from elsewhere for the same ASB they now exhibit here.

My MP is no good - he voted for the bedroom tax so it is in his interests to pretend this isn't happening.

The issue is simple really - build, build, build and make new council/HA houses exempt from Right To Buy.

The tories created this situation in the 1980s and now those people who have lived in council houses for years who are normal, often low income families are being replaced by people who got the housing points because they have all kinds of extreme problems. Council housing should be reserved for people on minimum wage, the disabled, carers and the elderly but as the system stands councils are re-housing other area's ASB tenants (because they are the ones who find themselves suddenly on the street).

Allof
IIRC it was changed to encourage people to take responsibility for their own lives. Partly, it was felt to be infantalising people to not trust them to pay their own rent. I believe, in certain circumstances, HB can still be paid directly to the LL.

redstrawberry10 why is this accepted though? It's insane

If the Right to Buy election bribe had not happened council housing would still be a strong factor in the rental market, it would have been harder for buy to let profiteers to inflate rent rates. Council housing rent rates are not subsidised they are calculated to repay the building costs and generate revenue in line with lower average earnings, in other words based on affordablity. Private rent inflation is based on greed.

When Labour designed the original Right to Buy in the 60s the idea was that older council properties in need or shortly to be in need of restoration would be sold off and the monies used to build new ones. In the Tory bribe council housing was sold off and monies returned to central government not to the councils.

We need a new nationwide structured council house building programme, we need to stop billionares from laundering money by buying uk property and leaving it empty and we need to regulate buy to let and impose rent controls.

Less spent on rent means more money going into the economy rather than to the few, many of whom hide their profits off shore. More money in the economy is good for ALL of us. I truly wish people would stop believing the nonsense peddled by Dacre, Murdoch, IDS, Osbourne and Cameron, they encourage people to be envious of others, and not in a try harder way, but in a 'green eyed monster let's dob them in for stealing our money they don't deserve free money way'.

Tory ideology creates more unemployed, more low paid, more zero hour contracts but at the same time cuts welfare, not because we need to but because it suits them. They cut public services because the rich don't need them, and they convince the electorate that it's because of welfare that we are broke, we aren't, there is a difference between deficit and debt....

no-one seems to have noticed that the other lot were in power for quite some time, and we still don't have enough social housing. It is being sold off at a high rate and not being replaced.

The UK has too many people for the housing stock and the country's finances. There's no need to concrete over the countryside (I remind you that food does not actually grow in supermarkets) but we need to make better use of the built-up areas that we have.

no, I don't have the answers as to how we do that without dictatorship.

Ah and for the record.... I brought up 5 children in a 3 bed council house. 3 bed. For many years 3 children shared one bedroom. If we are going to tax people for empty bedrooms we should compensate them for overcrowding. Many other HA and council tenants the same - very large families in very small houses. For years.

When I was a kid there was no right to buy - entire estates were council owned, and councils built large areas of bungalows for the elderly so when your kids flew the nest you got a nice bungalow and a family got your house.

Why is that not a solution?

These were often built as Homes For Heroes. People were not ashamed to be in a council house. And not made to feel like pariahs for living in one after their kids grew up, if they chose to.

I never intended to buy my house but now the council have put ASB tenants next door we will be forced to buy it at some point, so we can rent it out ourselves and move away...