To ask those who believe their taxes subsidise council tenants to read this

[Laulau79]

The Times today , see pic 😬

The councils could let the property in the private sector and make more ergo they are losing us money by not doing so because they charge lower rents than the market would bear.

Also as someone said above it sounds like council rules would not allow what the article implies - the funds to be moved to the opera fund.

Who was it abolished the Fair Rents Commission?

Tories, I'm assuming.

This past 15 years I have ben a council tenant my rent has gone up and up. TBH if they raised rents in line with private rents round here, then most employed people in council houses (and yes there are plenty of us) would be forced to claim Housing Benefit.

I think it's time for a re-think. Build swathes of prefabs as we did post WW2. Keep rents down - not try to make them in line with the ridiculous private rents. And do everything possible to make it hard to turn a profit out of other people's basic human right to have a home.

None of that is possible with a tory government, least of all a callous and inefficient one like May's.

Good post.

Amazing that a subsidy is still believed. In our LA the 8% cap on profit (after expenses) has meant rent reductions for a couple of years.

Which LA won't accept you on their list Gwen?

I'm not saying that I don't believe this article, but surely if council housing paid for itself in rents, councils would be falling over themselves to provide more, no? Think this is a very simplistic diagnosis of the true figures behind the cost of social housing.

Betty when right to buy was rolled out the LA wasn't allowed to keep the money to rebuild. (Still isn't afaik) so they borrow for the initial building for this example say 100k.
£100000 from central to build it. Repay the £100000 from rent, central is paid off.
Then the strange rule that rtb goes to central so +£ right to buy.
Leaving the local authority no money to rebuild.

Fanny, I'm pretty sure a single person with no children wouldn't get a council house in any big town or city.

I do know a single man who's been in the same flat for 30 years, has a good job and pays under 100 a week. He knows he'd never get that now.

My experience with my local housing association led me to believe they are dodgy as fuck. I said years ago one day it would all come out about how corrupt they are. I wonder if now is the time. My experience was that the ha was run by a company hired by the council and they spent months lying about misplacing my documents so they didn't have to give me the housing benefit I was entitled to.

So in this time of 'austerity' they actually make 15 000 000 quid profit on the social housing. What a surprise.

You can come to Sheffield and get a one bed upper floor flat.
Sheffield is pretty big.
The flats aren't in a great area but there are some better ones exclusively for working people.

There are massive shortages of bigger 3/4/5 bed houses but studio and single beds are plenty.

Not all LA have the same criteria.

www.sheffieldpropertyshop.org.uk/PropertySearch/Results?Sender=ResultsPage&AttemptedLocationName=&PreviousAttemptedLocationName=&AttemptedLocationLongitude=0&AttemptedLocationLatitude=0&SearchRadius=5&SortOrder=2&PreviousSortOrder=0&PropertyID=&AllocationScheme=556&AdvertTypes=1&AdvertisedDates=&_=1497875981335

These are just the first come first served.
As long as you are eligible for the list you can take your pick.

There's a saying that you can't make someone understand something if it's not in their financial interest to understand it. So I expect this post to have no impact on a lot of previous posters in this thread...

My definition of subsidy is getting something for free, or for a payment of less than it is worth. (If you don't want that to be the definition of subsidy, then tell me a different word that means what I mean by it and I will use that instead.)

Where social rents are less than private rents would be, for the same property let on the same terms, the person paying the social rent is being subsidised. The size of the subsidy is the amount their rent is below the market rent. If London social housing were not being subsidised, there would be no waiting lists. Waiting lists are how a non-market system matches supply to demand, in a market system the price fluctuates to the correct level, that being the one that causes supply and demand to be matched.

If the social housing tenant also receives housing benefit, then they are getting two different kinds of subsidy at the same time. My preference would be for their to be only one system of subsidy, and housing benefit is far more open, honest and transparent than giving people subisidised housing for a long time because they managed to work their way to the top of a waiting list at one point in their lives.

I will be happy when all council housing is let at market rents. I don't care if all the extra rent is paid by housing benefit: my priority is financial integrity and honesty, I don't have any strong opinion on how much overall subsidy there should be for housing.

And I was a single mother with a child and they laughed down the phone when I inquired about social housing. They wouldn't even put me on the list and told me to find private rental. I could only apply for the housing benefit when I was in the property and that's when the real fun began. I was warned they would mess me about to sent everything by registered post but they still said they'd mislaid things or had sent them off for scanning and hadn't got them back. I'd have to send them again. And again. Until I was three months into my tenancy. Then I physically took the documents to their office and refused to leave until they processed them, which they did eventually. And they were able to find my magically disappearing fine pretty quickly. They are profit making organisations that are making shit tones of money out of holding onto what people are entitled to byy law.

The trouble with that Fire is social housing shouldn't make a profit.
The theory of social housing is a social levelling, it isn't supposed to make profit.

The lack of social housing and private housing is not addressed by any political party can anyone explain why?

I find it really bizarre when people think social rents should increase to match private rents rather than the other way around. I think, where possible, more social housing should be built to pull down the cost of local private rent. That's what is happening around the flat I let out. It's great. Lots of the really greedy LL's (I let out my grandparents flat - when I say greedy I don't mean people who have one or two places. I mainly mean the guy who has 80+ local places that are dives yet the most expensive) are selling up as the two new HA estates are pulling prices down as the pool of renters is smaller.

I don't see the point in increasing social rents so we end up with more people needing more housing benefit.

Sometimes LL's don't realise that the extra rent is a false economy. I match social rent cost. I appreciate I'm lucky in that I don't have a btl mortgage, but I firmly believe the lower rent and my 'it's my house but it's your home' approach is why I've only ever had 1 bad tenant (who ironically was a well paid working professional).

Interesting to hear the housing account is separate. I wonder how much interest these associations make on all the money that is sat in the account and not being used to house people. There really does need to be an inquiry into the way it is all run.

Movingonup Now I'm wondering if the frozen council tax borough begins with a B... Our's got in time and time again by doing that and it's only now that services are utterly decimated that a few people are starting to notice.

I also live somewhere with no mains sewer and no mains gas. Neither are related to the council tax ( and isn't London cheap for that!) Because neither are provided by the council.

Really glad to see this post. Thank you OP

Wow! I consider myself pretty clued up, but I didn't know this.
Thanks for posting OP, this message should be spread far and wide.

Indeed amici.
I would not abolish all social housing or housing benefit but we do provide a subsidy, the 5-0% of us who pay income tax in the UK and we do help the other half of society out quite a bit by doing that. If there were no housing benefit or lower social housing rents (common in plenty of countries by the way) then a lot of people would have to live with parents (as indeed plenty of my children have had to do) and the like and life would be more difficult in some ways for them.

To suggest tax payers are not contributing through their hard work to ensuring these people pay rents which are low is not true. Grenfel T rent was £1500 a month. What did the social housing tenants pay?

Also remember it was the Tories not Labour who capped social housing rent rises.
"Housing associations will have to cut social housing rents by 1 per cent each year for the next four years from April 2016 in a move the government says will help reduce the country’s housing benefit bill.

Chancellor George Osborne revealed the change to the rent formula during the first all-Conservative budget statement in 19 years today (Wednesday), saying it was aimed at ending ‘the ratchet of ever higher housing benefit chasing up ever higher rents in the social housing sector’."

I pay income tax Mary. So does DP. We live in a HA property. So where do we fall in your 50%?

The housing benefit scandal is private landlords owning ex local authority properties and charging more than what the rent would have been had it stayed a council property.

Well, as a taxpayer I still think social housing makes great sense: because I'm not paying to increase private landlords' profits, and because of the many indirect costs that arise from greater social inequality.

Just as I am invested, as a taxpayer as well as lefty, in pushing back against the weakening of workers' rights and the rise in insecure, low paid work: most benefits go to working people, and it's outrageous that Sports Direct et al can exploit people, knowing the state will step in to support working people who are raising their children in poverty.

What is the interaction with housing benefit . So, rent - cost = surplus. Does the cost include the amount paid out in HB for the properties in the area? Because how could they separate that from private rent and HB where there's no cost to maintain property?

Chancellor George Osborne revealed the change to the rent formula during the first all-Conservative budget statement in 19 years today (Wednesday), saying it was aimed at ending ‘the ratchet of ever higher housing benefit chasing up ever higher rents in the social housing sector’.

This is damnear meaningless until we increase the supply of safe and affordable housing.