Aibu to think the council should clean your house before you get the keys?

[Kellyjohnson23]

I'm so sad today,got the keys but it seems totally impossible.
Everywhere is dirty,muck everywhere,the walls are scruffy,the skirting boards and doors are a horrible dirty yellow (that the white has turned into )
I don't have anyone to help me decorate so it's all on me.
I just feel sad

X2boys...well surely that is the point of council housing to be cheaper than private rentals and more affordable?

If in your area it is only £10 cheaper and not as good why do most (if they can afford an extra £10) simply rent on the open market?

I also said in private rented you usually get nicer amenities wrong word maybe but in private rented I got nice carpets fully fitted kitchen nice blinds none of which I get in council 😏what I do get of course is secure tenancy but it's certainly not reduced by much .

Secure tenancy of course I have a disabled child I need security for him I live in an area though where there is sufficient housing stock.

I'd focus on getting carpets, it would completely transform every room.
I really like the lino in the bathroom! You should see mine, it's off white with millions of different dull coloured specks

And of course there's swings and roundabouts with social housing versus private renting in private renting it may from my experience look nice but you can be given notice to leave at any time in social housing it's pretty much yours provided you pay the rent and stick to your tenancy agreement.

My local council paint and clean before tenants move in.

And I've always privately rented, and landlords have done the same. Just because some treat tenants like shit doesn't mean that's okay.

so the concept of getting a reduced rent property and expecting it cleaned too is laughable.YABU

@Dragongirl10. It really isn't laughable. I have rented a fair few properties and have helped friends move into rented properties. They were all cleaned and most were decorated.

Three weeks is plenty time try not stress, just make a list and take it one thing at a time.

Me and my partner moved in march into a bought property, he is not very DIY friendly and had exams etc on at the same time so every night after work I went round myself. Within three weeks I had stripped the walls (followed by regretting stripping them because the walls were awful) sanded every wall, replastered where needed, put lining paper up and normal paper where needed, painted, glossed, fitted the carpets and moved all the stuff in. It probably helps that I do love a bit of DIY but it was a lot of work and was managed even with giving myself days off here and there without too much hassle and you don't need to worry about plastering which was probably my longest job.

Just take it a room at a time but if you have to wait for one thing to dry start doing something else on another room :)

I always remember when I get my other property it was also a dive and after 3 months the housing officer came out and said "wow I can't believe how nice you've made it"
She sounded shocked that people actually wanted to make it nice.

Wow well done "stumpyscot92" I wish I had your motivation.
If only you could click your fingers and everything be done ...

I do feel for you but at least you have 3 weeks to get it sorted. When we bought each of our houses we moved out of one into the other in the one day. ANd every house has needed work doing / repainting. Thankfully only one of the houses was filthy

Can you bring the carpet/Lino from your previous place? Might save you some cash!

Yes I think they should be an acceptable standard.
It is not the same as buying a house, the cost reflects that and buyers take shabbiness onto account.
Everyone who I know who's privately rented has had to throughly clean the house on leaving, otherwise they loose their bond. In fact I helped A friend clean and scrub the property they were vacating, after the letting agent told them it needed to smell of cleaner, bleach and polish before they could have their bond back.
I wish posters would stop all the venom towards council tennants, they absolutely deserve houses that are clean.

I believe landlords should take responsibility for making sure the house is clean before the new tenant moves in. I work for a housing association and all our homes are cleaned before sign up (unless it's an exchange). The exiting tenant gets recharged if try leave it in a state.

I private rent and my house was dirty when I got the keys. Luckily I didn't have to move in straight away and insisted the agents got it cleaned, but it does really put a dampener on the whole experience.

Just reading some of the other comments on this thread. Why should the OP 'just be grateful she has a council house'?? I'm sure she is grateful, but she's still paying to live there and deserves the right to be treated as a paying customer. If councils treat their residents like they're worthless, how can they expect them to look after their homes and pay their rent on time?

You'd think so, especially as they require YOU to leave a house clean when you leave. It took us over £1000 to make this tiny house slightly presentable. We used the same wallpaper in every room (big standard basic cheap lining paper) and Magnolia EVERYWHERE. No fancy pretty decorating at all. It was the patching of dozens of fist sized holes in walls and having cat clawed and dog chewed wood sanded down and repaired that bumped up the cost.
Previous tenant ripped the shower door off the wall leaving a big 6" hole (plus others) and the housing association filled the pipework holes in the white tiles (from removed shower) with silicone sealant. Sealant. In the tiles. Seriously.
Stripping and redecorating every single wall got rid of the dog pee smell and we'd to go down to plaster to get the hair grease and sweat smell from where a tenant hadn't had a headboard out, and the numerous dried in bogies on the bathroom walls had to be scrubbed off by hand.

- NOT ENVY

Make one big difference as soon as you can eg some colour on a big prominent wall and I promise you it will spur you on.

Maybe bring in a vase of flowers and a chair/ stool with a cushion, a lamp, just to start making it homely (not so much as to clutter!) but to give you inspiration.

And a radio!

I moved into a council property 6 months ago.
cost me £2,000 for new carpets before moving in,
Still smells of dogs from previous tenants.
not much you can do unless you are prepared to shell out your own money.

Personally, I absolutely hate both cleaning and interior decorating. Neither are my thing. What helps me is:

One room at a time
Be on the phone to a friend whilst I am doing it - might not work so well if you are minding a two-year-old at the same time, but you never know.
The local buy/sell/swap FB group near me. I picked up some furniture cheaply and got shot of old stuff as well. Depending your area you could do a shout out for old paint, if you're not fussed about the colour. People often keep their half-used tins of paint so you might be able to take it off someone. Similar for carpet/lino offcuts if you do not mind being limited on choice of colours. Also tiles sometimes get stored if they are leftover from a DIY project. This does depend your area. Mine is really quite mixed so all sorts comes up on our FB group.

You have a few weeks to do what you can and it does not have to be as you want it before you move in. It needs to be safe and secure. The rest of it can be dealt with, in time.

We found that decorating an empty house was so much easier. We prepped every single wall in one go and simply moved from one room to the next, doing the same job (papering or painting skirtings for example). Each room was the same and if you prep well enough (sand bumps thoroughly or masking tape the woodwork) you can fly through easily. With no flooring you're lucky too as splashed paint is no issue. Preparation is key. And it's surprising how fast you can get at papering if you keep on at it day after day. By room two you're twice as fast. Room three? You're a professional!

Get some music on and dig in. It doesn't take long once you get into the swing of it.

The house I purchased i knew had blue walls and red skirting boards upstairs, I knew this, it was still painful to get rid of.

What I didn't know was that every kitchen cupboard downstairs had to be mopped before it could be wiped cleaned. It was nasty.

Do some work, take pictures along the way, you'll love it in a couple of weeks. Good luck

Be grateful you are not sleeping on the street
This

Lots of people would love to have a social housing tenancy - security of tenure, lower rents, ability to have pets, ability to decorate, cheaper rents.

Yet here you are moaning that you might have to do a little bit of painting first.

Rather than feel sad about it why don't you realise how lucky you are that as long as you pay you rent and are not anti-social, you now have a home that is for all intents and purposes your own.

Yours looks fine! We had a council flat for a while and there was BLOOD on the door and the wallpaper was awful! Peeling 80s wallpaper everywhere. We had to strip it off.

I don't think the OP is ungrateful at all....just feeling overwhelmed by the state of the place.

I can relate to that too. Sometimes it takes a few weeks before you can really feel at home. My house was in a hell of a mess when I got it and I felt utterly downhearted as life was already hard (marriage breakdown, disabled child, had to move back to be near family etc). I wasn't for one moment ungrateful for the chance of a secure tenancy....just overwhelmed by the amount of work that needed doing. Six months on the house looked great, eight years on and my garden which was neglected and rubbish filled when I moved in is looking much better too. I can actually sit in the garden and relax on a nice sunny day now.

When you first take on a place in a mess it seems overwhelming though.

I'd been spoilt having either had mortgages where houses were in a good state of repair and decoration (might not be my colours but at least intact walls) and there was often some carpet. Beyond that I had privately rented and the houses were well decorated. It was a shock to encounter social housing for the first time to find none of the luxuries I'd had in decent (or at least complete) decor when a private tenant or home owner.

Not the fault of housing associations or councils....some tenants are appalling...as landlords know only too well.

The previous tenant here had overridden the electric meter...so was getting free electricity, had left holes in the walls, there was graffiti and rubbish everywhere. Awful thing is I know she was just 23yrs old with a child and absolutely no idea how fortunate she had been to be offered this lovely house. She trashed it....I got it after she was evicted and I am beyond grateful. It was overwhelming to see the mess when I first got the keys though.

The tenants at Grenfell Tower came up against similar attitudes too. Sounded warnings about shoddy workmanship and safety ,were belittled and even threatened with legal action if they didnt STFU.

It ended in tragedy. Up to 80 people died including children. Yet it took just a matter of weeks post Grenfell to see these shitty attitudes towards SH tenants emerge again.

And many other tenants have encountered the "just be grateful" attitude over repairs and refurbs involving dangerous works. But they are only tenants so should just be grateful eh?