To wonder what would happen if every council tenant had their tenancy reviewed

[BumpowderSneezeonAndSnot]

Life time tenant or not. Everyone was reviewed and income taken into account when calculating rents. Would this free up housing stock for those in need?

If expensive areas are cleansed of lower paid people who can no longer afford to pay private rents, there will be knock on effects for the higher paid people who can afford to rent or own there.

My cousin works at a nursery where she has to be there at 7am to start work. It's crazy thinking low paid nursery workers should commute in at 5am on a long distance bus because their salaries don't cover rent in that area or expensive peak train fares.

And why should someone who is already working very hard in a lower paid job (looking after kids of wealthier families whose parents earn much higher salaries) have the added hardship of an even earlier start and a long commute?

If we ensured there was affordable secure housing for everyone then communities would be much stabler and there would be less injustice

Thanks myrtle I'm hopeful.we will.be offered somewhere soon but I do.look at mutual exchanges too!

"Most repares I have to do myself as they take months to come out and often do a rubbish job using the cheapest of products"

This is widespread across the sector and the reason why many tenants dread something going wrong that needs repairing or dread letters saying HA want to do a refurb.

"My cousin works at a nursery where she has to be there at 7am to start work. It's crazy thinking low paid nursery workers should commute in at 5am on a long distance bus because their salaries don't cover rent in that area or expensive peak train fares"

Ha. Imagine the AIBU threads from the wealthy parents when the nursery workers cant/struggle to get in or quit.

Like i said.................thick.

This is quite an entertaining theme, with plenty of varying views.
There are people who wish to throw old people from their council homes. There are others who think people earning more than the National wage, should not have access to Social Housing, then
others who think that private landlords are conscionable eople,whilst some disagree. Ad Infinitum.

Not a word has been mentioned about immigration, or is that a taboo subject on MN?
The elephant in the room is population increase, most of which is from outside Europe.
Does anybody on MN admit to have “tenants” living in a garden shed to provide a valuable social service, or 18 people living in a 4 bedroom house?
Enquiring minds wish to know, along with HMRC.
Perhaps some of our high council taxes could finance a 30 metre high sign stating that
“BRITAIN IS FULL” at all points of entry until sufficient homes are available.
Just a thought.

London is full. Large swathes of the rest of the country, are not.

There is a Syrian family living three doors down from my parents in housing stock especially set aside for refugees. I still managed to get social housing within a week.

London is not representative of the entire country.

London is not representative of the entire country.

This.

We applied for council housing. Our council offers choice based lettings where they advertise the available properties each week and you register your interest against (up to) three. At the end of the week they look at each property to see who is first in line for it. The line is based on priority. When you apply for housing you get awarded Band P (absolutely priority, typically people who are homeless), Band 1 (urgent need for rehousing but not immediate such as current home over/under occupied or unsuitable for various reasons), Band 2 (need for rehousing but non-urgent such as someone moving for work or to give/receive support from family), Band 3 (no need for rehousing other than tenant preference, for example someone wanting to change areas). If two people of the same banding register an interest on a property then it goes on who has been on the housing register the longest.

We joined the housing register as Band 1 applicants, didn't bid for agesas there were no properties we liked the look of, then bid on three in one week and were offered one of them. Total time from joining the list to moving our stuff in was three months and this was in a popular area that previously had very few vacancies. Recently there are lots of vacancies in this area as the elderly tenants are dying/moving to sheltered accommodation/bungalows/in with family and it's freeing up the 2/3/4 bedroom homes. Before we moved to this street there hadn't been a vacancy in over ten years but in the last six months there have been four, all due to older residents moving on.

There are properties on the council list here advertised as "always available", you can have the keys in your hand the very next day regardless of your priority status. Those ones aren't in very desirable areas but the point stands that not everywhere in the country has years long waiting lists.

Councils need to invest in one and two bed properties for those downsizing and in bungalows for elderly people. They should offer once gives to people to downsize rather than forcing them. New build estates here have a certain percentage of the houses given over to Social Housing as a condition of the land sale and it seems a good model to follow. Developers get their land to build on, councils get new housing stock, everybody wins.

Oh, and our tenancy is a lifetime tenancy or Secure Tenancy as it's termed in our tenant pack. Secure Tenancy basically gives us certain rights and freedoms but it doesn't mean we're guaranteed this property forever. The tenancy moves from property to property so it isn't linked to one specific house, if we were to move from here to a smaller council property (e.g., when our DC leave home) then our Secure status would move with us along with all of our attendant rights and freedoms rather than us starting over as Probationary Tenants.

It would be interesting to see what would happen. My manager earns £35k + a year, as does her husband. She lives in a three bed council property and pays £450 a month rent.

I'm a lone parent, privately rent and pay £650 a month. I've been told I don't qualify for a council property. Just doesn't make sense how this can happen when there is a joint income of that amount.

My manager doesn't understand how I can afford it, well I've no choice have I!

After seeing the disastrous affect that "Beast from the East had on thames waters pipes London is the last place id want to live!!!

London is full. Large swathes of the rest of the country, are not

London is not full

fgs.

London is not full

Really? I'll be honest, I haven't been to London or them South for years and pay about as much attention to it as politicians pay to the North but reading about people spending years or decades in some cases on the housing list, being asked or forced to move further North for housing and the fuss about rehousing Grenfell survivors in the area they lived in, certainly gives the impression it is full or at least has more low income families than it is willing or able to support.

If I'm wrong, I'm happy to be corrected.

London is full of empty properties used as an investment. The housing shortage is the end result of selling off council homes and not replacing them.

What Upstart said.
The rhetoric of being 'full' is used to excuse mismanagement of housing stock, lack of building and social cleansing.

In the way that London is seen by much of the country as some sort of Theme Park for rich people and tourists. If we allow it to be viewed in that way we can say 'why SHOULD poor people be able to afford to live there?'
As if its not a place to live.

Holding hands up and admitting not reading 11pages. In many areas the rent is not significantly cheaper, the benefit is the security of lifetime tenancy.
What would make more sense would be allowing people to buy at a reasonable rate BUT they can only sell back to council. The council shouldn't just build, they could buy properties at auction. Or run-down premises and do them up. Allowing tenants to buy, with the caveat, allows the council to recycle the money through new properties, new tenants etc. Buying properties also avoids the 'council estate' approach, houses can be scattered.

Of course London isn't full. That's just peddling the right wing "overcrowded by immigrants & poor working class who have all this council housing thrown at them" (yeah right) line.

There's always room made to throw up homes for gentrification, and buy to let for rich investors. People talk as if you can barely walk along the street for people here. Of course you can.

It's a race to the bottom with people envying council tenants fgs whilst continuing to vote in government who impose bedroom tax, free reign to unscrupulous landlords, and loads of (unaffordable for locals) housing for the rich. Why should tenants be moved out to make way for whoever's deciding "more deserving?". How far down the ladder do you go? Build more affordable housing is the answer. Money can be found for war and Trident but not the essentials at home

I worked in Housing for years, left disillusioned. There's still a lot of empty housing stock, with departments sitting on their arse not getting it filled. Mostly they're short staffed so properties left rotting. Selective blindness means some people aren't willing to open their eyes and see what's around them in real life, not what social and right wing media's say.

London isn't 'full' no, but it's got one of the highest population densities in the Western World. Whether that's a good thing or not is another matter.

I needed a council house when my ex husband chucked me out and I had no where to go. I was on a zero hours contract and needed housing benefit to pay the rent.

I then got a full time job but kept the flat. Good thing I did as less than a year after starring full time I fell pregnant.

Couldn't afford nursery fees to go back to full time work so again I'm getting housing benefit but I work 2 jobs.

If I'd been in a private rent I'd have really struggled especially on 550 mat pay.