To think there ought to be a rule that social housing tenants can’t own other residential properties?

[Mightymucks]

A friend of mine and her DH were extremely poor about 7 years ago and she was pregnant. She managed to get an absolutely beautiful HA house for absolutely peanuts. Which is absolutely brilliant, exactly what social housing is for.

The thing is, her circumstances have REALLY changed since then. Her DP has gone from being in a dead end minimum wage job to an extremely good job which pays well. Off the back of that they bought one house and let it out. She’s now inherited some money so they’ve bought another house outright and are looking to buy a third, all to be let out.

I’m really shocked by this, they could easily live in one of the houses and still be paying down the mortgage on the other two as a nest egg if they wanted. The people they rent to are significantly less wealthy than them, and of course there are families stuck homeless in B&Bs. They were in that situation so I would have thought they’d feel morally obliged to give another family in awful circumstances the chance of an affordable, secure home but apparently not. They have no intention of leaving the HA house as it is cheap and means they can keep more of the income from the BTLs.

Apparently this is perfectly legal and above board and a fairly common thing to happen. AIBU to think this loophole should be closed and people who own residential properties which are habitable shouldn’t be able to block HA and council homes.

I’m actually quite shocked it is legal.

Why is this thread still running? It is in almost every social tenancy I have seen, that you cannot own another property and this is a breach of your tenancy agreement, and will lead to possession proceedings and probably eviction (with some exceptions such as DV etc). It seems there are some disingenuous people on this thread that are happy to continue perpetuating this myth.

myrtleWilson I never said all council tenants dont pay taxes. But these days less and less do as the conservative government take more and more people out of tax.

Social tenants might pay what they consider 'fair' rent but ultimately private renters/owners have to pay more so that affordable housing is available. That is a massive subsidy. I am not saying it is wrong to do this but it is ignorant to pretend no such subsidy exists.

However the point of this thread is that social housing should be means tested so that the subsidies are used on those who need it not those who used to need it.

Private renters do not pay higher rents to subsidise social housing tenants. If private rented tenants pay higher rents (and in some parts of the country the difference between a social rent and a private rent is negligible) they pay them to a comparatively unregulated profit driven private landlord.

I pay 20% tax on my second job and I get housing benefit. Does that mean I'm paying my own flat lol.

Private renters do not pay higher rents to subsidise social housing tenants Of course they do, that's capitalism. If you subsidise house A then house B has to be more expensive to make up the reduced profit on A. Supply and demand.

We live in a council home. The rent is £140 a week. We pay for it with our wages. We don't get tax credits or housing benefit.

DH earns around 50k and I earn around 3k. We don't pay for or claim for any childcare. Our situation has obviously changed a lot since we were first eligible for our tenancy. We were homeless when we got it. We waited 6 years. We couldn't find a private landlord who would accept us on a low wage.

If we could get a mortgage, we would probably move, but we can't. A 3 bed property near us averages 600k. We have savings but not enough for a deposit. We need to stay here. We have children in secondary school and DH's work is in London.

I would happily pay more to live here if the money was used to provide more affordable housing for those in need. As it is, we are saving so that our dc have a hope in hell of moving out before they are 40.

To be honest, if someone isn't working, they can't afford either £140 a week or £500 a week can they? Housing benefit will cover either all or most of it. The biggest difference is security.

We have a fairly good income and cannot dream of buying an average family home within 50 miles of here. We need more affordable housing for everyone.

And again Walkingdead you are making a massive assumption that rents are much lower in social housing than private renting ,as has been pointed out in many parts of the country this is simply not the case I pay about £10 /week less than private rent , but in private rent I would get flooring white goods etc So where is this massive subsidy?

I know of a local couple who temporarily split (fake split), got a council property each (one flat, one House) then bought them both on right to buy. Got back together, sold flat for vastly more than they paid (London).

One of the kids then got a HA property. The couple then moved in with her and have left the other house standing empty (in London where people are desperate for homes) for over five years as they’re waiting for it to be worth £800k before they will sell. They can afford not to rent it out plus they don’t want anyone to reduce its value.

What is this obsession with “flooring/white goods”?!!
I pay 2.5 times more rent on a run-down private 2 bed terrace than my friends pay for their Council/Housing Association 3 bed semi. I had to supply my own washing machine and the fridge in situ has a mind of its own. I would love to chuck it out and buy my own which would probably slash my electric bill but I’ve nowhere to store this one for when I get moved on. I wish I could replace the carpets which are a murky shade of bogey green and threadbare but I could be given 2 months notice to quit at any time and indeed was within a week of having blackout blinds installed throughout our last place - so we now have Crappy temporary blinds up. Most stuff is crappy and temporary for the same reason - what’s the point in buying furniture to fit the house when you don’t know how long you’ll be in it and where you’ll be next. Plus furniture is not made to be moved and heavy furniture cost more to be moved.
I’d love a home for life - with or without discounted rent. Unfortunately a mistake in choice of partner means I will never be able to buy another home myself.

If the government cracked down on all or most of the loopholes then obviously more housing stock would be available to those who need it. I think just building new houses stock isn't enough without tackling this issue. Otherwise the same thing would happen again, people would exploit the massive loopholes. The checks and eligibility criteria needs to be consistent amongst the different HA's and the country. Reading the experiences here has highlighted the inconsistent qualifying criteria amongst the HA's.

Surely simple information like salary ranges, benefit entitlement, free school entitlement for kids etc which is already held by various agencies could provide the basis of qualifying criteria. Obviously, the finer details need to worked out but an over haul of the social housing system is badly needed.

A family near me needed a council house when the kids were younger, fine no problem as both parents were low income earners. The dad died, the kids grew up, some moved away and two adult kids still live with their mum. The council then knocked down their flat and rehoused them in a brand new 5 bed property. That's not right, they should be in a 3 bed or ideally the adult kids should move out & the mum be housed in a one bed flat. One of the adult kids is a property developer. He has a portfolio of 20+ properties but is living with his mum in HA house. This is where the system is going wrong and it needs to be changed. It's not illegal what this guy is doing but it's certainly immoral & is one example of these loopholes being exploited.

zibbidoo. That happens in Canada or at least Quebec. My friends parents live in social housing and the rent is a % of their income. As it goes up they pay more, in tough times they pay less. I think it is a very good idea.

I think it should be possible to have a lifetime social housing tenancy and that you shouldn't have automatic eviction when your wealth improves, BUT there is more the government could do to encourage social housing stock to improve whilst not forcing people to lose their homes.

Primarily the legislation change needs to be enacted to say that all lifetime tenancies, whenever they were granted, will henceforth have the rent determined by personal financial circumstances not just a flat rate according to the property itself.

Then the scale for rent can include factors such as whether you have income and capital gains from other properties, and whether you are under-occupying (the "spare room tax" only affects Social Housing tenants who are benefits claimants so wealthier tenants are unaffected)

Using these features it would then be absolutely fine for people like the OP's friend to stay in the home they have grown to love despite having vastly improved their financial situation - but they would do so by paying 10-20% more than full commercial rent rather than significantly less. The extra rent would be helping to subsidise the social housing provision for those who are in need. People could be encouraged to stay on, paying the higher rent, as a way of putting back into the system that helped them when they needed it.

All rent adjustment factors could be on a sliding scale to ensure that you don't remove all incentive to improve your circumstances, and with common- sense exemptions and allowances.

I knew a woman in London a neighbour with a flat in a very over crowded London authority. Her and DH work in low paid but essential jobs and a school age child. No problem there. Quite justified. Last year her FIL died, he owed his 2 bedroom flat (in the next block). Within a month the flat was redecorated and with an estate agent for rent - until they decide what to do with it. It was even on Right move. Talk about brazen. The local authority has a 'no ownership' policy. And the demand for social housing is so great that a couple with two small children in a one bedroom flat is not considered over crowded.

A poster above stated that the original intention a of social housing was for working people but when the wide scale social house building began late 40s 50s the uk population was 51 million now it is 67. And with the social housing sell off in the 80s and 90s the need for housing greater than ever.

I could never understand why the second home issue wasn't tackled when they introduced the bedroom tax. I get that people should be encouraged to downsize when circumstances change but living in social housing when you own property is stomach churning. Another neighbour reported that a man with a flat in the same block no longer lived there as he had remarried and moved to Spain - another neighbour had a forwarding address for any stray letters. The neighbour was asked 'can you prove it'

I was subject to the bedroom tax when I moved in here even though they housed me here due to homelessness. I did get dhp which helped a little but I was still to pay the rest. So every month when I was paid my pittance from my job I paid everything then I couldn't work for the remaining 2 or 3 weeks of the month as I didn't have money to get to work.

GrandTheftWalrus that's awful. I did wonder whether people who had been housed in a place with more bedrooms than they need, or people who's children had grown up and flown the nest yet had said yes they want to downsize but couldn't due to a lack of suitable properties, if they were still stung by the bedroom tax through no fault of their own. You've just answered that for me.

Yeah that's why I got the dhp but it still didn't cover the full tax. But now because dp lives her and we now have dd I don't have to pay it anymore. Just my rent arrears and over payment.

I got 130 of rent arrears because I didn't realise that 11 of my housing benefit payment a week was going to my HB over payment and was almost evicted because of it. I'd phoned and queried why I was getting letters saying I owed rent when I had full HB and was told to ignore them.

Then I had the housing officer at the door saying unless I came to an agreement I was getting turfed out with a 14 month old at the time and we wouldn't be rehoused.

So I'm paying it now but if that first guy hadn't said to ignore the letters I wouldn't have been in that situation and I'd have been paying.

OP can you tell us what council you're under so we can check if your friend is lying about it being legal? PM even if you don't want to post publicly? Do you know if she declares the rental income to HMRC also? If not she's in for a shock next time she goes to remortgage...!