To ask if you are under-occupying social housing that you consider downsizing?

[IckyBex]

If you are in a property with space you no longer need for whatever reason please consider asking to transfer to a smaller property. There are so many families waiting for three or four bedroom housing and hardly any available.
Staying in your four bedroom house after all of your children have left home is depriving another family of the opportunity that you were given.

saw someone on here a few years ago saying that all social housing tenants get their TV licences paid for them

Ah the free house days 'wistful'

The more expensive SH rents are charged under the definition of 'Affordable' housing - 80% of Market Rents - which imo is barely affordable for most.

The aim of 40% Affordable Housing to Buy and Rent is often eroded to at least 20%. So, of that 20% Affordable Housing there will be a few homes to Rent (usually the block of flats tucked away) and a few homes to Buy on a Shared Ownership basis (at inflated prices) and the remainder of the 20% will be paid directly to the LHA (Council) as CIL which they then flaff around with for a few years (degrading its value) to then spend on housing projects set up by other organizations.

I appreciate they need to build more SH but the lifetime tenancy THEN passing it on once to another LT means that very few SH actually becomes freed up. I think a sensible plan would be to abolish the passing it on rule, that way after death a property could be freed.

Some posters are alluding that getting a SH is very easy and simple and that there is no shortage or criteria. Where are these areas and can I ask for those in SH how long did you have to wait?

Where are these areas and can I ask for those in SH how long did you have to wait?

Last time I posted how fast I got one I was accused of lying 😂

I was in temporary accommodation for 5 months before we got our house

I have to pay more for my house if the windows/doors etc are done HTH

Where are these areas and can I ask for those in SH how long did you have to wait

It took me about 4 weeks I think 23 years ago. My friend got yet another need to move out notice from her private landlords and it took around 4 weeks for the council to house her because she was sick of private rentals and their habit of selling up.

Didn't even have to wait to be evicted or anything, fancy that

Nowhere near the south though

Is this honestly happening anywhere, now that there's the "spare room" tax?

Yes because pensioners are exempt from bedroom tax.

Bedroom tax only affects those on housing benefit.

Where are these areas and can I ask for those in SH how long did you have to wait?

not all Social housing have waiting lists. some assign you a 'Banding' dependant on need. with homeless families or vulnerable people having a higher banding.
then you go on the website and apply for which ever houses fit your needs.
so in my case my band is 2 and I need a 2 bed.
I can then apply for up to 3 a week of whatever is available.
if someone of a higher banding also applies then they get invited to view first. houses are assigned by highest banding to lowest.

in my area there are brand new houses being built. 10 were recently finished. they've managed to let 8 of them with 2 going spare as not enough tenants to fill need.

so feel free to apply on
www.homechoicelincs.org.uk
anyone is allowed, from workers to Universal Credit claimants. never know, you might end up living near me. :)

lastnight - HA's have also been able to deploy local lettings policies on specific areas - so that may be "open to people in employment" - if for example the aim is to bring a better balance of what used to be termed "mixed income, mixed communities" or "low demand" lettings policies where properties are less attractive (location or style) and therefore don't generate higher levels of interest so the HA has been able to open these areas up to people who otherwise would be low priority in banding terms... So for example as a band 4 applicant you could weigh up your chances of getting a sought after property in sought after area (and the HA website (often a collaboration of HA/LA's working together on what was called "choice based lettings") will give you an indication of how long you would likely have to wait for perfect home in perfect town, versus choosing to go for a less popular property/location - much shorter time to get a property.

I live in a "bad" area of Cardiff, listed on the council website as one with HIGH availability (based on how many people are housed per year and how long they wait, I believe) but in the valleys, about an hours drive away the lists are far lower and sometimes homes are even offered to the general public because no one on the housing list wants them. I was offered 3 different homes in the valleys after being offered my home in Cardiff, but due to the employment situation there opted for Cardiff (I don't drive and finding local work would've presented a challenge even if i was qualified with experience)

i live in greater Manchester i was bidding for houses for 8 or 9 months no priorty whstsoever when i was offered my house three years ago , im back bidding agsin as my son has complex learning and we need another bedroom im.hoping it wont be too long i have bern bidding a couple of months now .

I'm in a ground floor 2 bed flat, I'm a single parent with a 14 year old Autistic son. I'm disabled & getting worse as time goes on, I now struggle to get bathed or have a shower, the bins for my flats are at the top of 5 steps & are commercial skip bins, I can't lift rubbish to the shoulder height needed to get it in the bins & the lids are too heavy for me to open wide enough to get a black sack of rubbish in. There isn't any car parking provided, I have to park my car 200 metres away despite having a blue badge. My council say I'm not allowed a property for disabled people as I'm not "disabled enough" to qualify. I can't get any type of help in the city I live in.

I've had to apply to the next county away to get on their waiting list, they can't do enough to help me & are helping me to get a bungalow with a wet room, I'm angry that the city I was born & lived in all my life won't do anything to help me.

I know there are plenty more like me, there are over 50,000 people waiting for properties here, last week there was only 26 properties for bidding, out of those 23 have been up for bidding since before Christmas, nobody wants them as they are either in bad areas or in such a state they aren't fit to live in. There are large areas of empty council owned land here, these are sold to private developers to build private homes on in return for building a very small amount of social housing. When the new homes are sold, the nearby schools are then oversubscribed & families who have lived in the area all their lives can't get their children in the local schools. Council's should be building more social housing with the money they get from selling off land & building schools for the increased population, if they employed local people they would take them off benefits & if the wages are spent locally, help struggling businesses.

and regarding the life time tenancy and passing it on certainly in my area you cant just pass it on too your children, as both myself and dh are joint tenants if either one of us were to die the other would become a sole tenant this would count as the succession of tenancy , this was made very clear when we were given our tenancy .

Where are these areas and can I ask for those in SH how long did you have to wait

I had been on the housing list for 26 years, when my marriage broke up my son & I had to move in with my parents for 6 months before we got somewhere, I was bidding for 3 properties a week, I eventually got a house on a hell hole of an estate, we had 2 years of being threatened, bullied & terrified before we managed to exchange to a slightly better estate a mile away, since last Christmas on the 3 estates round here there have been 2 murders, several shootings & stabbings plus the usual drug problems. It's time council's stopped building these massive estates & mixed social housing with private, these large estates just end up being ghettos for crime & violence.

I lived with my DF while I waited to be allocated a flat. That was 11 years ago. I wasn’t high priority as DC were away at uni and I could stay with my DF so wasn’t in a desperate situation.

Heres a good example of the differences in the way social housing tenants are treated.

I posted this thread a year ago about a computer system that an HA is using called SAP. This is causing letters to be sent out to tenants saying they owe rent when they dont and serious DPA breaches.

Some of the replies i got were If it was anything else like the recent ongoing problems with TSB i doubt there would have been any shitty replies at all.

The reason the thread got bumped is because the letters have started up again.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2978114-URGENT-Do-you-rent-from-a-HOUSING-ASSOCIATION-Do-you-claim-HB-Then-please-READ-THIS

I left home 20 years ago (3 bedroom house), and my parents are still living there, it's a large property with a fab garden our back too.

It's the same situation for my uncle - although he is recovering from a heart operation and oedema.

My dm is in a 3 bed house and desperately trying to find someone with a 2 bed who wants to swap. Over a year later and no interest!

It depends. First time I got a ha home I waited a couple of months.
We then brought our own house but split two years later. As I was a sahm I had no choice but to go back on the list.

Things had changed in that time and there was a bidding system. My and my 2dc had to move back in with my dm for 4 months before I got the grottiest mouldiest flat ever.

7 years I was trying to move when I met ds2 dad. He still lived at home so moved in with me and was disgusted at what I was paying rent for. Mould EVERYWHERE and being told it was the way I was living (never had mould like it before or since)

We put a major complaint (got to the one before the ombudsmen service) in with the ha and we had the head boss come and sit in our living room.

He was disgusted at how we were living and the steps had been taken and told us we had 3 properties to pick from (which were coming up on the next bidding system) we moved 4 weeks later.
I realise that we were so lucky and not everyone can do that.

Btw the flat I was in there's thousands in my area and they've said there is a major problem with them flats and have started doing major work on them over the last few years to fix the problem. Weather it has I don't know.

We have choice based lettings too. I was on the list about a week and a half. I think I bid on around six properties. I was offered the choice of two. I took the first one I viewed because it was closer to family and the kids schools.

Two of my friends applied. One, like me, was offered a house within a few weeks. The other waited six weeks before moving into a private let. She viewed three or four properties while she was on the list but none were as big as she wanted them to or had floorplans she didn't like.

helena a thread about sh tenants being expected to pay rent in advance is hardly a good example of being treated differently.

"OneSanctuary SAP is the name of a multi-million pound software system brought in by Sanctuary in 2016, designed for use by all areas of the business. It has been an unmitigated failure, and is a huge drawback of working for this company.
The issues caused by SAP are staggering and difficult to keep track of. Because SHA tried to implement SAP in a cost effective manner, they ended up vastly under-investing in critical elements. There is no tailoring of the generically presented system ('vanilla SAP'), which is an issue as social housing is a unique environment from a service delivery and CRM perspective, whereas vanilla SAP is more geared towards providing a solution for manufacturing industries. Thus, the system uses corporate nonsensical buzzwords and methods of handling accounts which absolutely do not reflect industry practice.
Here are just some examples of the more specific issues faced by staff:
No rent statements have been issued since it was implemented in August 2016, and if a resident insists on a rent statement it has to be prepared manually in a spreadsheet.
The rent and calculations for accounts are hard to use, and often completely wrong. Mostly because the system was never designed to understand housing benefit payments, and this has a very convoluted workaround which a computer cannot make sense of.
SAP cannot interface with Local Authorities Housing benefit systems so payments are missed, lost or misattributed.
Direct debits do not work reliably, and for a long time following the implementation did not work at all. Front line staff are now preferring standing order.
The front end system of SAP requires far more testing and money spent on it. Each customer account is a total mess of information, with no discernible way to separate notes left between differing departments, with information left by staff often going into the wrong account entirely. This needs looking at as from a compliance (DPA) point of view the breaches are serious.
From a usability point of view, the view of a customers account within SAP CIC does not display appropriate information to the user (as stated before this is likely because the system was never designed to be used by a HA) and the user often has to go trawling around back end systems to find obviously relevant data (e.g tenancy start date, account balance, property type etc). This is a seemingly minor but considerable waste of resources"

I dont recall the victims of the Talk Talk hack being told to suck it up.

THATS the difference i mean.