AIBU to be worried about social housing?

[thegreenlight]

Have found our dream home on a new estate - looks out over green to the front. Lovely lay out, super excited. However, we went to look at the one we wanted to reserve (80% finished) to find that half the garden backs onto a small row of 3 social rent houses. I feel awful to be worried abou this but I am! The other houses it backs onto are small private houses. I now don’t know what to do. I don’t want to make the wrong choice for our family. What if there’s trouble? It’s seriously making me reconsider. There isn’t much social housing on the estate (minimum amount I guess) does anyone have any experience?

@HelenaDove

Oh my god some of the comments on that thread have made me rage

Long ago I bought into a new-build development where a minority of properties were reserved for social housing. There were definitely (and are to this day 30 years later) some issues where some social housing tenants were spoiling the appearance. (For example: rubbish left out in Tesco bags that get pulled apart by animals and strewn all over the pavement, instead of in rubbish bags in the bin room. ) (Actually not just the tenants, their landlord, a housing association, are not maintaining their properties in keeping with the rest. A few replacement garage doors in white not matching the several brown wood ones either side. I guess words can't convey how jarring this is, the properties are in a beautiful yellow face brick with wooden window frames, doors and garage doors all supposed to be in the same shade of brown. Believe me, a door let alone a garage door that breaks the pattern really stands out. At least there aren't multi-colour front doors, I suppose.)

I can anticipate the responses. Of course only a snob would care what anything looked like, it's not as though cleanliness and beauty are things that anyone would pay extra money for, and feel cheated when it wasn't delivered.

Having said all that, although the issues exist, they aren't that big. I'd say the estate is still OK, just 5% less nice than it would have been without the social housing allocation.

The thread has turned ridiculous now.

Salt of the earth, invite you in for a cuppa, besties with the milkman.

It’s bullshit.

Not every SH or council estate is like that in the exact same way that not every private estate is safe and free from “those people”.

Honestly, it’s just ridiculous.

What is the point of pretending that there aren’t social issues in social housing? Not all of them, of course. But willfully ignoring that there can be? As I said, ridiculous!

And OP did nothing wrong. She was concerned. She asked a question. She had her arse handed to her and she apologized. What do some of you want? Blood?

I had more trouble from private renters

My small village and the surrounding area has been graced with about 7,000 new homes. About 1/3 of those are social housing and we have also had families imported from the London boroughs that don't want them.

I can't comment on the people as I don't know them but what I can tell you is that from the day the first development opened anti-social behaviour and crime increased and has continued to do so.

I'm really pleased for the people who have had no problems but round here the fences are tall, the doors are double-locked and the CCTV and burglar alarms are robust.

And the hypocrisy, by the way, of slating posters who post anecdotes about problems they’ve had with SH tenants, and then giving anecdotal evidence of how council/SH estates are so very fabulous, is actually laughable!

Shared ownership housing doesn’t attract the asb issues that social rented housing can have. Any housing association could tell you that if they were allowed to.

This thread is unfair to the OP. Almost being coerced into feeling guilty not buying the house, because a bunch of mumsnetters that are in social rented housing are good neighbours, therefore it follows that all social rented neighbours nationwide are also fine and the OP shouldn’t think twice about ploughing her half a million into this house.

If you asked the same question to the neighbourhood team at the housing association, you would get very different replies. Why do you think private sale houses that are next door to social rented houses, are often priced at £20k below identical houses in a solely private location on the development?

AGree ivana pee

then a bridle way... having this close to your house (only one property away) would be much more of a deal breaker for me, as there's probably a greater potential for unauthorised access/getaways if people are up to no-good.

There will very likely be different problems (where there are any at all) from SH tenants to private owners. Rubbish in gardens, a particular type of anti social behaviour etc.

However, the problem is in the SH policy. If you look at old fashioned, good quality sh estates - for instance the Homes for Heroes - built in the 1930s, they are excellent places to live. Good quality houses, good sized gardens and secure lifetime tenancies which can be passed down.

If people have been fortunate enough to secure a property like that they tend to treasure their tenancy and behave as though the property is their own.

If you allocate someone a shit flat with a rolling 2 year tenancy why would they invest any time or effort into it's upkeep?

The problem is that SH tenants (these days) don't have as much security in their tenancy as they used to.

Oh, i nearly forgot OP buy a dormobile and keep on rolling.

OP ultimately it's your choice, drive around the area at different times of day, see if anyone is walking about and free to chat as you are potential neighbour regardless of whichever house they live in . You may hear other things that put you off or even reassure you.

nope YANBU. We decided against a house for the same reason. Bought in a completely private estate 2 years ago instead, and it's been the best decision for us, neighbours are all wonderful and the kids all play really well, social events are held for the residents and there's a real community feel. My friend bought a huge lovely house in a new estate 6 years ago, and directly opposite they put up 4 identical houses that were HA... They moved in 2 traveller families who made their lives a living hell. The kids let themselves into her house while she was in the shower one day, and let her dog out, they constantly had litters of tiny puppies wandering the streets, kids scratched her brand new car to pieces "playing by it" all the time. They'd run out the house and stand behind her car when she was trying to reverse off her drive.... tied a skipping rope round the back of it once?! They'd have street fights, the police were constantly being called, they'd dump trash all over the road, the kids would constantly destroy ANYTHING that was left outside, setting fire to another neighbours wheelie bin once, and smashing glass everywhere on recycling day, tore up a neighbours freshly planted flowers, stole and smashed plant pots up in the park. She was scared of going to work and leaving The house unattended all day as she never knew what she'd come home to. The parents weren't approachable and in the few occasions she went to return loose puppies, or ask if they could tell their kids to not play on her drive they were met with abuse and threats. Needless to say they only stayed there a year but had huge problems trying to resell as the wild kids were always outside causing trouble, and threatened an estate agent "for being in their road" while they were waiting for a potential buyer one afternoon. I know this is an isolated case, and I'm not saying this is typical HA behaviour, but this wouldn't have happened to my friend if those houses were privately owned/rented. The travellers got moved in as they were classed as homeless. Seeing the damage and hell they caused, it made me adamant I would minimise our risks to a similar situation when we decided to move. It's up to you op, but if you have reservations, think long and hard as it is a huge longterm investment.

Ok, for a balanced view, in our town there are four largish new build estates. All of these have areas of social housing, two small pockets of just a few houses, like the one OP is looking at. As far as I am aware they've had no problems and the social housing tenants don't stand out from the private.

The other two have larger areas of social housing together. I live on one, in the midst of the social housing. I actually chose the house I live in from a plan for its aspect, knowing that except for my neighbours on one side, everyone else on my side of the road, those I share a car park with etc are social housing tenants. Also just opposite me, there's a block of six flats who are all social housing, mainly young single mums. So basically most mumsnetters worst nightmare! I love where I live! People are friendly, they for the most part look after their properties, and the area is safe and relatively crime free. We've been here four years with no problems at all. I'm also quite friendly with several of the young mums in the flats. They're a nice bunch of girls and can't help the circumstances that led them to being social housing tenants.

On the flip side, the large estate on the other side of town has had a lot more problems. They moved in a lot of problem families and the crime rate is high, lots of drugs and antisocial behaviour.

My point really is that three out of four new areas of social housing are absolutely fine, but one has been a problem and the people who brought there do regret it. As usual it's down to just a few families ruining it for everyone else.

OP the house you are looking at isnt in a heavily housing association area. Just a few houses are unlikely to be a problem and wouldn't put me off at all. As I said I took the gamble in an area where there are loads more social housing tenants and it's paid off for me. I also figured that no neighbours could have been as bad as the ones I had who owned their house in a nice little village!!

In defence of the OP it's a case of statistics. I don't think anyone would think it was the case that all or even most people who live in social housing are likely to be bad neighbours. BUT is the proportion significantly higher than the general population? As a student I loved in a number of areas of mainly social housing - most neighbours were absolutely lovely but there were in all cases a significant minority that were bloody awful. There are problem neighbours in all walks of life and most people in social housing aren't going to cause any issue but I would say there tend to be slightly higher numbers of annoying neighbours in social housing than elsewhere.

I live in a semi-detached house on a council estate. We bought ours but the house we’re attached to is still council. The family who live there couldn’t be nicer. Constantly apologising for any noise (we don’t hear any!) invite us to lovely bbqs etc.
I do hear of some bother on the rest of the estate, but as I’m sure pps have said sadly there’s arseholes everywhere, and not living near social housing does precisely fuck all to protect you from them.

I'm a social tenant my next door neighbours own their property. They are arseholes, loud music weed smoking knobheads hth

I'll read the newer comments later but for what it's worth Op, you really can't tell. Where we live they do appear to have cherry picked who theyveput in the SH properties, they are all very well maintained, all have at leat one working person. There is a clause in our local housing policy, from memory, to allow them to do this.

Older council type estates near us, think 50/60s three bed semis with huge gardens, well they're now very much more mixed in terms of some having been bought and sold on many times. But the police are more frequent visitors because of the odd one or two families who've lived there for generations, are still problematic tenants. No housing near us is council, it's all Housing Association owned and they are pushing the rents up.

I've said this on other threads, locally a three bed rental affordable housing property on a new build estate (managed by a housingassociatio) rents at appx £1000 per month. You have to be working and have a minimum income toe en be allowed to have a sniff of getting the keys. I'd suggest looking up your local housing policy, ifits a bidding system then go and have a look on the website the type of person they are looking to place in them. It should all be freely available to view.

And finally finally they will also have to pay service charges for maintenance to lighting, parking areas, green and planting areas etc.

Absolutely dahling! You are sooo right to be worried. You can't be backing onto poor people with their feral children, staffies and noisy cars, because they are probably all drug dealers and benefit claimants....
I mean why on earth would you want to spend all that money on your house and whilst you are in your hot tub drinking Pinot Grigio, little Dolce might be peering over the garden fence? Its just not right. There should be a wall and those pesky social tenants should live in a ghetto and not be seen or heard by those decent people who can afford to buy houses. I would start a petition.

Seriously get over yourself. A " friend" of mine moved into a niace house in a niace estate , and her respectable next door neighbour was arrested and had his house seized under the "proceeds of crime act"...

@tocotoucan

A horrible situation. But not restricted to social housing. I lived in a private rent, several houses were also private rent and others bought. A few went up for sale as houses do and a local notorious LL snapped them up. People very much like you describe moved in, and appeared to know each other too. We had across the street parties, fighting, fires, my back gate kicked in as many others were, I was scared to leave the house and scared to stay in it. DD practically moved to DMs in that year. My LL contacted their LL, and we contacted council and local policing team. The upshot was that the council and police were having to force the private LL to kick the tenants out - in his own words the Hb paid the rent and he didn't have to do anything because they trashed the place anyway, so he didn't do repairs, and he didn't have to live with it. It came to a head one night when yet again I was woken up and lost my shit and went up the two doors in my dressing gown and turned into a screaming banshee. It was utterly dangerous and stupid of me, but the neighbours phoned the police, and they arrived, when we were all searched one of them had a knife (never threatened me or anything) and that was enough to get them out apparently because the LL was forced to evict them after that I think. The houses went back up for sale and were bought individually. There was a block of ha flats at the bottom of that road - saw the police there once - for a missing child.
Not all people who indulge in antisocial behaviour live in sh, and not all sh tenants indulge in antisocial behaviour.
Every one of us commenting has a story, but there is a stigma and prejudice around social housing, mostly based on untruths like it's 'free' and outdated ideas about who lives in them.

The issue I have with this thread is not:

‘I’ve found a house I like but it is near an established area of SH that has a bad reputation and anti social behaviour should I buy it’

It is

‘I have found a house I like but there will be 3 or 4 SH nearby should I buy it as I am assuming that all SH tenants are antisocial’

The statistics (send me some please as everyone is talking about them) do these differentiate between council/sink estates or small proportion of SH on new estates? Or are they just SH as a whole? Does it differentiate between different SH providers and tenancy agreeements? Does it have any stats about SH in terms of affordable housing vs council housing - both of which are very different and not the same at all.

I googled it

This is from Tower Hamlets which says ASB is twice as high in private rental compared to SH

www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/pdf/The-private-rented-sector-asb.pdf

Here is one from Haringey about the rise in ASB due to poor housing in private sector

www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/property_licensing_-_11._high_level_analysis_of_asb_crime.pdf

I’ve looked through ONS website and couldn’t find any direct link to stats for crime and social housing

But I did find a lot of documents online about how the private sector has increased with ASB because people do not have secure tenancies (unlike SH), landlords do not maintain the priorities so they are in dire conditions (unlike SH) high turnover of tenants (unlike SH) overcrowding, private landlords find it more difficult and expensive to carry out evictions, people using housing benefit to pay very high market rents and struggling (in SH the rent is more predictable and affordable)

But please send me some stats
Seen as we have a very low number of available SH where some people are waiting 10 years to be housed I would be surprised if ASB was higher in SH compared to private rental in the last 5 years

I did find this which suggests that SH tenants personally experience more crime than owner occupiers. It did not say commit the crimes FYI. They are more at risk of the crimes than people in their half a million £ house. You are safer than us

www.ntu.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/480817/Should-you-accept-40-more-risk-in-social-housing.pdf

How the sell of of housing stock increased crime and deepened the poverty and homelessness gap

www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/how-did-council-house-sell-change-crime-risks

London’s housing policy is trying to tackle all of these issues and one line from the crime section

There is evidence to suggest that mixed communities experience lower rates of crime than deprived areas

www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2018_lhs_impact_assessment_fa.pdf

YY @PookieDo

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/telly_addicts/3304710-Dispatches-Getting-Rich-from-the-Housing-Crisis?pg=1

I live in a new build estate. It has half million pound houses on it. It also had a batch of social housing - some shared ownership and some rented though a housing association.

Some of the locals were incredibly snobby about it when it was built. They went on about it being a 'council estate'.

In reality its one of the nicest and most sort estates in the area now. It has a nice park which parents with their young kids come to from outside the estate.

The only way we could afford our first house was through shared ownership. We eventually bought out the other half. As part of our shared ownership we had to pay a rent to the housing association and agree to terms with them over how we behaved. They did an inspection once or twice a year to ensure there were 'no unsightly things outside the property' that shouldn't be there. It was actually stricter than you might image.

The entire estate (including where the big houses are) is also managed by a management company, who maintain it and ensure the greenery is well maintained and the street lighting is working etc. This is because many new build estate roads are not adopted by the council, because councils are relutant to take on those costs. There is therefore a small fee for this.

I do therefore wonder if your new estate will be subject to any of this.

The reality is you'd never know which houses were 'social houses' on our estate unless you were told. There isn't a social divide. Just bigger and smaller houses. Our next door neighbour is still on the scheme and I can honestly say she's been a brilliant neighbour.

The local council take our estate as a model which they want to repeat. Its success has been good and now the local feeling is very much in favour of more such schemes. Even the NIMBYs are on board with the idea in principle these days!

I do get pissed off at the automatic assumption that 'social housing' means 'problems'. Its not true. Done well its brilliant. It helps people and its good for social cohension rather than rich and poor living completely separate lives.

If you have concerns about this, ask the sales person! Ask who the housing association is and what contracts in terms of behaviour there are. Ask if the estate will be managed (and whether there is a fee due to you for this). You might be pleasantly surprised to find out that consideration has been given about this.

I live in a house on an estate that has a number of social housing houses on it. 4 of them are behind my house and a small part of my garden borders their parking area. I've lived in my house for two years now and I only actually realised a month or so ago that the houses were SH. Never would have ever occurred to me to check before hand. And I have never had a single issue ever (they may possibly feel otherwise about me and my noisy children during the summer months!!).

Also used to live next door to a house that was social housing. Our house was ex council and the neighbours must have been bought by a housing association. Again, no problems whatsoever. The rest of the street was mainly bungalows with retired people in and the majority of them spoke horribly to us about our neighbours - purely because they were social housing!!! But they were fine. Never had any issues selling. In fact sold the day it went on the market.

And this house has sold a couple of times since being built in 2001 and has a higher sale price than the same style house because it has a bigger plot.