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?

@MeltingWax

Wow, what's a highly-educated, over-achieving family like that doing in sh?

We're not over-achieving jubbly.

We live in London zone 2 - house prices around here are astronomical. The social housing market reflects that.

To be fair in live in social housing in a new estate of privately owned I an expensive area and if I had paid the prices they have to overlook my disgusting neighbour. I would be pissed off
They have a 4 bedroom and after 3 years it looks like steptoe yard not to mention the multiple cars he has and now a hideous minibus thing.
I do understand the "stigma" and I am sure if they had to pay a mortgage to live there they would have some pride !

That isn’t always true at all. I can think of endless places I know are owned and treated like crap. Even homeowners can have no pride it’s not just limited to the scroungers of SH

Also, criminals don’t rob off their own patch. - most acquisitive crime is driven by drug addiction, and smackheads will steal anything that’s not nailed down, regardless of whether it’s on “their patch”.

I live in social housing. My house isn't a crack den. Hope that helps

OP in our area one of the criteria for social housing is working and most of the housing associations when they pick from the top 2 or 3 bidswise go for working over non-working. There are a lot of assumptions about what social housing is but it isn't necessarily reality

Apologies if I'm repeating others butdidnt you post about this a week ago and people told you to get over yourself?

We are also inspected yearly and they come down hard on complaints, a friend in a neighbouring area same housing association got a warning because her kids were too noisy in the garden (aged 4 and 2 midday and a neighbour complained

@thegreenlight I have no idea why there are so many negative posts to your question. I get the whole quality thing, but generally people in social housing do come with additional problems and may have different waking patterns to you.

I grew up on a council estate and visit my mum regularly. Things have deteriorated over time as the elderly neighbours inevitably passed away and new people moved in. Drug dealers, addicts, very young families - families with historic long term unemployment. Constant anti-social behaviour - the worst was years ago and I came home from uni one weekend and had to all the police as a neighbour was chasing another with a machete! It’s awful and unsafe. I was there two weekends ago and had to explain to my four year that we don’t touch dead rats and that a cat must have killed them. I get there are rats everywhere but they get disposed of, these had been there for weeks on someone’s drive with their kids playing on it. Why?!

I must say living on a council estate where all residents are social housing tenants may be different to an estate where there is integration. You may still have the issue of people not caring, but I do find that social housing tenants who DON’T work for reasons unrelated to disability are the worst. It’s just not worth the fight for an easy life.

The estate I live on is 50/50 social and owned houses. We have no trouble, none at all. My neighbours house is social housing and neither of the two families who have lived there since we've been here have been any bother. In fact, dd was really good friends with one of their sons and they still keep in touch even though they've moved.

Where we used to live was also very mixed. The only trouble I ever had, rowdiness, unkempt dirty house, broken down cars out side, out of control pets, general aggression, etc was from my next door neighbours who owned their house!!! All the social housing tenants were lovely and looked after their properties.

Also two of my best friends live in social housing. They are both professional people, but had kids young and were just never able to get the deposit together to get on the ladder.

It would not cross my mind to even be the slightest bit concerned about there being social housing near by. It seems really odd to me that it would bother someone so much.

This is the other very similar thread hence I thought you'd posted before www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/3545569-New-build-next-to-housing-association

You can’t reallt know. I lived on one new build estate. The social housing houses were hideous and their occupants used drugs in the parks and were a bit anti social (loud parties late at night, graffiti, littering type of thing). A different estate I live on the social housing looked lovely and in keeping with the rest of the houses. There was no criminal activity (as far as I was aware of). Although there was one privately owned house that clearly had a dope head living in it. But the social housing occupants all seemed to have very annoying young children who they would leave on the street for hours. There were bikes everywhere and driving around was scary because they would often run into the road without looking. I don’t think you can know what problems there may be before there are people living there. All different kinds of people live in social housing. Some will cause no problems at all. Some will cause minor inconveniences. And some major problems. That’s what people are like.

That sounds very very similar doesn’t it?

Titus that's the one I was thinking of.

You get horrible areas for different reasons so you cannot tar all SH in the same way. Most ‘council estates’ were bought up by tenants in 80’s and 90’s through right to buy and sold or rented out. It is very rare that an entire estate would all be council owned anymore as the housing stock of council property is crazily low - way Lower than you realise. I realise as I’ve been part of the bidding system for housing - ‘council housing’ is rare as hens teeth!

You won’t find a new build estates without some social housing. IT IS NOT COUNCIL HOUSING

Here a council house would be £400pm. SH is £800 pm. Its not the same thing

You have to pass and affordabilty check to get SH
They visit you and will even tell you to cut your grass. Housing associations have low tolerance for complaints and anti social behaviour

@MeltingWax

"We live in London zone 2 - house prices around here are astronomical."

That's why we live in zone 4, where we can actually afford to without burdening the taxpayer.

What makes me laugh about these threads is that do people look up all their neighbours on Zoopla to find out their social status? If so that is grotesque. How on earth can everyone generalise about the SH and the home owned unless they catagorically know 100% every single persons home status I am guessing assumptions. Any grotty house MUST be SH it could not possibly be private rent or owned

Seen as none of the HA homes here have big red flashing signs on which one is owned rented or HA I have no fucking clue who is who and their ‘status’ unless they tell me. I know me, the NDN and the 2 houses over the street. That is it. Out of hundreds of houses

The affordability check on our SH property when we moved here 12 years ago was a household income of more than 50k. We live in a shared ownership property and the monthly rent has more than doubled since we moved in. We don't have any spare money for drugs - even if we wanted them - although, they might help us cope with the pain of the ever-increasing service charge 😬.

Any neighbours could be a nightmare op. Doesn't matter if they are renting from the council or have bought privately.

I live in a row of social housing. Everyone is lovely. Just nice normal folk. No nightmare neighboughs. If your worried visit the road behind at different times of day.

Jubbly - ooo, I would love to hear you explain how I am a burden on the taxpayer.

I grew up in council housing and yes there were more anti social issues than anywhere else I've lived.

And statistically speaking more anti social behaviour is found in social housing than private, that's simply factual.

The op is simply asking a question, I'm not sure why people are pretending it is never an issue and attacking her.

Maybe it’s the people living in the social housing who should be concerned

The yellow ones are marked as affordable but the ones behind the marked house (the one we like the look of) are going to be rental. Most are shared ownership I think. The road in front of the house is private and nothing will be built in front due to position. Please please tell me I’m being unreasonable. I really want this house!