Council homes: which one is it; envy or stigma?

[EddyF]

Or both? When I read threads on here or even in general, anyone posting about waiting for a council home, or about their council home, the replies tend to be "be grateful, you've got a 'free' flat" blah blah blah. But on the another hand, there's is always a whiff of 'stigma' attached to them and not being the first choice for most people. But if the latter is the case, why does it cause outrage/sneers that people should be grateful for paying lower rent etc?

I know someone is a bit of a snob (I like them though😄) who lives in a London typical 70s brick solid small flat with mixture of houses and other flats in the area. Her rent is so reasonable. She complains a LOT about the lack of attractiveness of her building. Inside her flat is GORGEOUS to most people's standards. Brilliantly decorated, high end stuff, kitchen and bathroom she ripped out herself years ago with no permission from the council (as most of her neighbours). Honestly it's beautiful inside. The block is outdated. This person I know can afford to move out. She complains the council encourage their buildings to be attached to 'roughness' hence why council properties have a stigma, and of she had 'proper' money, she would be put like a shot. She stays bcos she knows she has a good deal. Her 19 yr daughter is at uni, had her at 17, brought up her child with no trouble in the same property/area. It's sad she cannot see the beauty in her environment (a struggling London borough) but could be worse. All of London has pockets of deprivation. Her flat inside is so nice I just can't see the issue!

How can it be in 2019 that there is a stigma to housing when everyone knows the difficulties of getting up on the ladder?

I feel like I may have gone of tangent here😅.

Hi Frouby,

It's not subsidised by the tax payer.

This is definitely true. But it is subsidised, because the assets are rented out at below market value. It's subsidised by the people who are beneficially entitled to the assets.

It's a bit like if my parents left me a house on trust with the rent to be paid to me for my lifetime, but the trustees let it out on the cheap. I would be (unwillingly) subsidising the tenant by taking less income than I was entitled to.

With HAs it is less obvious, because those who are beneficially entitled to the assets are less obvious. But it is the group of people whom the HA exists to serve, and to provide housing to. In other words usually disadvantaged people in need of housing. A small number within that group hit the jackpot and get a bargain. Others are left empty handed. The assets could be more equitably deployed.

ntly HA only just stay afloat (there is a reason so many of them merged about ten years ago, and a reason all the old housing stock was dumped on HAs in the first place

Its more likely this is to avoid transparency. Housing associations dont come under the FOI.

HelenaDove Sun 17-Nov-19 18:36:22
17.11.2019
It’s Time to Be Honest about Housing
By
Glyn Robbins
For decades terms like 'affordable,' 'social,' 'mixed' have been used as cover for market failures in housing - it's time to move on from those schemes and commit to a real solution: council housing.

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When it comes to housing, language matters. Politicians, bureaucrats, big business and self-appointed experts have become well-versed in using words that convey one thing, but mean another. This doublespeak has been deliberately used to underpin a particular policy approach which, at root, favours the failed capitalist market over socialist alternatives.

But whatever the political outlook, there’s no denying we have an acute housing emergency. As we approach a general election in which tackling the crisis will be a vital issue, it’s imperative to challenge and change the misleading terminology that’s been used as cover for policies that are causing huge damage to working class communities – and in some places, the reputation of the Labour Party.

If you want to get a laugh out of someone eager to hop on the housing ladder, say “affordable housing” – because most people know how little it means. The abuse of the term began in 2010 when the Tory-led coalition government defined affordable rent as anything up to 80% of the full market level. This opened a door, which was already ajar, for private developers to get planning permission while purporting to provide affordable homes, but at prices well beyond the means of most people and bearing no relationship to local housing need.

Another discredited term is “social housing.” This has been used as a convenient catch-all to disguise important differences between different types of non-market rented homes.

The prime culprits for this deliberate distortion are Housing Associations (HAs), particularly the big ones who have become virtually indistinguishable from private developers. The origins of this charade was in the Blair-Brown era policy of stock transfer, which drove two million council homes – and the land they stand on – out of public ownership into the private sector, a bigger transfer of wealth than any of the Thatcher-era privatisations

This could usually only happen after tenants had voted in favour of the move. To persuade them, HAs needed to create the subterfuge that they were more or less the same as councils. They’re not. HAs are legally defined, constituted and operated as private businesses, and their tenants have significantly weaker legal rights and higher rents. Referring to HAs as “social landlords” providing “social housing” hides these facts

The next item in the linguistic three-card trick is “mixed communities.” This term has assumed sacred status in urban policy and government circles, without any evidence to support it. The concept is that bringing people from different socio-economic backgrounds together in one place produces multiple benefits. On its surface, that seems plausible.

But in practice, what might be a laudable aim is based on deception, hypocrisy and class prejudice. The reality of “mixed” housing developments is often physical separation by tenure, as graphically illustrated by Guardian journalist Harriet Grant’s exposure of the segregation of children’s play areas. Commonly, so called “mixed” housing means social renters in one building, private owners in another, where they enjoy better facilities and probably a better view.

The mixed mantra suggests it’s better for working class communities to have middle class people living with them, acting as role models and bringing trickle-down wealth and cultural diversity to an area, reflected in new shops and coffee bars. I once discussed this with a property developer, who worked for a HA. He said “we thought it was going to be better for the estate as a whole to have a Tesco there that didn’t sell out of date milk and the odd bottle of twenty year old Blue Nun… we’d have thought we’d arrived if there was a Starbucks there or a deli, as well as the pound shop.”

The prime targets for such social engineering are council estates subject to large scale “regeneration” projects, another word that’s become heavily loaded. Again, some of the responsibility for this lies with New Labour. In 1998, Tony Blair launched the New Deal for Communities at the Aylesbury estate in south London. Today, the area is testimony to how housing policies dominated by private developers have reshaped working class communities and the role of HAs in this

The Elephant and Castle neighbourhood is being physically, socially and ethnically transformed. This started with the demolition of the Heygate estate, a classic for stigmatised perceptions of council housing and the people who live in it. As the local 35% Campaign has meticulously documented, a succession of promises to Heygate residents were broken to arrive at a situation where 1,214 council homes were demolished, to be replaced with 2,704 new homes, of which only 82 (3%) are for social rent. The HA partner was London and Quadrant. To be eligible for the cheapest one-bedroom home built by them on the Heygate site, people needed a minimum household income of £57,500. The average household income in that part of Southwark is £24,324

There are numerous similar examples from other places around the country, where a seductive lexicon has been used to camouflage brutal profit-seeking and displacement. At Labour’s 2017 conference, Jeremy Corbyn correctly referred to such practices as “social cleansing.” There is also a strong element of institutional racism in policies that favour better-off home owners and seek to recreate an area in their image – as James Baldwin bluntly put it, “urban renewal means negro removal.” But the other critical point about the policies that lie behind the words is that they don’t work! We’ve had over 20 years of the developer-led, public-private partnership model and the housing crisis has only got worse.

It is essential that the Labour Party breaks with the misleading, dishonest and failed housing policies of the past. The first step for doing this is restoring real council housing to the mainstream, as the centrepiece of a comprehensive rethink. The opportunity is there. Party conference has unanimously adopted a raft of transformative measures, including ending right-to-buy, improving rights for private tenants, using publicly-owned land to build publicly-owned homes and reforming HAs. They must be included in the election manifesto.

For too long, mealy-mouthed Labour politicians have seemed embarrassed by council housing. This has allowed the language of housing to be captured and twisted by corporate interests. Council housing cuts through the verbiage. Working class communities know what it means, how it works and why it’s important. Sometimes those qualities can be taken for granted, so it’s worth repeating them.

Only council housing offers genuinely affordable rents and secure tenancies that can form the foundation of people’s lives. Only council housing is directly linked to the democratic process. Decisions are taken in public, by elected politicians who can be voted out. Another linguistic distortion by hostile forces is that council housing is “subsidised,” when, in fact, it generates a net surplus and receives far less public money than the private market.

Council housing also has the capacity to link to wider social policy objectives, particularly around environmentalism. Climate change won’t be stopped through the individualism fostered by the ideology of private home ownership. Above all, council housing works because it’s not subject to the whims of the speculative property market.

It’s a supreme perversion of language that council housing is sometimes attacked because it provides “a home for life.” Labour needs to turn that around and say that’s exactly what we want

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/residents-near-tottenhams-new-stadium-18864998

Residents near Tottenham's new stadium fear they're being 'pushed out of area'

Plush new £1billion stadium couldn't be further away from Love Lane estate as tensions between club and locals grow.

Outside, you are standing on streets that are among the 5% most deprived in Britain.

The stadium redevelopment was an opportunity to lift the prospects of the people who live here.

But, instead, as the regeneration surrounding the stadium continues with a development known as High Road West, many families now fear they will simply be swept away.

A new walkway proposed to bring fans from a new station entrance at White Hart Lane station brings its own statistics. 297 social housing homes threatened with demolition in a borough with a severe housing shortage

Where 10,000 households are on the council’s waiting list and 3,000 families are stuck in temporary accommodation.

Meanwhile, 30 small manufacturing businesses on the Peacock estate, providing hundreds of decent local jobs, are facing eviction via a ­compulsory purchase order

The proposals will also mean the loss of a library

But yeah its totally the fault of tenants "home blocking"

Found these interesting posts from an old thread. Posted by someone who said the same thing ive been saying for years. But her DH works/worked on HA homes.

LEMisafucker Thu 12-Dec-13 10:23:27

It is not ridiculous - my father worked all his life, my mother still lives in the 3 bed council house that they would have paid for ten times over in rent. It is not about moving pensioners out of their homes its about the money being paid in by people renting these properties being put back into the system and invested properly. Its about efficient repairs and moneies not being squandered going through middle man after middle man before the guy turns up on the doorstep to fix the boiler. My DP has worked on social housing contracts, subcontracting for a subcontractor whos is subcontracting for the main contractor who is farming all of this work out with god knows how many back hander with every little cog in the wheel syphoning off their money so where a job that DP would charge £150 for a days work (hes a carpenter) to a private homeowner, the same job is probably costing the council (the tax payer) £400 while everyone else creams their bit of money on top. He was astounded at the lack of organisation, waste of time, three people sent to do a job that could be done by one person etc. THAT is where the failings are, well, one of them, not allowing people who have paid into the system over the years to keep the homes they have paid for. Many pensioners CHOOSE to downsize, but even then suitable places are not available - you cannot put a pensioner for instance in a 1 bed flat on the fourth floor

same poster

There wouldn't be that problem of the maintainance costs if it wasn't such a lucrative business, contractors fall over themselves for SH contracts provide substantial "perks" its money for old rope. They pay underqualified workers a pittance of pay to get the work done quickly to a pretty poor standard and charge more than a premium job. So that argument for selling off the council properties falls a bit flat - there are people out there making substantial profits out of people falling on hard times

that some people are angry at those who are lucky enough pay a lower, reasonable rent as opposed to the landlords who bought cheap and charge 4x the rent value just because they can.

at failing to understand that if you can can charge four times the rent value then that IS the rent value!

The only fair way to provide "affordable" (ie cheaper) housing is by increasing supply. We need a massive housebuilding programme. Allowing a lucky few to rent scarce assets at below market value, or even worse, to buy at below market value is an inequitable and self-defeating misallocation of resources. We need to bring the market value down.

I understand fine that some people are greedy bastards

I live in a 2 bed council flat in London but I don't mention it much to people as it does tend to get envious comments. The rent is £498pm which is very low for the area (7 mins walk to a zone 1 tube station, ex-council flats on my estate rent for about £1800 a month). However I only have the flat because I was in a very desperate situation - fleeing DV and a newly single mum of a disabled child, with severe MH issues. These are all issues that you can't recover from easily, and I'm still suffering the impact of it all (have been here for 13 years). It's not a matter of having a little hiccup in life and then getting an easy ride once you get back on your feet, really you need to have multiple factors to be able to get enough points to have enough chance of getting council housing in this area. My neighbours all have similar health/personal issues so it makes no sense to call council tenants the 'lucky few' because we are hardly lucky to have had to deal with all those disadvantages in our lives.

I'm fortunate that my council is very good with repairs - we have a Tenant Management Organisation which deals with repairs and maintenance and everything is dealt with within a week. I had a new boiler, kitchen and bathroom done last year (it had been the same since I moved in) and it's a good quality refit, and I was able to make choices about how it looked.

My tenancy is quite old and has RTB and is a secure tenancy. Newer tenancies are much less secure - my cousin has a council flat but as soon as she came off benefits and started work, the council adjusted her rent so that she was no better off working as she had to pay a higher rent than when she was on benefits.

So why are developers getting away with demolishing social housing and replacing them with less social housing than what was demolished (see above but i have plenty more examples)

And why are tenants already in situ getting the blame.

Im in a one bedroom flat and one of the reasons im still here is i didnt sprog farm. You remember how some of you Tories spout off about not having kids you cant afford no? Are some of you now going to play the Tory "lets move the goalposts to ensure the tenant is always in the wrong" card.

Surely not

The snobbery in this country is eye watering.

I'm not sure OP.

Personally, I get a bit when I hear of numerous acquaintances getting/ waiting for council housing just because when they can easily privately rent.

that some people are angry at those who are lucky enough pay a lower, reasonable rent as opposed to the landlords who bought cheap and charge 4x the rent value just because they can.

Meanwhile, there's people living in hostels or very unsuitable housing for their circumstance; do you not see how it's unfair that someone who can afford to buy are 'lucky' enough to pay low rent and pocket the rest? The real issue is lack of homes, but there will never be enough if people feel entitled enough in those circumstances.

It can feel a bit unjust when you’re paying £1500/month and your council tenant neighbour only pays £388 (figures mentioned by a PP) and has a secure tenancy. So for people in expensive areas of London/SE probably envy. If I couldn’t afford to buy where I live my next best option would definitely be social housing.
However where council housing is in high density, ugly tower blocks with horrendous social problems there is definitely more stigma than envy.

I think it's stigma. Some associate them as being rented by layabouts who benefits pay for everything, sometimes being rough too due to poverty.
Many don't realise council homes were designed for low income working families! Perhaps to some it's cheap rent but too others it's affordable rent, meaning they can stay off housing benefit. I've been in a friends towerblock up south and it isn't amazing as such, she wouldn't be able to afford new bathroom/kitchen etc, no carpet in the hallway but it was decorated with love and she made sure the children's room was lovely, she hand painted a farm scene on one of the walls. It was very welcoming and spacious.

Triangular it isn't a subsidy because it was never designed to make a profit. It isn't even a discount.
It's the same as black Friday cons. The market is artificially inflated. Just like the prices before black Friday.
Social housing is designed to cap it's profit, they aren't built to make profit.
Private ll need to make a profit so charge what they can get away with.
Social housing doesn't have market rents it has a strict rent formula so while it doesn't charge 'market' rates it isn't subsidised by charging less than was intended or needing outside payment to lower the cost.

I believe this will be our last opportunity to repair social housing, if this crisis (imo caused by capitalist greed) doesn't get the right response we could lose SH.

We've got a chance to do the right thing which benefits everyone and costs the same, let's stop the fighting over scraps and insist on our society being the focus and not some profits for the rich.

@TheQueef interesting points. How do you think we can repair social housing?

We could have a national build Blue for starters. All and any brownfield sites that are viable rebuilt to generate some movement on the lists but where possible old SH principles apply, If you are a teacher or school staff priority given near your school, nurses and doctors near the hospital etc.
Then build estates that aren't designed to make money. Ones that have realistic infrastructure and services. Estates that aren't a chunk of our poorest or most vulnerable, estates that people want to live in. Not just to survive but to live.
Simplistic sums here
A house costs £100k to build (interest free loan over ten years from central government)
The first ten years while there are no repairs or maintaining (new build so has builder warranty) the rent pays back the loan.
Now the house is in profit. It doesn't take a long time or investment and is a benefit immediately.

How to change the pervasive attitudes that SH has and the stigma will be harder.
We used to be proud to support and foster our communities.

I would like to see a return to wide scale council housing. It is better for the wider society for families to put down roots in a community not have to move on regularly as seems to be the case in private rental.

When council housing was first introduced it was aspirational. Over time it was allowed to become run down. Sink estates were allowed to form which encouraged the downward spiral. Right to buy got rid of the desirable housing stock.

Where I live the majority of houses are private lets. The occupants turnover regularly. In the main they are young families just wanting a decent home for themselves.

@TriangularRatbag I get the point you are trying to make. But HAs are different to council housing. The property is owned hy the HA not the local authority, or the government or the tax payer. Therefore it's up to the HA to set their own ethos and decide who lives in and benefits from the lower cost rentals.

It's only relatively recently that HAs were linked to councils and council tenants in some areas have access to the HAs waiting lists automatically. When I first put my name down on the council waiting list around 15 years ago, I had to apply separately to the local HAs. When I was offered my property 5 years ago it was from a HA I didn't have my name down for but via the council waiting list. But I still pay rent to and deal with the HA not the council.

Dictating that HAs must benefit as many people as possible would be like saying that the RSPCA can benefit cancer research with their funds, and that cancer is a more worthwhile cause than animals, so thereforw they must help that charity as well.

Or that a company set up to provide services for elderly people at an affordable rate, like home help, should now help families with young children because that benefits more people.

HAs are not publicly owned. They are landlords the same as any other private landlord, they just happen to offer not for profit rented accommodation. They generally offer secure tenancies as they recognise the benefits of those tenancies to both the tenant and the landlord. They aren't publicly owned or funded.

Remove the right to buy!
Then pump some money into building houses.
Why would a HA want to build if people can just buy them.

Iris I'm old enough to remember when Thatcher introduced RTB, I was completely against it then.
You can't ignore the benefit to social mobility though and over the years my view has completely changed.
Keep RTB, with all it's discount and benefit but ringfence the income.
Don't let it go back to the mystery pot in central government, let local authorities keep it and use it exclusively on a sell one build or buy one scheme. Every RTB property sold generates a lump towards future house builds or is used to bring derelict property back in to use.

We've enough data now to see it's a huge benefit to people and also see and learn from the put falls.

I agree with keeping RTB but it should definitely be reinvested back into the local housing fund rather than the central government funds.

One of our local HAs sold off its old housing stock, either to tenants with a 7k discount or if the tenant didn't want to buy it, when the tenant left they sold the older houses on the open market and reinvested the capital into new housing stock. They concentrated on family homes, minimum of 3 beds, maximum of 10 years old and up to a high standard. They worked with developers on new build estates and bought up housing stock and satisfied the planning regs re % of affordable housing on new estates. I suspect my HA has done a similar thing with my property. Little 2 street estate of HA property, row of shared ownership properties, all on the end of a new estate. No anti social behaviour, no issues whatsoever. Everyone looks after their property and gardens and most of the people who live here work. Definetly not a sink estate.

If people thought of housing the way they think of the nhs we’d be in a very different society.

I have seen envy from friends over my place. It’s HA but a large Victorian conversion in zone 2 in London. Rent is £700, which I pay myself and always have since being here. By retirement I will have paid over a quarter of a million in rent on this house alone (can’t remember figures for my previous place). Friends can only afford to buy smaller properties further out, but we are all in our 50s now. They all have less than 10 years left on their mortgages so will have that equity, whereas I have nothing. A secure tenancy is the one thing I do have and for that I am really lucky.

As well as all the rent, I have spent a lot on this place. The HA do minimal repairs and to a poor standard, so most things I have paid for privately. Along with decorating etc. I won’t be downsizing until I physically can’t manage the stairs any more! I feel sympathy for those on the waiting list or in overcrowded conditions. But I wasn’t the one who sold off all the council houses! People can call me selfish but those that do, would you really sacrifice your own standard of living to help the homeless? If so, why don’t you downsize and give the extra money you make to a homeless charity? No? Thought not.