Advice on Council Housing

[xLondonLeighx]

Please see below

Up thread someone said £2500 for a one bed rental - I’m in south east London and you can get a one bed for £900 - £1200.
It depends where you live re council policy.
Council housing is in very short supply.
Good luck.

In my council, the child isn't accounted for at all until it is born - because not all pregnancies continue - and then not afterward because of being taken into care, child mortality, or, as they tactfully put it, because a baby is supposed to be in with Mum.

You'd be better staying where you are and saving like mad to get somewhere of your own.

Your boyfriend is absolutely right on this one.

The limit for savings to claim benefits is £6k. I don’t think they take your savings into account when you apply to be put on the waiting list, but you’re not going to be priority so you could be on the list for 10-15 years before you got somewhere. You are extremely unlikely to get anywhere before you have the baby, and like others have said it’s even more unlikely to be a 2 bedroom. In my area you’re only entitled to one bedroom until your baby’s 1.

You haven’t really answered why you can’t private rent - even if you only rent a 1-bedroom at least you’d have your own living room.

The choice isn’t between a mortgage and a council house, there are millions of people who can’t afford a mortgage but also aren’t eligible for a council house.

Keep saving and try to sort your own place . If you go into council housing and then want to have more children will you expect them to rehouse you ?
If your area is too expensive to privately rent then I’d consider moving somewhere else .

In London? You'll be expected to privately rent. Where are all these friends who got dishy new council houses right away? Maybe look into moving there.

Round here you get a 1 bed until your child is at least a year old.

I'm sorry but why on earth would you think you should be given a council house when you have savings? You're privileged to have savings to be able to private rent. It's shit we can't save to buy due to rental costs but it's life in 2019. Many families are living in temporary accommodation because they have no savings and no house.

I work in social housing & we dont count a baby until they are one year old so you'd qualify for a one bed. But usually you'd onlu get accepted on to the list if you cant afford private which on your income and savings you can, even if not in your current area.

You would be extremely lucky to get housed anyway within the next few years as social housing is in short supply.

Consider moving out of London to somewhere cheaper and less crowded. You are unlikely to get anything nice in London for a very long time and private rents are, indeed very expensive.

2,500 for a private rental can be the norm in Zone 1.
The further you move out, the cheaper is gets.

If you earn over 2k a month save 2k a month. That will make 18k when baby arrives. That's enough for a deposit to buy a house. You need 10% of the total value and the 18k would easily cover it. If you have saveings you would not need to tuch it. Save save save to buy not to rent as that puts your hard working money in someones alces pocket. Buy your own home as you are in a good position to do so.

I don't understand. You have savings, you can afford accommodation, but the savings won't last as long as you would like?

So surely you have two options before you go asking for other taxpayers to pay for you?

a) earn more
b) rent somewhere cheaper

Why would the savings soon run out paying rent?
You pay bills out of your earnings. You know roughly how much you would be getting when you're on maternity, so you budget accordingly. Same with if one of you decides that nursery fees are way too much and one of you stays at home, or reduce hours and work around each other.

A couple of years ago one county near London reported it had 27,000+ people on its council waiting list, plus x amount of people in temporary accommodation. They were offering people accommodation 100s of miles from their places of work & school. This number must have increased
You can probably find out the number of people waiting in your area

With wages of £2900 you have plenty of income to privately rent a bigger room in a shared house or bedsit.
Or move to a cheaper area
Or look at housing association
Or look at part rent, part buy
Or deposit & mortgage

Every local authority will be different. Where I am you would currently be seen as adequately housed and so would not be very high up the list. You’re banded either gold, silver or bronze and at the moment you’d be bronze until the baby was around 2.

You’d have to get your mum to write a letter to the HA stating that she wants you to leave and giving a date you have to be out by. You’d then have to go into temporary accommodation, but you would then be banded as gold and you would probably get a place fairly quickly. This is how everyone I know in your situation has managed to get a housing association house.

A friend of mine did manage to move from a two bed to a three when she was only banded as silver (three kids sharing a bedroom), but she was lucky that no one else bid on that house, or she wouldn’t have got it.

As I said, every area is different. In some areas it will be easier to get a council house and in others much, much harder.

She wants a council house because, as she has stated numerous times, her mates have one.

I've just done a brief search, some councils in London have people waiting on their council waiting lists for 18+ years !

On your other post, you talk about giving up work when the baby arrives. You can’t afford to do that so plan accordingly.

If you’re not due for another 8 months, you’ll have lots of time to sort out a private rental.

(Also, you’d be mad to give up your job to be an unmarried SAHM but that’s another story).

Spot on, Paperback. You can't afford to give up work and have a baby.

On that income why don't you rent privately. You won't get a council property in central London - they are placing people in cities 100 miles away! I suggest you look at where you can afford to live and what uc you will be entitled to. Surely you should have considered this before getting pregnant!

Can you move to a cheaper area?

I'm in the Midlands, my brother and partner were recently in this position and weren't found to be eligible for help from the council so have had to private rent. It's a shame honestly because they're paying twice as much as they would from the council for an ex-council flat. But this is the system and you're expected to sort yourself out.

Some council with particularly long housing lists won't even accept everyone onto the list - certainly where I live housing is very expensive, social housing is in high demand and you can't just join the list.

With earnings that high and savings, you would be expected to find a private rent - they wouldn't even help you with a rental deposit scheme.

I don't think they will care whether or not you can close the bedroom door, and actually if you did decide to lie and pretend you're single you're making the house less overcrowded, aren't you.

I think you need to get some perspective - you might think you're overcrowded etc, but you also have the means to change that - however you'd rather save your money for a mortgage than use it to house yourself, expecting the council to give you somewhere to live in the meantime. That isn't the reality of the times we live in.

Yea loads were sent up north here when they went to the council homeless.
From what I heard, their parents had a quick change of heart and decided oh actually they can stay. Or they soon found oh yea, we can afford to go private.
Same applies to how long should we expect to live in one room? 6 months +, err yea and suddenly an alternative arrangement found.

If people didn't try and play the system, then maybe those genuinely homeless wouldn't be shipped hundreds of miles away from their support network. But then, when your homeless you don't care as long as you have a roof over your head.

Playing a single person route to housing is a very risky option. Lots of boroughs now give you a shorter tenancy that comes with conditions. Fraud would have your ass evicted a lot quicker than the old-style tenancy.

Why have a child if you don’t have anywhere to stay which you deem to be suitable?

Why do you feel you’re entitled to council housing?

You earn enough and have savings to provide for your child.

This is the problem these days. People having children just for a council house.

You can easily afford to private rent and you should do so. You have absolutely no need of a council house.