To think people dont understand the magnitude of the social housing crisis?

[Arrowfanatic]

I work in social housing. We have endless requests for moves from customers who expand their family whilst in a property which is unsuitable to move them to a bigger property. We advise that family size housing (3 bed+) has a waiting list of around 10+ years and then these customers get mad.

We're accused of allowing them to stay in overcrowded properties, or affecting their mental & physical health and inevitably an overcrowded property becomes prone to damp & mould as it's too full.

These customers also want these houses in the exact location they desire, thereby limiting even more their chances of a move.

We get so demoralised when every day it's the same thing, but social housing is at a massive shortfall for the needs of the country & family size housing is in an even greater shortfall.

My company has an extensive plan to build more properties but it's a 5 year plan!

It's like they think we're lying to them, or the old classic of "you housing immigrants straight away" note, we dont, they have to apply like everyone else. We dont want our customers in unsuitable accommodation, and we really work hard on making the housing stock we do have work.

If you're in this position what could we tell our customers to make them understand the position we are in, and the one they have put themselves in and why we cant help as quickly as they would like.

I feel like I say "we have a shortage of family size housing" 100 times a day & get yelled at 100 times a day for our association not caring.

@Stabbitha1

I claim child benefit for 2 DC and I get child maintenance from my ex at £60pw for 2 children.

I get nothing for council tax except 25% single discount which ends next year as my eldest will leave education aged nearly 19

I get a small amount of universal credit which is now tax credits (as my area is UC so I don’t go through HMRC directly anymore). I don’t have childcare costs anymore so I don’t have to pay for them. I don’t get my rent paid, I pay my rent. I get some help as a single parent but I earn £32k before tax, work full time and my eldest DD also goes to college and has 2 jobs - we are a hard working family. I’m not ashamed of it. I was born in this area and didn’t plan to be a single mum. My ex lives in a 4 bed mortgaged house with 2 cars - the CM system is what is fucked up the most.

I’ve tried to find a rich man to marry me but haven’t had much luck yet! I don’t have Sky TV or a leather sofa either and I drive a very old car!

I don't think anyone's forgetting that @Stabbitha1 ,I'm very glad I have a housing association house as I have a disabled child who will.always need a home , but it's swings and roundabouts.

I am also very glad I am not in private renting - I know it can be awful - i was in it for a long time! I feel sorry for anyone stuck with a horrible LL, but that doesn’t make SH tenants awful. We just were the lucky ones to escape. We aren’t the LL’s making other people’s lives miserable with awful properties and awful tenancies. I would support any movement for tenant rights and I’m glad that eviction is now harder but I would love to see more rights for tenants including Enforcement of good living standards inc dealing with mould and damp and ensuring your property is safe and secure. I really do support that

They should give you contraception to hand out at the desk OP.

Some people think the world owes them a living. Some people should get off their fat arse and pay some tax to educate/house/medicate/provide national facilities for their children. Ah no, they're happy to leave that up to me and others.

I'd switch jobs.

we can all google

But you dont because you are still spouting the same untrue shit.

Living in HA properties isnt cushy...................as the biggest fire in peacetime proved.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/3805467-Clarion-Housing-Group-cutting-residents-cooked-meals-to-save-money

I'm in social housing due to my youngest dd having cerebral palsy and learning difficulties etc, I was perfectly happy privately renting off my dad but when the o.t and physio etc poked there noses in they basically said we cant provide the work incase the landlord things woohoo a 30grand extension let's sell and boots me out! Even though it was my dad and it would end up my inheritance so I got put on priority to get either a 3 bedroom bungalow which does not exist or a 4 bedroom that we could put a through floor on for extra space, they also are as rare as hens tooth where we live so they kept forcing me to look at property that would take us away from our family support, a hours drive to go to our dd local sen school , where I knew nobody, the houses were rotten, one house had ponies tethered outside. Anyways very lucky my last refusal like my 5 house was refuse or loose so I've compromised and we are only half an hour away from familys and schools , we live in a very rural area where even the snow doesn't want to go! Theres no garden or yard we all share a courtyard it's a barn conversation with old wood beams think 18th century! We love it just wish I had a garden or s yard. The old window let mo light in and are single glazed and the private houses bushes complete block out day light, there only 1 door to escape from if theres a fire. Our neighbor's are idiots always fighting and calling police on each other, the housing manager tells us they will have a gentle word with them so they hide behind there disability, the lady has a long condition due to smoking but basically they get away with complete murder! We are hoping to move after 7 years are living in peace , always paying extra rent we've had enough of being kept wake until 4am because next door are fighting and the police and ambulance are there! Our poor dd is going to school exhausted, we are exhausted but our housing manager says well tough they have a disability, so do I but I dont behave or act like a twat because I can. So I'm hoping to find my dream 3 bedroom bungalow with a garden?ha more than likely il end up in the norths answer to Afghanistan! Please make bigger bungalow s

SH in Scotland is a different ball game. The population of Scotland is 5.5 million, the population of England is 55 million, 8 million people live in London alone, you are not going to get a council house now in most of the London area, not a chance.

I know someone who bought a 3 bed council house in London in the 80’s £35000, they have just sold it for over a million, so wrong, council houses should never have been sold off.

@x2boys - the point about social housing though is it is funded by the taxpayer to provide housing below the cost it would otherwise would be. private rents might be the same in some parts of the country (although not many) but you are not getting the same thing. In social housing you are getting a secure tenancy and right to buy. Not true in private. At the end of the day public housing costs the taxpayer money as its build and operation is subsidised. It should be cheaper (but that’s not always the case often because the public sector is not good at getting value for money).

I grew up in social housing and think it should be good quality and reasonably priced. But it is a public benefit essentially and it concerns me that when we have a housing crisis that it is not being well allocated.

OP: I am sure that people don't understand, or not properly. I confess perhaps to having been one of them.

I am in a private rental, basement flat, that i moved into nearly 4 years ago. However, a spinal injury has left me a full-time wheelchair user, dependent on carers and unable to work. I can't access the toilet using the wheelchair, so the OT has provided a commode, and the only way I can leave the property is to drag myself up the external stairs using my upper body strength, while my legs trail behind. In bad weather I am totally trapped, as I simply get soaked and filthy, sliding on cigarette butts, dog poo etc.

I have looked to move, but try finding a fully-adapted flat on te private rental market? I am now on the council list, but there are over 167 full-time wheelchair users on the list ahead of me. And one adapted flat came up for rent in 2019. One.

Every single one of those households includes at least one severely disabled individual, many of whom will be among the most vulnerable in our society. But because their needs are so specific, very few properties are out there - just as I found in the private market.

I consider my own current living conditions to be far from ideal. I hate having to poo in a pan. But I am heartbroken by the idea of at least 167 other full-time wheelchair users in the same condition or worse.

This is where I agree with the OP. I had no idea. I believed housing would be found and adapted for the most severely disabled among us, where home ownership is not possible. I was naive - and wrong.

@Stabbitha1

No, I won’t give it a rest. That isn’t up to you. Guessing you aren’t a net contributor, so I have touched a nerve. Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.

@x2boys

If you live in social housing and claim benefits, then you are not paying enough tax to support yourself or others. You are being subsidised by others. Simple numerical fact.

Wow, come back from work & this thread has taken off and gone on a tangent.

So here is my final word on it. At no stage have I ever suggested people are getting pregnant on purpose to get a bigger house, or paying less/more rent than private or that it's a them vs us situation.

I was trying to say that in my experience as an employee of an excellent HA that it's really hard to make people understand that we dont have enough properties to meet demand. We just dont. So it doesn't matter if you have 5 or 15 children, demanding that we have a duty of care to house you more adequately wont get you anywhere and not because the HA doesn't want to house you, but because we simply cant!! Councils work slightly differently but again they just dont have the properties.

I just dont think some people can grasp the scale of this problem, and why would they when they just want a better place to live in. No one begrudges them that. Now whether this is a Thatcher right to buy issue, or an "over entitled" population or what, that arguement could go on.

But the current shortfall in what housing is needed is extensive. Please dont blame the person at the end of the phone when they cant help. We are human beings too, we're not the enemy (although I expect Helana would disagree) we actually DO want to house those who need it most.

I worked in housing a decade ago, took 9 years off having my children and have come back to exactly the same issues.

You cannot buy affordable housing

Stop mixing up council housing and social housing

They should never have sold off the social housing
Everyone I know who has bought theirs, has either sold it for massive profit or has moved out and is renting it out.
A work colleague knows of 1 person (a friend of his) who was given a 3 bedroom flat, has never spent a single night in it, lives with parents and rents his out ABOVE the nominal rentable value, has done this for over 10yrs. has saved all the income and will buy it eventually then sell.
Another I know, purchased hers as maximum discount, then moved out the same month and rents it out. She still doesn't work!, 4th child on the way...previous partners paying child maintenance, now lives with current partner.
They are literally rolling in money.

The whole system is completely fucked up, with scavengers, and benefit cheats.
Makes my blood boil to think I have to go to work to fund these idle fuckers!!

But not everyone claims benefits though Ada ( other than child benefit ) how is this so hard for you to understand ?

How did she manage to buy it with no income than contentedsoul ? Yeah she might have got a massive discount but she still would have needed a mortgage for the remainder .

How did 1 person get a 3 bed flat in the first place.

There does need to be more stringent checks on who is living in the flats and a crackdown on subletting

4 in 10 council homes purchased under right to buy are now being privately rented out.

So 40% of the houses that were previously up for rent via the council, are now on the private rental market.

@ x2boys current partner (related) stumped up the cash he received as work compensation. Has since never worked. Between them they now own several houses, neither works to this day, Constantly bleat about been hard up, yet 2 foreign holidays each year, plus 2 vehicles, plus weekends away, plus latest phones, plus labels.plus,plus,plus……

I often wonder why I bother, seems to me the more you try, the harder they kick you, yet sit on your fat arse and bleat and the money comes rollin'......or so it seems.

I hope leaving the EU completely fucks this country up. Only then when theres no money to keep these fuckers, will government crack down, as it is, I suspect most MP's are in on this scam.

A work colleague knows of 1 person (a friend of his) who was given a 3 bedroom flat, has never spent a single night in it, lives with parents and rents his out ABOVE the nominal rentable value, has done this for over 10yrs. has saved all the income and will buy it eventually then sell.

And fraud like this is why some housing associations are taking photos of tenants so they can make sure that’s the person actually living there if they ever have interaction with them face to face.

Are they? i wasnt aware of that.

And then you have local residents, like in the area I live in, that are so against any new property, scheme being built anywhere near them. Everyone seem to expect that problem should be solved elsewhere. They complain about a building being built and they do not realise that the area they live in went from being fields and fields to suburbia in the space of 5 years in the 30s.

@stabbitha1

Please can I ask you very kindly to change your username? I've had mine for years and I'm an active poster. I'm the original Stabbitha, the first ever one on the World of Warcraft Armoury, all the way back in 2006.

Plus when someone replies to you I get an email. Please.

Sorry for the thread hijack

Oh hang on I forgot about Paradigm Housing.