To think these changes to the housing waiting list are not “cruel” but simply realistic?

[Eastie77Returns]

Our council has announced changes to the local housing waiting list from next month. There are tens of thousands on the list who will never be housed as they are not deemed to be in urgent need so they will now be removed.

The council has said they will be offered “personalised support to explore their options” which probably means advising they leave London, advances to help with private rent etc. I understand in many cases that is really not helpful but a close relative of mine who works in housing has been on the phone to me in tears because of the level of abuse she has faced from frustrated residents who have been on the list for years and are being removed.

Now a parent from DD’s school is organising a march on the town hall to protest all of this and has asked parents for support. She has been offered a council house 100+ miles outside London and is refusing to leave as her support network is here and I fully understand that. However, I do think a dose of realism is needed. There are 15,000 people on the waiting list here and a few hundred council properties become available each year. This parent has been told she does not fall into the 3 bands that will be kept on the list so she will never get a council house and she has responded by accusing the council of unimaginable cruelty

I don’t understand where she expects the council to magically just find thousands of homes and change that situation?

@NailsNeedDoing

Most people on housing benefit are not paying private landlords, they’re paying not-for-profit housing associations.

My now mortgage free 2 bed flat in Bath was paid for mainly by housing benefit. I lived in it for 6 years, then rented it out until the mortgage was cleared, now use for family or weekends.

Was it wrong for taxpayers to clear my mortgage, yes, but I provided a home for 3 families over 18 year period.
Do I feel guilty- nope.

@Whammyyammy WTF?!?

Remember Bob Crow? If ever there were a living breathing example of entitlement this is it.

ssr.standard.co.uk/news/london/bob-crow-ps145-000ayear-union-boss-says-he-won-t-move-out-of-council-house-8964001.html

I find it a bit mad that it's okay to accept people having to move away from their support network. Is this what life is really coming to?

People Have always moved location to improve their life chances since time immemorial, a process which accelerated with the industrial revolution and then massively increased in the 1980s under Thatcher and Norman Tebbit's infamous 'on your bike' comments.

However, most people stay local, a fact reflected in the amount of caring done by family. If all childcare/eldercare was provided by professional carers, the country would implode as so many can't afford it. There is value in allowing people to remain in the community they grew up in, not just for caring purposes but because of the general contribution it makes to social cohesion.

Sadly, when it comes to London, it's not possible to turn back the clock. However, with minimum wage being what it is and transport costs being what they are, some thought will have to be given to how those forced out can be incentivised to work the jobs in those expensive boroughs that the remaining residents don't want to do and the exiled ones can't afford to travel in to do...

The Tory Party circa 1979 is to blame when Thatcher decided that people should be lowed to buy their council houses at a very cheap price. Councils then didn't have the money to build houses to replace those bought for the people who either didn't want a bought house or couldn't afford to buy. There has been so little investment that there are far too few houses for rent. But if everyone who needs to rent leaves London, who does the jobs they fo now?
People cannot afford to live outside London and then commute back in when they are paid minimum wage or not much more.
Rich people in London may have to do their own cleaning, childcare, bin emptying, street cleaning, etc. Are they prepared for that?

"I don’t understand where she expects the council to magically just find thousands of homes and change that situation?"

@Eastie77Returns I think I may have a suggestion for you

www.businessinsider.com/housing-market-rental-prices-berlin-referendum-landlords-public-apartments-crisis-2021-9?r=US&IR=T

@Kendodd

Why should high earners (doctors, solicitors, barristers) benefit from low cost housing? Why shouldn't they benefit from low cost housing? Shouldn't all housing be low cost afterall it's an essential need we all have.

This.

Stable, affordable housing should be for everyone. Rent or mortgage is not supposed to amount to more than a third of your income if you are planning well financially, and not much more than 4x your income for the mortgage overall.

People need to realise there are middle class people struggling to secure affordable housing but instead many just keep banging on about the unemployed. Once the middle classes begin to suffer things always turn nasty.

The purpose of our politics is to make sure that no one group of interests become so overpowering that it becomes an either/or situation. If people begin to feel like they have to choose between their own survival and someone else’s interests (property developers and current property owners, in this case) things will become very bad indeed.

The one job of politicians is to make sure these interests don’t get too far out of balance and they are not doing that job. They seem to have joined the club instead. Powerful interests will not restrain themselves and, history shows quite clearly, that the outcome of imbalance is violence of one type or another.

It’d be nice to avoid that tbh. It’d be horrible.

It's simply realistic. They're never going to be able to house the people that they're removing from their lists, so there's no point them staying on it. Nobody has a right to social housing unless they have very distinct and serious needs.
So many families seem to have treated social housing as their right for so many years - this just isn't the case today. You won't be housed just because your granny and your parents lived in council accommodation.
Many councils have passed on the management of their housing to other groups, including housing associations, and they hold very little housing themselves.

Has anyone read the book Home Truths? I’m reading it at the moment. It’s very illuminating.

And no, it isn’t all Thatchers fault. It started way before then.

If people don't make a fuss about this, how will the situation ever change? The shortage of council housing in England is a public health crisis. Should people just ignore it? I'm sure no one expects the council to magic up homes, but how else do you suggest they draw attention to their plight and lobby for change?

This is a perennial dilemma. Whilst it’s right that the highest priority are just that, the highest priority, housing only them results in entire estates of people with issues- and whilst it seems unreasonable that someone who has bettered their lot in life by lots of hard work should no longer be entitled to SH, should losing their home be their ‘reward’ for their efforts? And if it was, it would surely put others off even trying. Residents getting re-training and qualifications and becoming tax payers make an area ‘mixed’ as opposed to filling an entire area with people who struggle with their issues, surely? Wouldn’t that then end up as an estate they’d call ‘notorious’ ? There’s no easy solution sadly

This is the price that is being paid for selling off council houses (many of which were sold for a good profit to landlords) and not building new ones.

I think it is unfair. What has this country come to? Expecting people on average and low wages to pay vastly inflated rents that may cost them a quarter of their income.

I wonder how people would feel if they were expected to move 100 miles or more away from the area they have always lived in - where they have a support network, where their children go to school and where they have friends. It's easy being "realistic" when it doesn't affect you.

Some people are paying half their incomes for rented property.

If I can’t afford a house in London I’d have to go to an area I can afford, I’d like to live in London but don’t have the cash. We can’t expect to get a council house. It’s just life, always has been. Some just don’t understand.

@Inexpertjuggler I agree. We should be encouraging successful people to remain in areas of social housing to show that people who live in social housing can become successful and we should be creating mixed tenure - not hiding all the affordable properties in one part of a development out of sight.

People become what they see around them so it is important for the country as a whole that communities contain a mixture of occupations, education & income levels, etc. It also acts as a brake on situations becoming out of a hand - people with different standards and experiences notice different things that need to be done or tackled. Having families around retired people interspersed with homes where all the occupants are out during the day and some are always around increases security - social and physical.

Might do something to improve tolerance as well - one can always hope.

Expecting people on average and low wages to pay vastly inflated rents that may cost them a quarter of their income.

Seriously, most Londoners would be ecstatic if their rent was only a quarter of their income.

@TheYearOfSmallThings social housing in Singapore is completely different to the social hosuin system in the UK.Singapore has 92% home ownership rate due to its social housing system, almost all flats are owner occupied with only a tiny number of rental flats for the vulnerable.

How it works: the government builds new flats every year for Singaporean citizens and permanent residents. Most of these flats are family flats measuring 1000 square feet and with 3 bedrooms. They need to be family units of husband/wife; parent and child, singles above the age of 35. There is an income ceiling of the equivalent of £84k combined household income but anyone can buy resale flats. Of course if you subsequently earn more, you can still continue to live in the flat as you own it so high flying graduates would try to purchase a property as soon as possible so they can benefit from the subsidy before upgrading to a private condo at a later stage. The prices are wide ranging - you can pay as little as £200k for a new build in a suburb that is further away from the central or you can pay as much as £550k for a more central flat. Location is key. I have a cousin who bought a more upscale condo which was technically under the 'social housing scheme' but developed by a private developer to cater to the market that earns too much for a vanilla basic flat but too little to buy £1 million condominiums- it had a swimming pool, karaoke room, tennis court, jacuzzi, spa. He paid the equivalent of £400k for this condo which was roughly the same as what I paid for my London flat. There are restrictions around sale, you can only sell to other Singaporeans and you can only rent it out after 5 years unless you go overseas. Also you can't own any other property at the time of buying so even though I am Singaporean, I can't buy government flats as I own a london flat. Minimum deposit is 5% and you can get a mortgage from the government or from the bank. Benefits of getting a mortgage from the government- they are more likely to forgive loans in exceptional circumstances; my aunt got half her loan forgiven after her husband died..

So while it is technically a social housing scheme, it is probably more akin to a national housing scheme. I actually think it would work quite well in London but sadly British people would rather dream of the freehold houses with gardens that they could theoretically own even if statistics show that 1/3 of them never would and this number is only going to increase. I have the distinction of owning the second or third most expensive property amongst my cousins despite being far from the richest simply because I bought in London even though Singapore is one of the most densely populated and expensive cities in the world!

I wonder how people would feel if they were expected to move 100 miles or more away from the area they have always lived in

Most of us have done it. It is not an abnormal or unusual thing to do. At all.

@TheYearOfSmallThings oh and singapore top tax rate is 20%. 60% of the population pay no tax. Its a lot cheaper to help people have a stable roof over their heads when the government owns over 90% of the land.

The government here has to spend so much on housing benefit because it mainly goes to private landlords who expect to make a profit. Its always cheaper when the government owns the infrastructure. Pity we sold it all off during the thatcher years.

The original intention for social housing was to help people get on their feet and move on. That's not been the case. Constantly creating more social housing with little infrastructure and insisting the 'rich' pay is also not the answer

It’s shit, but until we have a government that DO something about it, it’s just how it’s going to be sadly. A few years ago we were in the priority housing band and on the emergency list, but still ended up having to move miles out of area where we had no one. Fast forward 4 years and we finally got offered a flat in our original area. And that was in a really crap area, but we took it and we’re grateful. Fast forward another 4 years and we are fortunately now in my home town and no longer in need of LA housing, but I feel for those who are still battling away with very difficult lists and bidding processes.

Even though there is obviously a severe lack of social housing (does the money from right to buy go back into building new homes - although clearly buying a home is quicker than building one) its clear from recent stories that the council are not properly maintaining the existing properties. There were some shocking reports earlier in the year detailing the horrendous state some LA tenants were expected to live with, for months. (I think that was Croydon Council but I've seen other examples)