[quote gogohm]@Bearfrills
Except a large proportion of tenants do not pay their rent themselves. It comes from universal credit so effectively we taxpayers are subsidising council housing. I think we should have council housing, more too but you are naive to say it makes a surplus.
As for @NetflixMom21
I know they may not have been perfect but you have turned down 2 houses, where I live that would put you to the back of the queue in your band. There will be other high priority families waiting too, alas dv is not uncommon. I'm sorry you are in your situation but for the council you are one of baby needy families and they don't have enough housing to meet everyone's requirements [/quote]
In 2000, the sixth social security report stated this;
'Indeed there is now no net basic housing subsidy for Council tenants; and Council tenants' rental income in England and Wales currently contributes some £1.5 billion per annum towards the costs of Housing Benefit for the sector.'
Hansard in 1981 records this (truncated to get less of the politicking and more of the facts);
The result of all this freedom is that many councils are steadily amassing surpluses on their housing revenue accounts—or, to put it crudely, making profits out of their council tenants. Until the Housing Act 1980, it was illegal for local authorities to make profits out of their council rents, but the 1980 Act abolished Labour's no profits rule. Moreover, it allowed councils to transfer those profits to the general rate fund—or, again, to abandon the Secretary of State's discriminating use of language, to use the profits on their council rents to subsidise the rates of ratepayers who are not council tenants, and who have average household incomes 20 per cent. above those of council tenants.
There is, for example, the district of South Oxfordshire in the constituency of the Secretary of State. Its average council rent is £15.30 a week—34 per cent. above the national average. These huge rents provide a profit of £407,000. All of this profit is transferred to the general rate fund, and this enables the lucky 8,665 council tenants of South Oxfordshire to contribute 90p a week each to reducing the rates of the other 35,000 ratepayers.
Let us take the example of Tonbridge and Mailing, in the constituency of the Minister for Housing and Construction. This year, the Tory council there put its rents up to £14.75 a week—29 per cent. above the national average. In doing this, it has accumulated a profit on council rents of over £1 million. Tonbridge and Mailing could have used that profit constructively—for example, to provide decent accommodation for homeless families. At present, the council exiles its homeless 20 miles away to Gillingham, where they are permitted to count their blessings in squalid bed and breakfast accommodation, the breakfast consisting of several days' provisions dumped outside the inmates' rooms in carrier bags.
However, Tonbridge council is more prudent than to squander its profits on council rents in this improvident manner. Instead, it uses most of them to subsidise rates. The 7,000 council tenants in Tonbridge each pay £2.30 a week extra to subsidise the rates of the borough's 23,000 other householders.
The Minister might refer to the 22 per cent. of households which receive rent rebates and those which are helped out with their rents by the Department of Health and Social Security.
In that record, there are comments from a conservative MP.
The question of surpluses on housing accounts was also raised. I am not one who believes that we should put surpluses towards the general rate fund. I have reservations about that. I believe that that money should be used to do up the houses. It is important to keep our housing stock in good condition. Far too much council housing is in a bad state. The surpluses should be used directly for the benefit of the generality of council tenants by doing up the housing stock.
And further on, we have
Houses built pre-war or immediately post-war cost about £400 or £500 each. The outstanding debt charges on them are negligible, as is the cost of maintenance and management. Therefore, the houses cost the local authority far less than it receives in rent. In general, rents increase to keep pace with inflation, even for older houses.
One of the advantages of the pooled rent system is that money from the older houses is used to help subsidise the building of new houses. It is wrong to penalise those who have lived in their homes and paid rent for 30, 40 or even 50 years. Indeed, Conservative members use that argument to justify their right-to-buy legislation.
The Minister has not dealt with the fact that the majority of tenants still do not receive rebates. Of those who do, the majority do not have all their rent paid. People get rebates only because their income is so low compared with the rent.
This was in 1980.
Taxpayers (and Social Housing tenants also pay tax, many work, all pay through indirect taxation) are only funding private landlords. Your issue should be with them and the way the property market enables them to charge so more than it costs to maintain a property.
They are literally arguing about what to do with the profits made from council housing and that they were being increased to make an even greater profit to fund other things than their construction and maintenance. Not that there aren't any, but that there are and what they should be used for.