The good old Mumsnet Council housing debate

[QuandaleDingle]

You know all you people who demand that council tenants have their long tenancies taken off them and have their rents increase ??

Why don't you INSTEAD demand that the government makes shitty insecure private renting better ? And becomes more affordable and secure.
Or even better than that, build more council homes so anyone who wants or needs one can have one.

Rather stick the boot in on council tenants out of some sort of spite and ...jealousy ? I also think snobbery comes into it

It's a race to the bottom for some peeps🤦‍♀️ I'm not a council tenant btw but I have been.

😂

Absolutely right.

Yes the private rented sector needs improvement. However everything the government has done in the last 10 years has actually only served to make the situation worse.

Stop landlords claiming mortgage interest costs, as a erm cost means their costs go up. Which means rents go up. (No other business is not allowed to claim their finance costs)

Tenants fee act. In theory a great idea to stop letting agents take the piss. However banning a raised deposit for pets has resulted in more now banning pets because the damage a bad pet owner can do to a property outstrips the max 4 weeks rent by multiple times.

The constant threat of removing section 21 has caused around 30% of landlords to sell up because they don't want the risk of having a tenant to destroys their house, abuses them and their neighbours and they can't get them out because the system isn't fit for purpose.

Covid. Stopping evictions is all well and good during covid but when reportedly 40% of landlords had issues with non payment of rent, did the government step in to help pay the rent. No. Because private landlords apparently are the government's cash cow.

Landlord licensing. With several councils apparently bringing in schemes to license landlords, at eye watering costs of several thousands a year, where do you think thst money is going to come from? With profits already very thin, thanks to the above, landlords have to put the costs directly onto the rent. Also, do you actually think this initiative will crack down on dodgy landlords? Because they are by their nature, dodgy, they won't register. It's only the decent ones who will.

Of course the answer here is to build more council housing. It has been for decades but the successive governments have put their fingers in their ears and expected private landlords to fill their gap whilst continually beating them with a stick. I'm not saying landlords deserve sympathy, but I am saying that perhaps someone should consider the outcome of the actions by the government, lobby groups such as generation rent and shelter before calling for even more legislation on a sector that is about to implode.

The free market dictates rental prices, due to location, job opportunities, transport, sxhools etc.

Unless the government were to own all housing- and in this country, they don’t and never have - people pay what it’s worth to them to live in a set location. London very obviously more expensive than other places.

I agree with subsidies to ensure we have a functioning micro economy in these places (I.e. lower paid less skilled workers are needed everywhere) bur please don’t pretend that it’s not subsidised.

Because it is.

And no, we shouldn’t have enough council houses for everyone. How is that a good idea and how logistically and economically would that work.

If enough housing stock is built and rents cover costs then everyone who wants one, would be able to have one.

Where is all the money coming from the build all these houses. And maintain them?

Why do so many people in this country expect other people to subsidise and indeed pay for them. Why?

I think people only want tenancies removed when people are earning a high salary and no longer need subsidised rent. It’s not fair to take up a much needed tenancy when you’re earning 100k plus. Not is is acceptable to pass on tenancies for people who do that need them

A subsidy would indicate a contribution to costs from elsewhere though,perhaps discounted would describe what you mean.

If we agree that shelter is a basic human right, and obviously we can't just find a nice spot in a park and build ourselves home or shelter then the argument stands that housing (rental not ownership) shouldn't be a profit or investment sector at all.

Shelter is a basic human right yes,
I also agree with the principle of council housing and helping those who need it.

Means tested though.

And no, not everyone who wants one should get one. Why should they?

@Lolliepoppie council housing is there to support families who can’t afford private rental.

That's not true, it's never been true, and the only reason it looks like it's true now is because so much has been sold off and not replaced that theres a massive shortage and only the most desperate have a chance at getting to the top of the list. The point of council housing was to provide decent quality housing to normal working people so they didn't have to live in overcrowded, badly maintained private lets.

Unfortunately the private landlords are in government now and god forbid anyone disrupt their unearned income source, so the line is that council housing is some of handout and we've gone back 50 years.

There is no argument that housing shouldn’t be an investment sector at all.

If I can afford to by a house, not rely on anyone to subsidise my costs, why not?

You want communism then?

It is cheaper than private rents. It is not, however, subsidised.

Agreeing that private housing needs better control, is not the floor side to everyone should have the right tolive in a council house.

That’s a false equivalence tbh.

Can those of you confidently alleging that social housing is subsidised please for the love of God go and look up the concept of a housing revenue account.

What folks don’t understand well is that a) the majority of people in council housing are working as b) the rents in some areas are almost at parity with private rents for properties of the same size. With housing associations, new builds are often completely at parity (my sister’s HA new build was a case in point here), the difference comes in the application of housing benefits, for which private landlords will discriminate renters in receipt of benefits thus removing them from the available local housing stock (HA, council & private in total) for some of the most in need.

The truth that is hard to swallow is housing is now seen as an asset, not a home. Private renting is dominated by landlords who have a portfolio for profit rather than homes for rent.
Some areas of the UK, particularly in the south west, locals are priced (and physically forced) out of an area due to second holiday homes & AirB&Bs. Houses that for the winter season will stand mostly empty, or irregularly occupied.

And what about homes which are empty & have fallen in to disrepair and are thus assets rather than occupied homes?

Or take a wander down Bishop’s Avenue, one of the most expensive roads in the UK. Most are foreign owned, unoccupied huge properties, or decrepit, derelict edifices.

The balance of wealth is so skewed that a roof over a family’s head is second to making a profit for an owner (the ‘should I raise my tenant’s rent because they had a pay rise’ thread here is a good example here).

The sell off of council houses started by Thatcher didn’t help this. Councils had to ring fence their money from house sales & they were not allowed to use it for building new stock. The Northern Rock saga, financial collapse & pension raiding in the 2000s really compounded the ‘houses are assets for profit not homes’ mentality in the UK.

(Our council’s ring fenced profit was raided after they lost a multimillion ££ court case to a property company, obvs I can’t say what, but it was typical councillor took a bung, backfired spectacularly, council fucked, reduced their portfolio, my workplace ended up as a pile of rubble & sold off for building homes that were snatched up by private landlords).

How many years have we had a government that have a ‘greed is god’ mantra now? I’ve always been a Labour supporter (I even blew off an Oxbridge place for one at Warwick; we had a minutes silence in a full course education lecture when John Smith died), but we have to be honest in that good old Gordon as PM sold our gold, helped crash the banks & nudged the snowball that has been rolling downhill since 2007, increasing house prices as the ‘pension pot not a home’ snowball governs house prices today.

As unsavoury as it sounds, a housing crash & high interest rates may be the only way to rebalance the scales. Add in affordable housing (not just affordable council housing stock). No one should be paying a 9x joint salary for a home. It’s ridiculous. How many threads on here are about financial stress, childcare issues around work, worries about the increase in the interest rates? If homes cost 3x salaries aa they have been in the past, would those pressures we write about here not be relieved, even just a little?

And yeah, Brexit is a factor here; more expensive matériels being imported for vastly more, transport costs higher, & loss of EU tradies equals the basic costing of building a property is inflated. Even a kid could understand that one.

TL;DR - housing should be homes, not assets for profit, greed is bad, house prices are over inflated, 2nd homes are bad (not including incidental second homes via inheritance, moving for work etc) ditto AirB&B & holiday homes, and this govt is all about greed.

And;

tl;dr’s tl;dr, F*ck the Tories.

Really? And do you feel the same about food?

As to why should they because the society we live in benefits us all. Despite not needing SH myself I benefit because we have less homelessness, poorer children are housed accordingly, disabled people are housed and to prevent ghettos and poverty stricken areas we need a mix of people. RTB and big windfalls have queered the pitch imo, I think we need to go back to the old principles so that there is enough SH so that the GP can have a council house beside his surgery and the headmistress has one beside the school.
I'm going for utopia here but the true benefits of SH have been muddied deliberately.

Where I live there is housing being built at unprecedented rates so there is clearly plenty of money for this.

Properties which are rented pay for their own maintenance.

I don’t think that private landlords and mass builders consider that other people are paying for or subsiding them, it is just the way the economy works. We are all reliant on each other.

Access to food as a basic human right? Yep. We should be allowed to grow or buy food and if there is no way to do that society (benefits) should be available.

Socialism not communism yes.

@Threadkillacilla but you are OK with someone going to a restaurant if they don't want to restrict themselves to what's available on their estate? So if they'd rather rent than live in whatever housing the state deems suitable, why can't they?

One thing is saying that there should be adequate social housing available. Another is insisting people live in it.

Why on earth would someone be jealous?

I don't agree with council housing or benefits except in the most extreme circumstances. It's a lifestyle choice for far too many people who moan about their crap life but are unwilling to do anything themselves to change it.

Do you agree with public libraries or do you think they should only be used by the most desperate too? Is there any need for local authorities at all in your view?

I have always thought that private rents should be capped to the same as local authority level.

I would vote for a party that pledges a large scale council house building programme.

In this day and age, secure homes should be a right not a privilege. A privilege which for some provokes jealousy and hostility as it is now only available for those further down the social scale.

No I dont, I don't think people should be forced to live in SH at all. I think it should be an available option of someone does want it.