To be jealous of my friend’s social housing house?

[Crankitcrew]

I have a house with a mortgage. I can barely afford to pay for repairs to the house. It’s falling apart.
My friend has recently moved into social housing and has a much more spacious house than mine, but the biggest reason I’m jealous is if anything goes wrong with the house it’s fixed by the housing association within days. No cost. She only pays a small contribution towards her rent. The rest is paid. She doesn’t work and claims PIP because she has PTSD and depression.

She and her partner are talking about getting some decking done in the garden and paying £600 for it. There’s no way on earth we could afford that, we can’t even afford to have the re plastering done that is falling off, not to mention the damp problem.

People say to me “well, at least you own your home” and “you can leave it to your children” but what if we never pay the mortgage off? What if we end up needing care and the money from the house goes to pay that instead? Which is what happened to my grandparents.

I saw getting on the property ladder a right of passage or something, but I now realise it’s not all it’s made out to be.

@Ohgoodyanotherone On my friend's street, there's a couple who are early 50s in a large 3 bed HA (yes, I know for a fact they're with the same HA). They've never had a rent increase since they moved in, in 1993 when the houses were built so they only pay £250pm (that's half local HA average!). Their kids grew up & married many years ago and ever since it's been exotic holidays, brand new car each, all the latest tech and they each have a spare room to do what they like with. They've said themselves that they can only have their luxury lifestyle due to the low rent. If they were forced to move, they'd have to pay £500+pm. They were offered a 2 bed HA apartment with a £2000k 'incentive' about 10 years ago but they declined! So they'll undoubtedly be there for many years yet as the HA's in this area are not yet forcing downsizing. I'm very glad they will be doing though.

I'm in a HA house as a widowed parent but only a 2 bed so I'll be unlikely to be made to downsize for a very long time yet.

Home ownership can feel like a drudge sometimes - right now we are dealing with a blocked kitchen sink, a broken washing machine and an intermittently slow filling toilet cistern.

But as poinyed out here the benefits are you have control of the issues. We declared the washing machine not worth saving last night and ordered a new one asap. I'll work on the sink today but if it doesn't shift soon we'll get a plumber in.

Yes it costs money but part of your house buying calculations should factor in regular saving in to an emergency fund, which is why I find the whole "if you can afford rent you can afford a mortgage" thing a bit frustrating. The mortgage isn't the only issue - it is everything else. This month I suspect we will have to find almost £900 for additional repair and maintenance stuff.

In an effort to spread the costs, I suspect we will put up with the dodgy toilet flush a bit longer.

Firstly it's strange to be jealous of.someone who got something due to pretty difficult life conditions.

Secondly, there is a will you can get that ring fences a portion of your house so it is protected for inheritance and won't be used for you care costs.

And thirdly, it is likely you will pay off you mortgage and by the the time your retired and on a limited income, you won't have housing costs.

As people have said several times, you're not allowed to do your own repairs, particularly on things like kitchen units. If you do the council will come and redo the work to their standards and charge you for it.

This is bollocks. Of course their rent has increased since 1993. About ten years ago it was ruled that all SH rents must be equal to 80% of local market rent, so the idea that they're paying half of what other local HA tenants are paying is ludicrous.

And even if it were true, SH rents were lower than £250pm for a 3 bed house in 1993 (I was paying £120pm for a 2 bed in central London at that time). And an extra £200pm that they are apparently saving would not be enough to fund the 'exotic holidays', new cars and luxury lifestyle you describe anyway. Right now it'd barely cover the extra bills/price increases borne out of the CoL crisis.

If you're going to make things up in an attempt to whip up a bit of SH froth, at least make it credible.

There is some pure bs on this thread.

Also @ProhibitedSteps how can two people 'each have a spare room' when it's a three bed house?

Perhaps don't involve yourself in gossip about a friend's neighbours, then you won't get the wrong end of the stick. Or don't make random stuff up to get people indignant about the evils of SH tenants, whichever.

No bedroom tax either. Amazing.

Bedroom tax (not really a tax) doesn’t affect anyone who pays their own rent in social housing. Its actually a deduction of a % of benefits paid to tenants of working age where a property is under occupied, ie a single person in a three bedroomed house would lose 25% of their housing benefit . There are some circumstances where it may not apply, and it doesn’t affect those over state pension age.

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/help-if-on-a-low-income/housing-benefit/how-an-extra-bedroom-affects-your-housing-benefit/check-if-a-room-counts-as-an-extra-bedroom-for-housing-benefit/

Even if you don't oat off the mortgage you will still benefit from an increase in value and hence equity

Thanks - I didn't realise it didn't apply to people not on HB.

Social housing rent has to increase every year. Their rent might be cheaper than a private let, but their rents pile have gone up, year on year.

This must depend on what council/HA it is - I've put in a new kitchen and bathroom here. The HA were fine with it - they just wanted to see it afterwards to make sure it had been done properly.

Technically, if we leave, they might charge to put back their units, but they never do.

It suits them, because now we are responsible for any repairs/maintenance of the stuff we had put in.

We can also do indoor repairs - providing it doesn't affect gas or electricity.

But, they probably vary - most have their own rules.

It also affects you if you are on Universal credit and most people on UC are working.

Also when I accepted this property with two bedrooms social housing was fully paid by housing benefit (I wasn't working at the time I moved) so people like me did move to properties that had extra bedrooms.

I don't think a private landlord could just up your rent by 25% with no warning, effectively that is what the bedroom tax did.

My property is designed for a wheelchair user, if you think finding social housing is difficult then try finding something suitable for a wheelchair user.

I can understand why you might feel this way because of all of hard work involved in owning your own home.

I’ve lived in social housing all of my adult life. Where I live now is very nice and I know some people are envious. Likewise, I know of people who either pity me and/or look down on me for it. It just goes to show that it’s all relative and a matter of perspective.

What they don’t know is why I’m here, nor how I got here. I ended up in social housing because I escaped an abusive relationship and was homeless with a baby. We first had to live in a 1 bedroom flat in a very dodgy area and didn’t qualify for a 2 bedroom until my DC was 8 years old.

Likewise, your friend has depression and PTSD. I suffer from both (I should add that my experiences in social housing have contributed to these) but want my own home so I’m working like crazy to save up. It is very nearly impossible and like walking through hell.

But the benefit of being a homeowner is that you can choose where to live and what home you want. If you can’t afford it then you can downsize. A mortgage can feel like a prison sentence when it’s not really affordable. But otherwise, to me that freedom is priceless.

There are always going to be people who are in many ways better off on benefits and social housing. That’s great for them if they want to stay in the same house probably for the rest of their lives. But it wouldn’t truly be yours.

And do you really want the life circumstances that would make you eligible for it?

It affects you if you claim any UC, and if you're on a lower income you're very likely to be doing so. Most UC claimants are in work.

If you have two DC in a 3 bed house and they're deemed able to share a room (there are age/sex rules on this), you will likely find you have to pay 'bedroom tax'. You will also have to pay if, for example, you need an extra room because a household member has a health condition where they need to sleep separately from siblings/partner. There is discretionary help available from LAs but this is a limited pot and not everyone qualifies for it.

The reality is that there is no housing availablity for all the tenants who could technically downsize. There are simply not enough one and two bedroom properties for everyone, so moving people into temporary accommodation in order to house a family simply moves the problem around. Making a single person or a couple homeless (and given they're likely to be of an age where family has left home, we're talking about people in late middle age/older people) doesn't solve the issue, it just creates a new one.

Perhaps what the envious, outraged posters on this thread could use their energy better and more constructively by campaigning for more affordable social housing for all and the abolition of RTB. Far more useful than making up goady stories about friends of friends and deriding SH tenants.

@PrincessOfWaiIs I agree, we need more social housing, and we should withdraw the RTB as Scotland has done.

Its about time that social housing and their contractors move into the 2020s Friend of mine has had a letter saying he has to have a new intercom fitted. Apparently this will happen over the course of two days this week. No time or date given. Just 11th to 12th Jan. And Mears have written to him saying he HAS to be in for an inspection next week on a certain day. So what happens if a tenant has a medical appointment or like his neighbour works for the NHS. Back in 2019 when we had new fire doors fitted we got a letter saying we had to be in Mon to Fri. An ALL WEEK call. I shit you not. Its obvious they dont want to make proper appointments and just want to go house to house flat to flat on the day FFS

You're talking nonsense. HA rent is increased every year it is not possible that they have been paying the same rent for 20 years and 2 people in a 3 bed house can't have a "spare room each".

Every year HA up the rent.

*30 years

This pisses me off, like even they think that social housing tenants must just sit at home all day. I have this every time for gas/electric inspections or anything else they need entry for, they send me an appointment (sometimes, sometimes they just arrive and then send me a nice letter saying I'm putting my tenancy at risk by refusing entry for an appointment I didn't even know I had) and it's invariably for less than a week's time, when I need to give a months notice for requesting a certain day off, and then get shitty when if I manage to get through on the phone to change it and say I need a months notice to arrange a specific day off.
Want your rent? Then I need to go to work and abide by my employers policies so I get paid. It happens every bloody year these inspections and I know roughly when it's due (the month) and have even rang before the random call ins and threats for missing appointments - to be told I have to wait until they contact me with a date and then change it.
Tbf I've had this with private LL's too though.

I don't believe for a second there are council tenants that haven't had a rent increase since the 90s. My rent goes up every April, sometimes it goes up by a couple of quid, sometimes it's more but it goes up every year without fail.

True. No-one would have NO rent increases, ever. Not in this country (the UK,) anyway.