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.

@Fandabadobie

Mine is the only HA house on the whole street. Every single one has been bought over the years. I appreciate some estates do still have a high percentage of tenants on them but it does decrease year on year. Now that I’ve been in mine Im surprised how easy it would be for us to buy this house. It’s quite old though, it’s a fab council house but I am not sure I wouldn’t want to maintain it.

I hope you don't mind me asking but when that happened did the council rehouse you? I just wondered if that happened if the house has been repossessed and I do worry about that, rightly or wrongly

@purpleme12

I was initially homeless (with my kids) but didn’t meet the criteria for housing as I had a place to stay at my mums. I then private rented a small flat whereby we were all very overcrowded. I then got onto the list and i waited 10 years before being offered my 3 bed semi.

I live in social housing. The house is damp and mouldy without a proper heating system. The most recent solution offers by the housing association was that they could provide us with 15 tog duvets.
I have no shower just a bath, the kitchen is falling apart. We are expected to replace most fittings ourselves even though we don’t own the houses and still pay rent. I don’t get my rent paid for me although it’s cheaper than a private rent. The house is in considerably worse condition than most private rents.

Think there must be a lot of variability then between housing associations. My house is old but it’s maintained very well and I can’t complain with repairs etc. Always done quickly too. @DonutsAreNotLunch

If I want to install a shower, I have to pay for it (including tiling my bathroom to the ceiling), and then have it removed and made good when I move out.

^ sorry that was about DonutsAreNotLunch's point about only having a bath (I'm HA too)

@Goosefatroasts my HA seem to say most things are ‘wear and tear’ and expect us to replace them ourselves. If they put a dirt cheap kitchen in 17 years ago I’m not sure how much wear and tear it’s expected to cope with before they would find it reasonable to replace it.

I hate my house so much, living here is making my daughters asthma so much worse and the house is a major factor in my depression but we are stuck here because there is no hope of getting a private rent in this area these days and no chance of ever getting on the property ladder.

@NewBootsAndRanty Do you live in a house with no shower too? We have the same rule although I think you can have the work inspected and they will keep it if it’s a high enough standard. I just can’t afford to get it done.

Can really relate to this. I lived in a housing association property (paid my own rent and bills the same as most people), the roof leaked, you could see daylight through the roof, it ruined all belongings initially stored in the loft and caused the property to be damp. HA came out and told me roofs are "guaranteed for 100 years" so they won't fix it.

Yep @DonutsAreNotLunch , just a bath here.

@SomeCommonThing my HA sent a roofer out to inspect my roof after I complained about water running down the inside of the walls, the roofer told me it was in a complete state and needed replaced. The HA sent someone out afterwards to assure me that the roofer was actually lying and there was nothing wrong with the roof. I can see daylight through mine it and birds nest in the loft in the summer.

@NewBootsAndRanty Do you have kids? I’m finding the lack of a shower such a struggled as my kids get older, having to heat enough water for them all to have a bath and wash their hair takes hours every night and costs an absolute fortune. It wasn’t so bad when the were little and just shared a bath every couple of days!

Oh I completely agree with you!

Same here, I've bought one of those things that attach to the tap and have a shower curtain each side to protect the walls that aren't tiled, I physically couldn't get out of the bath from a sitting position couple of years ago because of an injury, and had to sort something as I was standing in the bath and having a strip wash out of a bowl. It's not permanent and I keep an eye on the walls and ceiling and as long as I have the extractor on and open windows after I have no issues, and it's temporary as in I don't have a permanent fixture so I can just take it all down if I need to.

I’ll spell it out then. Why would you borrow so much that you can barely afford to pay your mortgage when interest rates move towards historic averages, which was always on the cards? The OP has willingly walked into this problem.

We have no shower here either and aren't allowed to install one. It's getting harder and harder for me to get in and out of the bath but there's not much I can do about it. Also baths are way more expensive than showers, particularly when you have three adults living at home.

We also can't change any of our internal doors (which are falling apart but the council won't fix) or paint our front door, or have doormats outside them (both are fire hazards apparently). Can't alter our kitchen or bathroom in any way, including repairing them ourselves. No washing to be dried on balconies for the flats which have them (we don't - we have no outside space).

We also have black mould everywhere and are waiting for the council to do something about it. They tell us it's 'normal at this time of year' and we should have the heating on low all day to combat it, and open all our windows at night. So, spent hundreds more than we already do on fuel bills and freeze overnight in January. Fantastic solution 🙄

That’s an easy repair to do yourself 🤷‍♀️

@PrincessOfWaiIs out internal doors are the same, they are the original doors put in the house when it was built in 1985 but I will still have to pay for any that are ‘damaged’ when I move out. It’s not like they were good quality doors to begin with 🤦‍♀️

Quite. I'm still on old style DLA, and I had to provide reams of medical evidence. It's for physical, easily provable stuff, but I had to follow all the assessments, like everyone else.

Who are these people getting "free" houses and "free cars"?

I got neither lol I pay for both.

Jeez, if anyone envies me, perhaps they'd like my disabilities?🙄

It makes me so angry to see people, usually mums, bringing up kids in sub standard accommodation they have no choice about and blaming themselves. Or feeling guilty and feeling like a bad mother as they cant provide a decent standard of living for their children. IT ISN'T THEIR FAULT . Thatcher allowed grabby people to buy their council house and be a home owner and pull up the drawbridge for the next generation. Who are now parents themselves and have no chance of getting a council house. Cos they've practically all been sold off. Yet this generation blames themselves and features on ch5 programmes about being in temporary accommodation. And gets looked down on, by the people who bought the council houses cheap 30 years ago.

It makes me so angry. None of this is their fault or their doing.

You lost at "gets it repaired within days".

What a load of BS, try months if not years. Even an emergency call out can take days and that's if they don't mess it up.

A friend has been trying to get the council to sort out damp and mould for a year now. The maisonette had been newly decorated when she saw it, but the mould and damp reappeared in the three week interval before she moved in.

The problem is caused by blocked gutters/downpipes and in heavy rain the hopper above her bedroom window overflows so badly it sounds like Niagara falls.

When they do get round to fixing something, the contractors don't seem to do it properly at least half the time.

Don't be fooled either. The government could solve the housing crisis by building more social housing, it should be a condition of land sales to private developers that a set percentage of properties must be given over the local authority as social housing and that these should be a mix of accessible bungalows for tenants with mobility needs, 1-2 bed properties for those looking to downsize and 3+ bed properties for families. They could also pass laws making banks take renting history into account for mortgages, it is madness that a bank will refuse (for example) a £600 month a mortgage on the grounds of affordability despite the applicant paying £1600 a month rent for several years without ever missing a payment. There should be more help with deposits for first time buyers too, particularly those who struggle to save a deposit due to stupidly high rents. There should be a cap on how many properties private landlords can own, freeing up properties foe buyers particularly in areas where BTL has a monopoly. There should also be rules around mortgages and BTL with a cap on how much mortgage is allowed on BTL properties (e.g., the mortgage can be no more than 50% of the property value) to reduce the risk of landlords overstretching financially and then tenants laying the price via rent increases and/or eviction.

They won't do anything to ease it though because they don't give a shit. People squabbling over the issue suits them because it means they're not looking at who is really to blame.

There are so many people would give their right arm to be on the property ladder.

Talk about clueless.

The people who bought their council houses were the parents and/or grandparents of people who are struggling to find housing now! The whole idea was that as people became homeowners, future generations would benefit.