Housing stigma

[Antiquedoll]

Has anyone else noticed an increase in bad attitude towards social housing from property owners? I hought the UK was progressive and believed innequality but it seems to me the division is growing?

It was never supposed to be temporary, they literally gave out lifetime tenancies!

What’s next though? How does this scenario play out in your head?

Family of 4 temporarily housed in social housing. Both parents working, so now you kick them out into private rented. Before when the rent was reasonable-it was a comfortable amount, they managed to get by. Now they’re paying 3 times as much so they’ve had to claim UC for help so their rent is being subsidised by the tax payer and now life has got a lot tighter because of LHA caps. There’s definitely no way they’re ever managing to save for the deposit for a mortgage and they’re slowly ruining their credit score because now credit cards are a way of life and they’ve missed a payment here and there. And just to add insult to injury, the landlord has served them with an eviction notice because he wants to sell.

Tell me because I’m really interested how you think this goes next?

Yep.

I had to buy my own flooring, blinds and white goods. My son was also in hospital at the time so we had to do it all in a rush making sure it was ready for his discharge.

Definitely not free or ''subsidised''.

Spot on @KellySeveride some people are so myopic and narrow minded, they don’t think about the long term impact of how this will play out .

Or maybe they don’t care, as long as Sally from down the road who works full time doesn’t get to keep her stable long term HA tenancy or pay cheaper rent (which isn’t even always the case) and has to shell out loads to a private landlord for a yearly tenancy that is rising sharply ever year “like the rest of us did” they’ve won.

Talk about crabs in a barrel!

@TheCheeryTurtle why do you think social housing used to be a "temporary" thing?
It was NEVER for that purpose.
Council homes and HA housing (many HA schemes existed before council housing existed like Peabody which has been around since 1862) were designed to be decent quality and secure permanent homes for rent.
That's their purpose.
Not temporary accommodation 🙄

@TheCheeryTurtle Becontree - one of the first purpose built council estates had 26 000 properties when it was finished in the 1930s.
Why on earth would 26 thousand houses be built as "temporary" accommodation.

John Boughton talks about this and other estates at length in his book Municipal Dreams The Rise and Fall of Council Housing.

I do, but I think it's with anyone who rents over a certain age; be it social or private.
My husband and I both work but simply couldn't afford a mortgage on a house with min three bed we need. We both work but on pretty low wages and are "trapped in the middle" in that we earn too much for benefits or social housing but not enough for a mortgage.
We are 44 and 49 and have been renting for about a decade after both of our first marriages ended in divorce. My husband is adamant we are not unusual, but I disagree. I don't know of anyone else of our ages who doesn't own their own home.
I love our home but ultimately there is no long-term security.

It has never been temporary.
Assured tenancies that are affordable should be the norm. None of this lining private landlords pockets (although I do know they have their place), getting evicted on a whim, not allowed to personalise your home whatsoever, frequent inspections where the state of your sofa cushions is judged etc

Safe, secure and affordable housing is not a lifestyle choice. It is a life essential.

Having re read it this morning I’m also astounded at the lifestyle choice comment. So also apparently only people who can get/afford a mortgage are allowed to choose the lifestyle of safe secure housing.

Myopic is the perfect description though. It sums up a lot on this thread.

It’s definitely to do with the new builds being allocated to social housing. People having to save for years and pay a mortgage on the same house that someone’s had given to them and is paying subsidised rent in with repairs covered.

And as someone who has grown up in poverty and lived in social housing schemes their whole life but who now owns their house (after years of saving for it) this is the first nice street I’ve lived in where most of the gardens are kept nice. There’s no social housing on this street although the surrounding area is a social housing estate. When you go down to the housing estate it’s quite grim. There’s rubbish piled outside the houses and overgrown gardens and also rats. I have found that there’s a large number of social housing tenants that really don’t take pride in their houses.

Indeed, instead trying to hold the government to account for the shambles they made of the right to buy scheme ie. Selling off the stock without replacing it, and urging them to rectify the problem they caused by building more social housing, they would rather spend their energy in ensuring more people are plunged into misery and unstable housing conditions.

Aye, of course - safe and secure housing should only be for those who can afford a mortgage (or the destitute)!

There’s even pp on this thread (as we can see above) who benefited from social housing previously and have adopted this attitude . The mind boggles.

@KmcK87 the thing is due to the lack of social housing many people have to private rent.
Many of those families need help with the rent via the housing element of UC (or "Housing Benefit" as it used to be called).
Unless a new build estate has a no rental rule then a high proportion of the properties get bought up by private landlords who rent them out to those who would more likely have a "council house" if they actually existed.
So on a private estate a home owner can likely still be living next door to a "social tennant".
The old council estates have mostly been sold off through right to buy and many off those properties are now rented out.
It often looks like there no pride in keeping those properties clean and maintained - but often that's down to crappy landlords who don't allow the tennants to do any maintenance but also don't do it themselves.

The provision of social housing on New Build estates is Section 106, it’s the law.
And of course, SH is subsidised, as it should be. If it isn’t, who are Homes England and where is the £3.8bn they are currently allocating for new build social housing coming from?
I really don’t think the issue is it being subsidised, I think the issue is we need far, far more. And I know people say “greedy landlords” but honestly, if your mortgage went up, would you make a loss or would you charge more rent?

@Mrspatmoresapprentice I am curious though.
Is the average monthly mortgage for an basic 2 bedroom new build flat almost £2000 a month?
Because that's often what rental prices are round my way.
Obviously rent needs to include extra for maintenance but are mortgage payments really that high?
(apologies if I am wrong)

No idea, I’m not a landlord and I don’t know where you live! It could be that it’s an incredibly expensive area? Where I live a NB2 bed flat would be £1200 ish I think?
But let’s also not forget that not all tenants are angels. I had one brief foray into being a landlord, decades ago. It was horrendous. Despite all the relevant checks being done, tenant failed to pay any rent after the first month (whilst I still had to pay my mortgage), utterly trashed the house, to the tune of more than £20k and it took almost a year to evict her. It put me off for life but many landlords will be factoring the cost of a “nightmare” tenant into rental prices.

@Mrspatmoresapprentice I am in South East London.
Nice-ish area.
A large mix of everything from social housing, HA, Part buy/part rent, £1million properties and slumlord properties. Sometimes next door to each other 😂

Then £2k probably is the correct market rent. Which is why we need more SH. As said upthread, if you take home £1700 how on earth are you supposed to pay £2k in rent? There was some vague suggestion, years ago, to move all social housing tenants out of London, into cheaper areas. Thankfully, that was ditched!!

Then 1 of the parents gets made redundant, the council house them in temporary accommodation, they eventually get a more permanent home, parent finds a job, then the whole sorry cycle begins again.

@Mrspatmoresapprentice but do those paying a mortgage pay almost £2000 a month?
Are mortgages really that high?

Yes! Plus they have cost on top - insurance, maintenance, fees etc.

How on earth does anyone afford anything 🙁

It depends.

I know people paying much less than that in mortgage payments for a 2 bed in the south.

Of course there are variables which may affect this but if you enter the price of the local two beds on this calculator it may give you at least a rough idea of how much mortgage payments might be: https://www.zoopla.co.uk/mortgage-calculator/

This.

The type of person in social housing has deteriorated over the years. Fecklessness no accountability and a scourge on society.

Some posters are championing their plight, claiming they pay the same ( housing benefit isn't their money) better neighbours and so on. If that is the case, let's REMOVE all housing benefit and everyone would be 100% paying the same amount (out of THEIR own money ). Private rents would even out. This would be fair for all and no doubt social housing tenants would agree as they claim to be equal, do they not??

I think it largely depends on what circles you move in. I have lived it from all angles. Unsurprisingly, the people who were not poor enough to have grown up on a council estate, yet are too poor to purchase a house, therefore private rent, often have the most to say on the matter. They seemingly resent others paying cheaper rent.

Of course there are the snobby types who automatically assume anyone who comes from SH is a street urchin, but these attitudes have been around forever what with our class system being what it is/was.

OP why did you ask 'Has anyone else noticed an increase in bad attitude towards social housing from property owners? I hought the UK was progressive and believed innequality but it seems to me the division is growing?'

It's clear you have a bad attitude towards social housing. You've effectively answered your own question. Seems like you started this thread to bash people on council estates.