To think social housing should be means-tested annually like benefits?

[EqualLedgerJay]

Situations change, why should lifetime tenancies exist if income rises? AIBU to think fairness cuts both ways?

Do you really need me to spell it out?

'Forced into a home by the authorities'. That's disgraceful, even criminal.

Why?!

if I chose to rent to you rent of £150 a week would you insist that I charged you more?!

social rent is social rent. Its whole philosophy is that it is not market driven.

Then fix the private rental system. Don’t hobble social housing

It really is!! We don’t talk about working people, paying tax having a say in the benefits system. Well we do but it gets shot down.

I would like either more houses or it means tested. I think that’s pretty fair.

What else can you do? Leave a poorly elderly person who is unable to look after themselves to rot?!

Staying social housing when they don't need to is just another way the piss takers have found to sponge off their fellow citizens.

There is no social housing near me as it all got sold ages ago but I understand that there are approx 12k people on the waiting list for a council property, In days gone by the little terraces such as the one I own were affrordable for first time buyers but these days the only people who can afford them are the BTL landlords who then turn them into unofficial HMOs with as many as 10 people crammed into a two up two down. They do not maintain the properties, I live next door to one such hell pit and it is horrible, The whole street has gone downhill to such an extent that nobody would buy round here except the landlords so the houses and the street gets worse as the months roll on. Rents are at least £1k a month, (city is in the Midlands) and they have rotting windows, broken doors and leaking gutters. Overcrowding means that there is rubbish everywhere and I hate where I live so much that I don't invite people round. The social housing up the road was all flogged off ages ago and never replaced so people who can't afford to buy are forced to rent out the neglected and decaying landlord owned properties.

No people shouldn't be reviewed. What happens if your income increases and you're forced to privately rent and then lose your job what do you do then?

there is no city in the midlands where there is no social housing 😂

No, the real piss takers are private landlords having their mortgages paid off in the form of housing benefit from their tenants.

There should be no lifetime tenancies. All tenancies should be reviewed every 5 years. Antisocial tenants or those that no longer qualify should be given notice.

Well that's the system for everyone in private tenancies

You would then qualify again and they would be housing available because it would all be taken up by people who might have needed the help for a couple of months in the nineties.

Because all benefits are out of work benefits and no one on benefits pays tax. Amirite?

Yabu. Social housing is not supposed to be limited to only the poorest. The shortage should be addressed by building more, not by time-limiting tenancies. The stability of a secure tenancy is the basis that allows people to sort their lives out and better themselves. Keeping people insecure and worried about the future because they are going to get booted out and at the mercy of profiteering landlords who can end their tenancy or increase their rent to unaffordable levels is not a basis from which they can build their lives. People's homes do not need to be used as a mechanism to profit the capital-owning wealthy.

If you could guarantee the same area, maybe. Maybe. But that's unlikely to be the case, and then you're moving people away from their communities, their support networks, their jobs. Being poor doesn't justify punishing people by removing their entire lives from under them.

People downsizing when they own their own homes is entirely different.

But that’s the wrong system.

don't put everyone in the right system into a falling system, that makes no sense.

social housing is the gold standard. We need more of it, not to lose it to inexperienced unprofessional landlords

What mean-spirited, beady-eyed thread.

This typifies it: Why should you be any different to the majority of people who have the insecurity of private renting? Whether you agree with it or not, I don’t get the argument that it’s unfair for people in subsidised housing to not have the insecurity that everyone else has.

Look I am as socialist as they come but I think society has to help those in need as a priority . high earners living in a council property are being subsidized by society as a whole when according to the post I answered they really don’t need it. Paying a rent closer to market rate wouldn’t be such a hardship surely?

It would create ghettos. No one would make their houses a home because they’d know they’d be moved on. Don’t be ridiculous.

Nope, they pay around £650 a month for a house in London zone 3/4 borders and earn well in excess of 100k , they talk about it openly when laughing about booking their next holiday. It is a bit galling tbh. When they got it 35 ish years ago they were both on relatively low incomes but no children. I just think about the young families now who could really use it and lots of people like me and my friends who had to move out of London because we couldn't afford to live where we grew up and by the time we were off she the waiting lists for social housing were almost a decade long. There needs to be more mobility if the stock is so limited or other ways to fund increased availability

Oh dear. You clearly don’t know much about housing policy and social housing.

We’ve been here before Localism act 2011. Flexible and fixed term tenancies. Mostly have not worked. Just an admin burden. most housing associations are moving away from them now.

Social housing should be available to all within the allocation policy limit. That’s why there are limits on household income and capital limits.

Paying a rent closer to market rate wouldn’t be such a hardship surely?

That's assuming that the market rent is reasonable.

Terrible, and I'd guess the 'caring sharing' council do bugger all ?!