You have no choice, unless you want to live with bare walls and floorboards.
When I moved into my house, there was no floor in the kitchen, living room, and 2 out of 3 bedrooms. There were no wall coverings in the living room, kitchen, or bathroom. There were no skirting boards in the living room or any of the bedrooms. Several floorboards needed to be replaced, but this was classed as cosmetic because they were not rotten; they were just too uneven to properly fit a floor covering, ditto the kitchen plastering, which needed to be done, the wall was bad enough that only a thick vinyl wallpaper would have covered it and who the fuck wants wallpaper in their kitchen but it was deemed to be cosmetic as it was not cracked just badly done by previous tenants. There were no window coverings, curtain poles, or white goods, as there are private lettings and no lightbulbs except the fluorescent tube light in the kitchen. Oddly, there was also no grass, only the HA knows why they saw fit to dig up the back garden.
I was given a £200 Wilko's voucher to pay for all of this. Now, bearing in mind I was moving from private rented where maintaining decor was not my responsibility, so I had no equipment such as paint brushes, rollers, trays, etc, or paste tables and paste brushes, hammers, step ladders, plastering float, trowel, mixing bucket, etc, please explain how I could have made the house habitable without spending a large sum of my own money?
We did do it as cheaply as possible, and a lot of it is now being redone to a higher standard now that we are in a better financial position, but when we first moved in at least £1500 if not more, was needed to make the house habitable, plus the cost of white goods. All in all, it cost me at least £3000, before rent in advance, to move here.
I assume if HA housing becomes temporary, the cost of this will be shouldered by the HA or the taxpayers demanding this, and the effect this will have on affordable rents has been taken into consideration?