Keeping a 3 bedroom council house when your children have grown up

[Iwishitwerewarmer]

Just pondering - what are everyone’s opinions on a single parent raising their children in a council house/housing association house and staying there once their children have moved out? Should they downsize into a one bed flat/smaller property or is it their right to remain in their home/neighbourhood?

Added extra - they have looked after the property well, have landscaped the garden, installed a new kitchen and generally added value to the property.

Yes, a friend of mine mentioned this. She lives in a mixed street as she bought an ex Council House (1930s, spacious rooms, large garden) without knowing it - SE London, so she is a council leaseholder. She paid market rate for her property as the house had been sold twice before.

New family were housed by council 2 houses down. Very nice, very respectful. Iraqi Kurdish family - husband & wife with 3 kids. Man, who works as a taxi driver, within 6 months of living there approached the council about the Right to Buy - £160K. Bought it. Spend 3 years totally renovating and refurbishing the house himself and did a very good job. Now has it for sale at the market rate of £450. Extremely hard working and enterprising. Then friend said she was extremely disappointed when shown pictures of their house in Northern Iraq which was palatial by London standards.

Is it right?

Well we managed to build lots of social housing in the past, available for normal working people. We did this when the country was much poorer as well. And let's say everyone wants one. We'll they all pay rent, councils can profit (with a tweak in law) what's the problem?

I’ve never disagreed. They’re still not subsidised.

@custardlover. If a person in on universal credit, their rent is paid for by the state which is in effect a subsidy. This is different to a person who pays the full rent on their council/housing association home who are typically not subsidised (though land may have been bought with grants or other subsidies)

Not in all areas. Especially in cheaper areas and/or less desirable areas.

I moved into my council property over a year ago now and I paid the same rent as I did on the private rental I moved from.

Council house entitlement should be reassessed every 7 years- lots of time for people to make other arrangements should they no longer be entitled to one or if there's people more in need than themselves.

No reason an adult with adult children's needs subsidising for the rest of their lives.

Better that they twice as much rent is paid for by the state to a private landlord surely?

I live in an area which is almost exclusively 3 beds, very few flats or bungalows. The town next to me obviously did a lot of building in the 70s and there’s loads of small bungalows next to blocks of flats. They won’t do that now.

I know someone in a 3 bed and a massive garden. She was furious when her eldest left for uni as she would have to pay spare room tax, now the youngest is going to do the same. It’s all she talks about, how much money and how unfair.
She won’t move even if she did get offered something else. She doesn’t look after the garden or use it, it’s right next to a school, she spends almost all of her time at her parents who also have a large 3 bed with a massive garden.
She has a small study room downstairs that is rammed with millions and millions of toys she doesn’t even want to sort out. She would need someone to come pack and move her and massive incentives to do it.

A lot of people don’t realise this.
I have an adult DC that lives with me permanently due to additional needs. We’re in a 4 bed. We wouldn’t be allowed to move to a 3 bed as we’d be deemed as under occupying, despite the fact we are in a 4 bed now.

All the 2 beds on swapper sites are either very expensive new builds, which I actually can’t afford. Or they are extremely grotty high rises in dodgy areas, for the same as what I pay now. No one in their right mind is going to give up a lovely 4 bed with a garden, in a nice area, for that!

The rent you pay is not wholly determined by house size. It’s very dependant on when you actually became a tenant, due to there being a limit on how much your rent can be raised each year. I became a tenant just under 40 years ago. So my rent is far lower than tenancies given out over the last few years. But if I swap I’m subject to the current rent on that property.

I work and pay my rent and subsidise my DC. I just cannot afford any more in rent, it’s becoming a struggle as it is now on my “lower” rent, to the point I’ve been doing overtime at work for the last few years. Currently I get no benefits. Maybe I would be entitled to a UC top up if my rent was higher, I don’t actually know. But it’s a road I’d be loathe to go down. I don’t want to be reliant on UC.

Yes when there was far more land available in the right places. Can't just keep building everywhere when there's plenty of homes sat with 80% of their rooms unused

Thats the same with any property though.

Right to buy now gives a maximum discount of £16k in london.

I still disagree with right to buy but it is far better than it used to be.

Have you even thought this through for a single second? Take a promotion at work (or even just get a job) and you lose your secure home.

Lack of smaller council properties?

The whole HMO debate at the moment where Councils are giving permission for family homes in residential streets to be converted into bedsits that can then by rented by the council for social housing. That's very much a London Suburbs conversation that is raging at the moment. Some are for it. Some are against it.

Equally no one has a need to have 4 kids they can't house do they?

I’m afraid I do think that a single person in a 3 bedroom property should downsize. There’s a lot of families crammed into 1 or 2 bedroom properties that would benefit from somewhere bigger and can’t get it. The purpose of social housing is to provide exactly what a person/family needs and not anything extra.

That would be lovely. But it's never happening. What do we do with all thenprivatelynowned properties? Turn them over to the council and ask them to look after them?

The current situation is we don't have enough social housing available, so people are in the wrong type of house. Families in hotel rooms, single people trapped downstairs in their unadapted houses, 4 bed homes taken up by single people, council houses rented when people have hundreds of thousands in the bank. All those scenarios and more need to be addressed, whilst we.build a better range of social housing for.our ageing population.

@ProudAmberTurtle

why are you automatically assuming the tax payer is paying? Believe it or not not all housing association or council house tenants are in benefits. Lots work and pay as well as maintain their homes. That includes my own family members one of whom lives in her own ina three bed property

It’s their home. As long as they can afford to they should be allowed to stay. It’s not their issue councils and housing associations haven’t been building

One way to discourage under occupation is to highly incentivise downsizing. I know it's not going to be a popular suggestion, but hey it will pay off in the long run and far cheaper for the taxpayer than having to build/supply larger homes for larger families.

So what would be appropriate? A one off payment up to say 10k, together with removal costs and basic refurbishment of the smaller property? Something like that.

Other suggestions welcome. I don't believe people should be moved from their home but I do support incentives to free up larger properties. Carrotts are good for you.

She can't go on homeswapper. The rules of our local authority is you can only swap to a home suited for your needs. Meaning she can only swap to a one bedroom property, but the tenants in the one bedroom property must be eligible for her five bed house (8+ people) and there arent any! Trust me we've tried!

We found a two bedroom ground floor flat for her and were told no. As she wasn't entitled to two bedrooms and the family in the flat weren't entitled to her five

I’m coming up to this scenario. I’ve lived in my 3 bed house over twenty years and my two two youngest were born in the house. Two of the ‘children’ still live here 25y and 16y. The 25y is still here because of the cost of housing now and 16y is in education. I’d anticipate being able to downsize in the next 5-10 years.

However, the rent in some of the smaller houses is the same as mine - I’d only benefit from down sizing if I was getting housing benefit (ie bedroom tax). New build rents even on social housing are much higher and have service charges and I have a dog and still need a garden. Legally, I have no reason to ever move. My tenancy is assured. If I downsize it will be to a property I can afford in a location I like and with a garden.

All that said, I am reasonably civic minded and know families where I work are looking for larger houses to raise their toddlers so I know my property could help a young family so it is something I will be looking at but must be a property I like. I work full time but my main problem has been being a single earner for the last 15 years hence never having a deposit to buy or savings to maintain a property.

A combination of council housing and pensioners . Guaranteed to bring out prejudice.

Who do you think paid for the house to be built?

The issue with that is rental costs. Newer properties with newer tenancies are going to be more expensive than someone with an older tenancy who has been in their council house for 40 years and even though it is a smaller property, they may not be able to afford the rent.

No problem with tax payers subsidising private landlords with Housing benefit then?

I plan on downsizing i might only be able to get a two bed though because of my youngest special needs he is unlikely to ever be completely independent but yes you should downsize not immediately just in case but within a year or two