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.

I agree those are problems too. But how many of the 1million empty homes are part of the social housing stock?

WTF?? 😂 You cannot see the difference between social housing where the rest of society helps you pay for your rent from their very own labour and private arrangements where all rent or mortgage payment is privately paid so nobody else's business.

Sorry this is too long to read.

However, no I believe a suitable place would need to be found in their area or at least an area within a 30 mile radius.

What? Your comment is bizarre.

People’s mortgage payments often increase even if they don’t get a pay rise. People purchasing a home are buying it with their own money AND paying a lot of mortgage interest on top of this AND taking a lot more financial risk because mortgage rates can rise at any point without them having any increase in income.

Maybe 20 years ago if you gave up your council houses / HA property you were given a grant anything between 10 -20k depending on the size of the house
a few people I know took the money and bought a place

they stopped doing it

but one of my neighbours was trying to downsize a few years ago
3 bed 3 storey house , huge garden , double drive
her rent was 90 quid a week
A one bed new build flat was around 150

so she stayed in her house and is still there now

@YouDriveMeCrazyButICanDoThatMyself , that’s comparing apples with pears. The person who used their own money to purchase a property has every right to stay but the person in a housing association property doesn’t own it and has been supported by the taxpayer to use that property while they had a need. Those who become able to support themselves or no longer need so many bedrooms should not expect to place a burden on the taxpayers larger than is necessary.

Sorry to hear that you struggle to read, that must be hard.

Where would they go ,there is,often a shortage of one bedroom properties .

SH tenants work and pay tax and pay their own rent.

My mum grew up in a council house. Has a degree and two post grads. I grew up in a council house. Two BA degrees and two post grads. You fancied him? Earlier on you said no one associated with those kids.

Oh it definitely was snobby but you have to remember. This was the 90s when there was actually no good reason why anybody wouldn’t go and buy a house.
Properties on that Council estate would sell for 32,000
Starting salaries were 12k if you had two of you working you really did have to be poor to not be able to better yourself at that time

Indeed

You can look without touching you know 😂

Subsidised blah blah blah, all I've seen throughout this thread.

Do you think people who own their homes should not be allowed spare bedrooms?

Maybe take in homeless people from the streets if their children go to university?

Surely you understand that there are people in council and housing association housing that work full time too and pay taxes? Yes rents are subsidised - but that's nothing new

My Bil went school wit somone who was brought up on a nice middle class estate who committed a notorious, brutal murder
Both examples are extreme and neither are the result of where they lived as children.

Between 30 and 40 thousand.

A council house should be given to someone on the condition that it accommodates the size of their family.
Once their kids have moved out, it should then go to the next family.
It's not their house, they rent it. If they choose to update it to make it nicer whilst they live there, that's up to them.

What does that even mean? The market rate is the market rate. How can it be “artificially high”?

The market adjusts based on supply and demand so automatically reflects the current real-terms value in the price.

The only way I can conceive of that you comment makes any sense would be the fact that many of the legislative changes that have been made (i.e. market interference) to levy tax on landlords based on revenue rather than profit (unlike any other business) and make it more risky and expensive for landlords to let property have inflated prices because (unsurprisingly) they have reduced supply. But that, of course, is just the market operating as usual and adjusting the price to reflect the current costs and risks which have been changed by the regulatory regime, so is not “artificial“, rather an accurate reflection of the new costs introduced of course then having to be reflected in the price charged.

It’s just basic economics.

Council rent isn’t “subsidised” in the way people assume.
It only looks cheap because private rents have exploded, not because councils are giving tenants a discount.

Council rents have never been based on the private market. They’re set using a different system: long-term cost of building, maintenance, and affordability rules. Private rent is based on demand, mortgages, and profit.

People also forget how recently private rent overtook council rent.
In the 90s and early 2000s, in places like Dagenham, private rent and council rent were actually quite similar. You could realistically choose either. Council wasn’t seen as a “lottery win” because the gap wasn’t huge.

For example, my mum paid around £40 a week in the 90s and pays about £150 now. That’s a normal, steady rise. Meanwhile, private rent in the same area has gone from around £100 to £350+ in the same period. So it’s private rent that has shot up, not council rent being artificially lowered.

If someone pays their full council rent, they aren’t being individually subsidised.
What’s subsidised is the social housing system as a whole not the tenant’s personal bill.

The real issue is that the private market has become unaffordable, not that council tenants are getting an undeserved discount.

No we can build more homes if the powers that be do their jobs properly. Housing associations can access bank finance just exactly the same as property developers building private homes. They already do all across the country so it’s not necessarily coming from taxpayers.

People’s situations are fluid and just because someone lives alone at a point in time doesn’t mean they always will. New partners, returning adult children, friends living together are all realities of life and shifting them into one bedroom properties takes away choice and has other social implications to extended families, communities and health.

These people are often no longer on benefits and are working, paying their rent and taxes, and supporting their children with grandchildren meaning the bedrooms are needed at some times in the month.

lots of folks on this thread have a very narrow minded view of how the lives of others should look and are lazy to blame the person instead of those in charge making decisions for our communities.

its not that its just there not one person in the council dedicated to house swaps. im sure there's a very simple platform and algo that could be done for it but each council is individual and none of them have money for new systems being build form the ground up.

most councils don't have many one beds and if they do they keep them for temporary accommodation. limited stock, plus silo systems, plus large waiting lists and small teams. its not one singular thing.

But the majority of the issue is not greedy council tenants refusing to move.

I never ssid it was I know the difference between a home and owning a house i was replying to a Pp who doesnt.

As you're asking, yes you should move out of your taxpayer-subsidised house, given the huge waiting lists and shortage of council housing in general. Those who have to pay market rent or mortgage have to live in houses of a size they can afford.