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.

Everyone knows council houses and housing association do not pay full market rents. They are subsidised by council tax payers.

My mum has lived in her home for 24 years, it’s 3 bedrooms. There is now just her. I don’t see why she should give her home up that she has maintained and decorated and lived in for so many years. It isn’t my mums fault that there isn’t enough social housing or that people keep having kids that they can’t house
Maybe because your mum was lucky to get the house on a first place?

This is how it goes:

• I made wrong choices in life, I'm now on the shit, it's your problem to sort me out now because you have a social responsibility towards me and my kids (I accept that some people find themselves in the shit through very poor luck kny, but they are the majority).
• My needs must be met NOW. I should be the government priority.
• Finalky I get what I deserve. It's only right, after all it's not my fault of my life turned shit and I can't sort it on my own.
• I could sort myself out on my own now but I font want to. Why should I? I am as entitled to an easier life as those who achieved it through good choices and sacrifices.
• I don't care other people have more needs than I. I am more important to me. I am owed what I have and it's now mine and mine only!

Yeah, a great society we've become!

My mum is in a council house and has always worked.
Stop reading the Daily Mail and taking it as gospel.

' more likely'. Do read a comment before you reply.

It isn’t theirs any more than my rented house is mine. State-owned housing is a public asset in short supply, and should be allocated efficiently.

Yes, the same as in a council house.

What a vile post.

Of course something being affordable isn't a privilege!
It is nowadays, as a free health system. Sadly, too many have been brought with such an entitled attitude, they gave lost the ability to distinguish due and privileged.

It wasn't your post I was responding to. Not sure why you felt the need to pull me on it

🤨

When I got given my keys, both me and my husband worked full time.

Not reading the post properly. Prize goes to you 🏆

My DPs stayed in their 3-bed council house until they died, some 15 years after my brother left home. However, they were in the early stages of dementia when he moved out and never would have coped with moving to a new area, and there were no smaller social housing properties around where they lived.

They'd been in social housing for nearly 50 years, always paying full rent, and had probably repaid the cost of building and maintaining the house over that time. I'd have preferred them to have moved, tbh, it would have forced them to get rid of all the stuff they'd hoarded over half a century and saved me spending a fortnight doing it after they'd gone.

My MIL is still in the 2-bed council house she moved into in 1961. She'll never move, she's spent all those years creating the most fabulous garden (over 100 different varieties of roses) and it would break her heart to leave her life's work. She's amazingly fit for an 87 year old and in full possession of her marbles, and if the council tried to force her to downsize, her adult kids would help her exercise her right to buy it and pay for it themselves. She gets full housing benefit (no "bedroom tax" for pensioners), and has done since her husband retired nearly 30 years ago.

In principle, I think it's wrong that older people are occupying much-needed family housing, but when you look at individual cases, it's also asking people to make massive changes at a time in their lives when that is most challenging. And of course, if successive governments hadn't failed to build social housing in any meaningful numbers, the debate wouldn't be necessary.

If she’s working why doesn’t she move out and rent a private place?

Just like people raised in private houses.

We worked and lived in social housing my parents worked and lived in social housing , we live in an ex council house on one of those "council estates" posters keep refrencing .where it is a mix of still SH and owned people work, I don't know why people think SH tenants don't have jobs.

There are people who buy their council homes so that they don't have to pay rent in retirement -particularly single people. I personally don't think everyone who buys a council house is selfish - when my mum bought hers she was a single parent on one income and would have struggled to buy elsewhere. Her rent was twice her mortgage.

I don't think people should be blamed for having the opportunity to buy.

Because people are allowed to work and live in council housing.

Why are you assuming council tenants are not working and sponging off the state?
Have a little think about your plan to limit tenancies to a year
It would be extremely expensive to have families constantly in and out of council houses not to mention disruptive.

Unless the government build more social housing it will continue to be like gold dust. They could also charge higher rents so councils got more money back to buy up empty properties to add to their housing stock. At the moment council rents are about 1/3 of market rents. They could I crease them to 1/2 then over time 3/4. In this way more people with families could be helped.

If council house tenants have to earn below a certain level they will just make sure that they do. E.g. if this couple had to earn below 60k they will just go part time simple as that.

If people have to keep full occupancy to keep their home some people will just keep having kids at regular intervals to the limit of their fertility.

Kicking people out of their homes to give them to families (along with removing the 2 child benefit cap) will just cause a resurgence in the "I have 6 kids it is my right to have a massive new build home provided by the tax payer" attitude. An attitude that has dwindled as Council 's have been telling people that yes they might have 3 kids in a one bed flat but the Council has no properties to give.

Perhaps people who can only afford to live in a one bed flat should think about how many kids they choose to have.

How do a couple both working full time qualify for council housing and subsidised rent?

Because social housing is secure and private housing isn't?

Most social housing is running by 'not for profit' organisations with the rent usually being 80% of 'market' value. That doesnt mean its being subsidised by the tax payer it just means they cant make a profit like private landlords.

Why shouldn't people who work live in council or social housing?