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 think people should mind their own business!

I live in a 3 bed council house with my children, and intend to ask to be rehoused to a one bed when the youngest graduates.Knowing that I have failed to provide a family home for the children to rely on as young adults is awful, and has been the main driver for my reluctance to to anything that smacks of "permanence", e.g. decorating, having a shed.But there's no point wishing things were different.I consider living here as like winning the lottery after renting privately. I would never buy it, even if i could afford to, because it helped us when were most in need, and should go to another family in need once we have left.I expect to pay the bedroom tax for a few years as well, which is fair and reasonable.

Day off?

Who pays the interest?

There are very few one bedroom flats in my area. Most one bedroom properties tend to go to pensioners. Not all but there are far more two bedroomed properties than one

I thought they make you move into a smaller 1 bed property these days

I find yours problematic, but here we are.

It doesn’t matter who pays the interest. The point is there’s no “body” benefiting from it other than the bank.

And shortly it’ll be all of the managed funds benefiting from it. That will be paying out your pensions.
The whole ecosystem relies upon one hand feeding the other.
This pillock banging on about how hard they work has probably just realised it’s not serving them well. Hard work and success have a little correlation.

And again
Just can’t resist replying, can you?

No, they don't. DM just had an inspection and was worried about this. They said she could leave in a box, but they would help if she wanted to downsize.

No. They don't. Not in every area. In mine it's voluntary

I think the same.

https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/council_housing_association/downsize_smaller_home

What utter bollocks.

My DF worked F/T almost all his working life, save for 3 months while he found a new job following redundancy. My FIL worked until he developed a disabling health condition in his early 60s, that meant he could no longer do his physically demanding job. My council tenant hairdresser and her retail worker husband work bloody hard, too, as does her paralegal sister.

Off the top of my head, I can only think of two council tenants who don't work among my friends and acquaintances; one is a paraplegic with significant MH issues and the other is a F/T carer for her disabled son.

There simply aren't that many smaller properties, though. It's more than possible she is already on a waiting list to downsize. Older people in council homes with mobility issues get priority but even then often have to wait for a year or more for a suitable property to become available. It's subject to the same points system that getting a house through the council in the first place has. She won't be a priority for moving, particularly if she lives in an area with an older demographic.

Well they do
And you don't make the rules.

It is good Friday lol

I think I’ve got you wrong on this thread. I apologise.

The problem is there isn’t always anywhere local for them to downsize to.

The landlord pays the interest, which is a tax deductible business expense for big commercial landlords but mostly not for your average Joe who’s letting out their flat while they get posted abroad for work for a few years, or because they can’t afford to live in it themselves, or any number of other reasons.

What @caringcarer really means is that the interest is not “paying for the house” because no equity in the house is changing hands. The landlord owns no more of the house at the end of the mortgage as they owned at the start. All that has happened is that the debt has been serviced.

My LA has an unusually high proportion of one-bed properties, for reasons that no-one has ever been able to explain to me. However, they all seem to be in small blocks, with no lifts, so only the g/f flats are really suitable for older people. Luckily, they had the foresight to build quite a lot of one-bed bungalows, too.

It's a completely different picture in the neighbouring LAs. Single people who are entitled to social housing because they are vulnerable in some way often have really long waits for social housing.

As council rents are significantly lower than equivalent private rents, they should only be allowed to under occupy if they can pay the difference. There's a huge shortage of council property and whilst long term we need to just build more bloody houses, short term it's not at all fair for a single person to have a subsidised 3 bed house when so many families are in overcrowded accommodation

Why do it then? 😬

DM is in a 3 bed house, and has to pay the full rent. She is not on benefits. People claiming housing benefit only get benefit according to their needs... so if my mum did claim HB, then she would only get HB to cover a 1 bed place, and would have to make up the shortfall herself. That is what is known as the 'bedroom tax', and is already a thing.

But also they should only be required to move out if a suitable smaller property can be found, and I'd say "suitable" includes within a 30 minute walk of the existing property - we should be making it easy for people to downsize.