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.

Wrong. People who rent privately do get repairs etc done.

I can only speak from my personal experience. One of my best mates is Polish. She was a self employed cleaner for years. Doing OK and sharing a house with a mate.

She then moved in with a well off guy who owned a gym and renovated houses in addition to having a decent day job. She lived rent/bill free for years and just did a few beauty treatments as a sideline.

After they split up she got a brand new place on the outskirts of a beautiful cotswold town nearby. Lovely looking place with different coloured bricks etc (looks modern and high quality) and surrounded by young professional families. She's just carried on working part time and would never go back to cleaning or anything like that.

Fair play to her but it's a bit frustrating that she has the choice of working part time and living in a nicer place than I do whilst I work bloody hard. She's on holiday in Portugal atm.

They should clearly move out. They’ve paid well below market rent subsidised by hard-working families. They should free it up and let a family with children upgrade from something smaller.

Because council house tenants aren’t also ‘hard working families’? Where do people get this shit ffs?

SH tenants are also hard working families. Or are you one of those who think SH tenants are all on benefits?

In my area people wait years in houses too big for them to manage waiting for somewhere smaller and suitable to move to. It's not always about hogging family council housing.

How can some people be so bloody stupid? They probably all read the Daily Mail.

The tenant pays the rent to the owner then the owner pays it to the mortgage company to cover the interest. You do realise if the renter lived in the same property with a repayment mortgage they'd be paying a lot more than the rent they pay, yes?

Does it matter?
Why do we have to reduce people down to what they are contributing or not? People are worth more than that. And the people in low paid jobs are still doing something that needs doing.

Our neighbour (a single woman in her mid 60s whose children are in their 40s and left home 20+ years ago) is in social housing and she pays £700 a month rent for her 3 bedroom house where she lives alone. She is an accountant and works full time and has a good income.

Comparable private rent for similar houses in our road is upwards of £2k per month.

I can understand why she wouldn’t want to move as it’s her home but there are families locally living in social housing with their children in one bedroom flats who can’t afford private rent on somewhere bigger.

It isn’t black and white but it doesn’t seem quite fair.

Of course it isn't. I hate the current system (and devote a lot of my free time to trying to change it)

Do you apply this to everyone? Do you, for example, calculate the costs of someone using the NHS? Or state education? Or other public services?

I lived in an area that people didn't want to live in - anti social issues. I'm single and I have paid full rent for around 28 years of the time I've been a council tenant. My last flat was built in the late 70s and this one was built in 1934.

My previous flat had a kitchen that I could put my hands through the cupboard doors due to holes until a new kitchen was put in twenty years after I lived in. Rattling windows - that were fixed eventually that didn't stay fixed for long

I was still grateful as people keep putting it for a roof over my head and even when my landlord did make me homeless - I wasn't given a new build - not that I expected one

I had drug dealer neighbours too

I have a 4 bed house with a lifetime tenancy. Currently I still have two of my children living at home and I love my house. However if it was just me i would happily move into a two bedroom house or flat, but…they no longer give lifetime tenancy ( it has to be renewed every 7 years and i would be paying a much higher rent ( nearer to market rate) than i do now. Why would i do that to myself? They need to make it an attractive prospect to move not one that makes you worse off!

Most of the jobs that I have done that haven't been very well paid haven't been part time ones. They've been full time.

In seems council house tenants can’t win. They’re either lazy benefit claimants leeching off ‘hard working taxpayer’ or the well-to-do who should have moved out years ago.

Council housing is public housing and should be for those in need while they need it. It is not a ‘home for life.’ If you want that, you need a mortgage. Yes, that sucks but we can’t be giving council properties to people for 50 year stretches. Yes, I did grow up in council housing before anyone asks.

It isn’t. My MiL has always been in a council house. It’s not a privilege. She does have lovely home, but it’s not hers really. So if she dies, it will be passed on to another person. A stranger. Mine will be passed onto my sons.

If private renters are paying for repairs in the house they rent, then they are being exploited.

The bigger picture is that there aren't enough social houses to go around and that private renting is too expensive for some people. I don't think it's necessarily the fault of people who have been given tenancies and then their adult kids move out

Well, I wouldn’t mark any difference between “a single parent” and a couple, neither need a three bed.

I think in theory it would be sensible if they could swap to a nicely decorated etc one bedroom in the same area, but I imagine there are lots of real life obstacles to that always being feasible/ practical.

If it is not a 'home for life' then why was my DM told last week during an inspection that she can stay until she dies?

I absolutely agree, it isn’t a straightforward issue.

Why would the answer to the problem of insufficient affordable housing be to make what affordable housing we do have less so?
Few SH tenants would afford such a steep increase without needing to claim top up benefits, so rather than making money, your idea would just be the state robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Some people can't afford to get a mortgage. Why should people have to be in insecure accommodation just because they are on benefits or low incomes?