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.

If people live within the conditions attached to their tenancy then they can not be forced to leave. That includes paying the extra bedroom tax if claiming housing benefit. The Government should build more social housing.

The other side of the coin is that there are people who would downsize but appropriate older residential housing has not been built. Why would you give up a house with a garden for a flat in a tower block with the kitchen in your living room and paper thin walls.

It's a home insofar as it's the personal dwelling of the family who lives there, while they live there. Like the house of a tenant is their home for the duration of the tenancy, or the owner's house is their home until they sell it by choice or because they are forced to.
Tenancies for life were offered generously when the country was in a position to. It currently is not.

Council tax banding in England and Scotland is based on what the property was worth in 1991.

The private landlord is responsible for repairs to his property .

Thought that was for building houses. Nothing to do with the people living in homes built in the 50s and 60s is it

Not all tenancies are for life in England. More likely to be in Scotland

I have one so
And in my LA they are still a thing
Like I said you cant just make the rules up.

Bullshit. My next door neighbour in an identical flat ( hers owned by the council) has exactly the same council tax bill as me ( we were whinging to each other about it a couple of weeks ago)

Pretty sure my neighbour who bought his council flat decades ago will be in the same council tax band as me.

I was talking about re-banding and some Local Authority Valuation Depts can be quite lazy about this.

My auntie lived in a 2-up 2-down cottage in a Welsh village. She had no central heating, no parking space or garage (which was OK as she didn't drive or own a car) and an outside lavvy. She was in Band A
She rang me one day in a great state to say the Council had put her up into Band B. I asked her when it was they came round to view and assess the property and she said no-one had been.
So I rang the Valuation Dept and queried this. They agreed they hadn't been round but "because all the other properties in the row had been modernised they took it that her's was the same".
I suggested they go and take a closer look.
They did that and she was immediately dropped back to Band A with a refund of what she had paid.

Of course there is another side to this argument. Ideally people shouldn't have more children than they can afford to house adequately - it isn't up to the OP to downsize because others have been lax about contracepton. In addition, there's a dearth of secure social housing for people who want to move into something smaller. And it would certainly be mistake to give up a secure tenancy for a private rental. There are no easy answers to the housing crisis, unfortunately.

It is not the fault of this woman in her mid 60s that some families with children are (allegedly) living in one bed flats. Why should she set herself on fire to keep others warm? She would be incredibly foolish to move, and give up her tenancy. I hope she clings onto it for dear life.

I'm embarrassed for some of the posters on this thread 😬

And this will be factored into the rent.

🤣 same.

Yep, it is easy to put your postcode into the Gov site about bandings, and see what your neighbour's pay.

Why?

Didn't even have to do that. She was waving the bill at me saying " have you seen this? ". Lol

I know. Spouting outdated ideas about social housing with the tone getting progressively worse

Wrong. Council housing IS a home for life. Tenancy for life = home for life.

HTH.

I have one too and only moved to SH a year ago.

@CalmTheFuckDownMargaret In order to bring about the change you deem necessary why not stand in your next local council election? Get yourself a seat in the Commons and table a motion for SH tent ants to be evicted en masse if they’ve got too much space.

So they build more so the next generation can bring their kids up there and then when they move out the parent stays there and the council keep building more
Where is all the money coming from?
Where is all the land coming from?

This. Private rent payments to landlords, are what are clobbering the housing benefits budget. Not social housing. 🤷‍♀️

We stayed in ours until we were 'certain' they weren't going to bounce back..downsized to small bungalow..then our adult son had a MH crisis and nowhere to go, homelessness threatened. As with everywhere now, no help for MH. Certainly no housing!
If we had stayed in the house he could have come home. As it was a friend put him up for a bit.
It's a constant worry that he will relapse and end up on streets as he knows we don't have room so wouldn't ask for help.
So no, it shouldn't be forced.