No more council houses 'for life' - thoughts?

[Ewe]

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A large part of me thinks that with the social housing crisis as it is then this is most certainly a good thing. However, when I start to think about it in more detail I find myself wondering how this could possibly work? How much notice would people get? Would you enable them to downsize if in a house too big? When adult children have left home etc.

I do agree that something needs to be done but it does seem like yet another thing that is going to negatively impact people on benefits (his aim, no doubt!) along with cuts to housing benefit.

The problem starts because social housing is allocated on the basis of housing need rather than financial need.

Most of the council estates I know have houses and flats on the same or adjacent street so people wouldn't have to move out of their communities.

2 frequent causes of death in the elderly are hypothermia and falls down stairs. These would be reduced by moving to smaller flats.

I have seen 2 people exploit the current system so I think it does need some reform.
The first was an employed 20something living with her (both employed) parents in their 7 apartment council house. The second had been on a council waiting list for years but by the time she was offered a flat was living with her boyfriend in a 2 bed £600pcm flat which they could well afford on their £35k joint income.

Well said, claig

As I read it, the principle is as you may earn more during your life, you should give up your council house and move into private sector giving up all your hard earnt wages and probably HB too on paying someone else's mortgage for them on a property probably not maintained.

In the meantime your council house which you have lovingly cared for over the years gets given to someone who probably also is on HB.

I really don't see it.

I think they were brought in to look after poor people and give them decent accommodation. I think that was civilised. We don't want to turn the clock back and return to a brutal dog eat dog world, where we don't help our poor people.

Council rents are subsidised because the housing stock was originally built using public money and councils get grants from central government to improve it. Council housing expenses are never covered by the rents received (even taking into account top-ups from housing benefit).

Go ahead, get tearful about little old ladies forced out of family homes (to be put into perfectly comfortable flats with equally low rents), my sympathy is always going to be with the families that need that family housing rather than the people who are a bit miffed that they may have to register at a new doctor's surgery . I'm afraid I don't understand the comment about "who or what they may have to live next to". Other council tenants?

"Private tenants have to pay a lot more because the landlord has to make a profit on costs which include inflated house prices."

Private tenants have to pay more because the owner paid full price for the property.

Council tenants are "subsidised" because many of the properties were built using subsidies back in the boom years.

So the original asset was subsidised.

I would also be very curious to learn that Council Housing is profit making, and if it's not then it's being subsidised still.

But let's make it cleat that subsidised isn't a dirty word.

"It is an erosion of the bond between the State and the people. Some jobsworth bureaucrat can change people's lives with the stroke of a pen."

Reviewing of every other benefit happens and people's lives are changed without it being an erosion of the bond between the state the the people.

I was on unemployment benefit once, I got a job, I lost it, no one said that was an erosion of any bond. Rather it was just that I didn't need the safety net anymore so the money I was having went back into the pot to help someone else.

And when we talk of "pensioners" realise that most children leave the parental home long before parents retire, so the people who would be affected wouldn't be pensioners but middle aged parents.

If we try and argue that pensioners will be kicked out or asylum seekers will take your grannies home then we will loose this upcoming argument because we would be wrong.

Nothing will shoot those trying to make sure that any proposals are fair and balanced in the foot quicker than ill informed and inaccurate scare stories.

I'm not getting involved in this because I have a HA house and do not want to give it up. I know it wouldn't apply to me, I'm just trying out how it would feel. But I am a big fat hypocrite because I do feel that RTB-ers should have had to give some profit back and that high earners should move into private housing. But in typical fashion, I don't want it to apply to me.

Just a thought though - is this not going against some fairly ingrained Tory thinking? What happened to not penalising people for doing well? Hardly much of an incentive for people is it: come off the dole and you'll be a whole £100pw better off (until we take your house back cos you're too successful).

Does the right to keep your own home only apply to the inheritance tax/nursing home arguments then?

We've all seen council estates with overgrown gardens, derelict car in front, cardboard over broken windows, curtains that havent been washed in years, children wandering estate at all times, loud music, teenage hooligans. NOT SAYING all council tenants are like this. We have all witnessed properties and anti social behaviour. If you are living next door, possibly sharing pathway or gate with anti social family and paying full rent and council tax, the council has a duty of care to you as a respected tenant and should want you there.

Council rents are reasonable. Private rented sector are out of all proportion

"We don't want to turn the clock back and return to a brutal dog eat dog world, where we don't help our poor people."

No we don't.

I want there to be social housing provision, I think it's very important that there is and I also believe it to be a "civilised" thing to do.

However....

There's something odd about it being probably the only benefit that once you get you never have reassessed when your need changes.

There's also something wrong about middle aged parents whose children have flown the nest living in a multi-bedroom property built, if not continually funded, by public subsidies while young families struggle away in a tiny flat.

We are all saying council where many have sold their stock to a Housing Association by now. Same tenants and applying is through the council's criteria and administration but they are profit making I believein most cases.

lalalonglegs, you probably live in some ivory tower or are a state bureaucrat. Do you know any old ladies who live in council homes? Do you realise how much they value the contact with neighbours who they have lived next to for years? Do you know how change frightens them and how safe they feel in the streets that they have known for years? Most of them want to stay where they are. It is only heartless state bureaucrats who consult their lists and are prepared to uproot them.

My mum lives in a council owned property and has lived there for nearly 40 years. It is in a private road, not on a council estate. She brought us up there, lived all her married life with my step-dad there. When she moved in it was newly built, so she is the only tenant ever to have lived in the house. Over the years, she has :
had the garden landscaped and it is now full of mature plants and shrubs, rather than the mud heap it was when we moved in,
had the windows double glazed
had central heating put in
had the kitchen fitted and then re-fitted
had the bathroom re fitted
maintained the outside (window frames etc) to a very high standard
All out of her own pocket. Does anyone seriously think that tenants would be happy to do that if they thought they might only be living in the property for a few years?

If she had to move, she would have to leave the area and move to an estate, because our LA only has flats and 'old people's' accommodation on their estates. Therefore she would have to leave her friends behind, as well as having to change doctors etc.

I appreciate that the current proposal indicates this would only apply to future tenancies, but really, if it goes through, how long does anyone think it will be until they announce that insufficient housing has been freed up and therefore they are extending it to current tenants?

"how long does anyone think it will be until they announce that insufficient housing has been freed up and therefore they are extending it to current tenants?"

excellent point, what's next? They are dismantling housing security one brick at a time, and hoping that nobody will notice.

I agree with you Claig. My Mum has lived in her 3 bed council house for 35 years, logically it makes sense for them to ship her out and make room for a family to move in, but emotionally it is her home where she has bought up her children and now has her grandchildren to stay regularly. She has never claimed benefits and her and my stepdad have probably paid for the house twice over in rent over the years. Surely that has got to count for something.
It always annoys me, the assumption that all HA tenants must be on benefits, or scrounging off the state, as usual it is the minority that gives the majority a bad name.
I'm in a HA house, not my choice of house or area tbh but I don't have that choice. I live in one of the most expensive areas in the country and there is no way I could afford to rent privately or buy a house so I make do with my little council house (which I work hard to pay for!). I would hate to have the constant threat of eviction hanging over my head as my dc grow up.

Yes, ginny, that's what i meant about council respecting tenants like your family who have probably paid for the house twice over.

Life isn't as easy as politicians want it to be is it? And there are no easy solutions

why do people say that a HA house is a "benefit"??
we were moved into our HA by the council as they could adapt our existing house.
we pay all the rent and are not on benefits, but we could never afford to move.
couldn't even afford the deposit for the through the floor lift we would need.

'Social housing, as with most benefits, should be a hand-up, not a hand-out.'

Not everyone is going to be a high-flyer, able to buy a home or pay full private-sector rent.

So what then? Do they get help from the state to prop up the inflated market or do you just let them know that because they work in a care home or hotel, let's suppose like my DH they are too learning disabled to be a high-flyer but they still work, that they deserve to live in slum housing?

Do you expect them to accept this because that is capitalism?

Because if they private rent you are subsidising them even more, you know. Otherwise you send the message to them that they are scum who deserve to live in a slum, and I've a funny feeling they're not going to take that lying down for very long.

What do you do when the cost of housing is too high for those who provide vital services like care home assistant or hotel worker in a place like London becomes too high and that same government makes it harder for immigrants, who often come on their own without their families and can therefore live more cheaply or hook up with a rogue landlord who breaks the rules and houses 15-25 in a one or two bed flat, to come in and do the work?

What then, when your population starts to become more and more aged?

I think what a lot of people forget is that we can't all be high earners.
Many people work for a pittance minimum wage and if it weren't for social housing they really couldn't survive. For them social housing isn't a 'benefit' its a necessity.

"I would hate to have the constant threat of eviction hanging over my head as my dc grow up."

exactly right. This policy will make people feel like scroungers, as if favours are being done. There will be newspaper stories of families in need, and people will have to justify why they should be allowed to stay in their homes, when there are needier people in the queue. A home represents security, which is why this policy will break the bond between the state and the public. The public will start asking whose side the state is on, and why they have created a climate of insecurity?

BadgersPaws, your comment "There's something odd about it being probably the only benefit that once you get you never have reassessed when your need changes." can probably be explained because the cost of housing is completely disproportionate to any other benefit.

If you're on JSA (or whatever it is now) you get X amount of money that you're supposed to use to pay for food/utilities, etc. IF you then get a job, your earnings will cover the same amount, so it's right that JSA stops. However, you can have two people, with one child, both working full time on minimum wage jobs, and even their combined income will be insufficient to pay a private rent (let alone a mortgage) and still leave them enough left over for food/utilities and all the other things that would have been subsidised while they were completely dependent on benefits. The state recognises this, which is why you don't have to vacate once you start earning. Housing cost is the biggest factor leading to poverty in this country, particularly among the working poor, who don't qualify for benefits but could not afford to go into the private sector. Food/utilities/prescriptions/other things paid for by benefits just cannot compare in the same way.

If genuine need is there, then no one will be evicted. Nothing will change.

But who defines 'genuine need'?

You can argue that a couple with a joint income of £25,000 doesn't need subsidised housing, but if they have two children, one of each gender, and are having to pay for childcare (even childcare when children are in school can cost £5000 a year for two), that income will not pay a private rent on a three-bed property in many parts of this country.

Why is it accepted as a given that there is not enough affordable housing?

We need to build more affordable accommodation- not these shared ownership schemes which cost as much each month as private rentals in most places, and are rarely suitable for families.

Squabbles over who is entitled to the paltry amount of social housing whilst ignoring the fact that most of it was sold off during the 80s is bizarre.

Council housing is not a hand out. People pay rent.

Council tenants are not subsidised. They pay rent. (Some may qualify for housing benefit but so do people in private rental so it's irrelevant.) The rent is not discounted - the gap between private rental and council house rental reflects the madness of our housing market and the prices private landlords pay for property (and that private landlords choose to maximise their profits - long gone are the days of Guinness and Peabody).

Yes, the land may belong to the council and the houses were built with council money, but that does not mean the tenants are being subsidised. Especially since very little council housing has been built over the past 30 years - these are largely houses that were built over 30 years ago.

I do wish people who want to sneer at those less well off than themselves would bother to check their ruddy facts first.