social housing changes

[Strix]

Can someone enlighten me? I read this article and two statements really surprised me. I want to know if they are true.

Statement 1:

"At present, council tenants keep their property for life unless they breach their tenancy agreement, for example, by engaging in anti-social behaviour. They can also pass their homes onto their children."

Surely it is possible to get out of your rut, finish uni, get a good job, and leave the council house behind. But, why would you if you can live for free for the rest of your life and then pass the house onto your children. I must have missed something. Someone please clarify that this story is misleading.

Statement 2:

"There are currently some eight million tenants in social housing in England. "

As I think there are a toal of some 50 million people living in England (including quite a lot of foreigners who would not qualify for social housing) this sounds like a very high figure. I wonder what percentage of UK residents are in social housing in England?

Again, please come tellme I have been misled by this article.

we pay a % of our rent, as dh is low earner and disabled. HB covers the rest.

but once his hours increase as does his income (and mine hopefully) then we will be paying the full rent.

we have done a LOT to this house. we took it on in a bit of a state, but was clean and tidy. it needed more work doing to it than ia relised, and still needs more. the one thing i cant afford to do is redo the 80's style kitchen with cupboards hanging off. this is apparently down to the HA to be done in the next 5 yrs. so for now its maintanence work and repairs by moi. i need to fix the drawer thats broken again, fix the handles which are hanging off, seal the leaking outside pipe. yes technically i could call the HA to do it, but with a long waiting list for 'non-urgent' repairs, its quicker for me to do them or calll someone in.

i love this house. its big enough for our needs, even though we are technically overcrowded.

The reason the tenancy endures is to keep up social cohesion, as a previous poster stated. It also means that tenants have a greater interest in the upkeep of the home and can plan their lives (schooling etc) in a context of stability. (And why shouldn't it be handed on - the rich get to hand out their assetts to family members. These proposals sound vicious and utterly disastrous to me. Like everything else coming out right now. And they will just displace and magnify problems.

I am interested because I am interested in the finances of this country. There are a lot of cuts being announced, and I would like to form an opinion on whether I agree/disagree with them. I accept that the country needs to balance the books. But, there are some cuts I think are a good idea and some which I think aren't. For example, I think they should leave education alone.

So, I read this story this morning (as I thought I explained in the OP) and I just wonder if all those figures are real or if they are deliberately misleading -- as the media sometimes does. One of the things that alarmed me was 8 million out of 50 million living in what I thought were paid for houses. Now, much of that has been corrected here. I am quite happy to admit I don't know a lot about social housing. But, now that I know 8 million is not at all the figure I thought it was, I just wonder how many do live in free houseing. Are we talking about 1% or 25% of the population. Obviously, if it is 25%, I would think that was too high to be sustainable.

But, it sounds to me like the BBC was looking a for, so I'd just like to understand the true picture, and therefore the true cost of supporting these houses.

I don't mean to offend anyone. And I'm not passing judgement on anyone who lives in a council/social whatever it's called house. Just like to understand the country's finances so I can form an opinion on whether or not I support the government chosen course of action.

I hope not to have offended anyone.

I would be interesed to know the percentage of people liviong in ex council houses that they bought under the right to buy.

On the estate that I live, half of the houses are privately owned. They were bought several years ago when the discounts available were huge. That has stopped now.

All those houses nearly given away. Who pays for that mistake?

If you are talking about housing benefit ..a lot of people in private rents claim hb not just council house tenants

it costs a lot more to support people that they've "encouraged" into private rental than to let them stay in Social Housing.

To be honest, I'm lost on HB vs council vs was there something else? Didn't realise it was all so complicated.

HB= housing benefit. A means tested benefit paid to those on a low income to pay rent. This can be to the LA,HA or private landlords. Only paid up to a certain amount.

HA=housing association. A body providing social, affordable housing. House people via local authority that reach a certain criteria

LA= local authority. The council. Provide social housing.

HTH

"Didn't realise it was all so complicated."

- and that's just the housing part of it, then you need to know whether you're applying for CA, DLA, ESA, JSA, IS, CTC, etc etc

"I am in a HA flat and pay full rent. It is very cheap considering it's in London, but it is not subsidised by anybody."

If it's a new build HA property then it was more than likely subsidised by the tax payer.

Day to day costs of a HA are meant to be met by their rents and service charges, however that's unlikely to cover the cost of actually build the property. So the Housing Association is funded by the Housing Corporation (before 2008) or the Homes and Communities Agency (after 2008). They were both funded by central Government.

So new build HA properties are only able to offer the rents that they do because the cost of building the property was picked up by the tax payer.

So that means it is subsidised, or it was subsidised and the HA could never offer the rents it did had that subsidy not been there.

Not that that's a bad thing, well not in my view anyway. But HAs can only offer new homes because of that public subsidy.

Day to day costs of a HA are meant to be met by their rents and service charges, however that's unlikely to cover the cost of actually build the property. So the Housing Association is funded by the Housing Corporation (before 2008) or the Homes and Communities Agency (after 2008). They were both funded by central Government.

Or perhaps the money came from the proceeds of all the houses sold off in the 80's and 90's.

Badgers paw - some HAs do build without subsidy or cross subsidise the afforable housing with housing for sale on new developments, but the vast majority of HAs which develop, rely on public subsidy to do so.

With the affordable housing budget decimated going, looks like it'll be down to councils to build from now on. They have hardly built anything for years and the incentives (councils keeping rents etc) aren't terribly attractive, and there is no stick to make it happen as Eric Pickles has already scrapped all local authority targets, the regional housing strategies council were working towards and is in the process of dismantling the organisations which support and help deliver these strategies.

i ave a tenency strix.....i like here near MK in a 3 bed house,i can apply/bid to move to a 3 bed,or eventually take my tenency to a smaller 2 bed.....or i can take my tenency to a house in cornwall or a flat in yorkshire.....the tenency leaves my options open....

I am no closer to understanding the finances and if I support this advertised 50% cut in the housing budget. But, I am now firmly of the view that the system is much too complicated and involves too many beaurocratic overheads.

I live in a (Victorian)HA flat, claim no benefits, pay rent which is about 60% less than market value and have a year long tenancy which is renewed every year.

Am I draining the taxpayer or not? I can't work it out...

"I live in a (Victorian)HA flat, claim no benefits, pay rent which is about 60% less than market value and have a year long tenancy which is renewed every year."

The HA might have received a Government subsidy to buy the property and renovate it. However you definitely meeting the day to day costs of the property. It's that initial subsidy that can keep those costs low enough for HAs to function, they don't have the high mortgage that a private land lord would have that requires a high rent to cover.

"Am I draining the taxpayer or not? I can't work it out..."

Well I wouldn't call it "draining", Social Housing is, in my opinion, something the Government should be funding.

My point is that in most cases it's not true to say that HAs can offer below market cost property at no "cost" to the tax payer.

"The HA might have received a Government subsidy to buy the property and renovate it."

Hmm.. unlikely, as they acquire the property in the 1940s. I will check, though.

Strix -the cuts in the housing budget refer to the pot of money used to subsidise the building of new homes.

Majority of these homes are built by HAs and private developers and become homes for rent but some are sold through affordable sale initiatives.

With the budget cuts it's likely all new build of affordable housing will stop or slow down. The govt are hoping to encourage local authorities to start building to fill the gap by letting them keep all their rents and increase rents if they want in order to raise the money to build (something they can't currently do).

Many local authorities haven't built houses for years or have sold off all their housing to HAs so it'll be interesting to see what will happen and combined with the housing benefit cap, it'll put more pressure on the huge waiting lists

My feeling is (and many might disagree with me) that most people cannot afford to buy property (even those who have done so). All it takes is ONE redundancy or other knockback to see a familyu without a home if there are no other means of paying the mortgage (and in mnay cases there ARE no other means).

Selling off the majority of social housing stock without making provision for replacing it is in my opinion one of the worst betrayals of the needy that this country has ever seen.

Those of us lucky enough to have social housing (and in my case that is a three bed upper maisonette on a slum estate) have to be grateful for what we have but it does not take into account need as most people are not in ideal circumstances even then due to shortahe of stock. So we have single elderly people in 4 bedroom houses with massive gardens while young families are crammed into two bedroom flats.

And - just to add to all the others here - my home is not free, I pay all my rent as I earn too much for housing benefit. If private rental was more secure then I could and would look to the private sector but my son is autistic and change is difficult. I need the security that this place brings (however unsavoury it is here).

Historically, the state/the lord of the manor/the Cadbury family/Lever brothers have always recognised that if you want to put a roof over the head of the working population/the people who work for you, you can't rely on the vagaries of private landlords and the housing market. This is the origins of social housing.

At some point during the last century, it was also decided that the workhouse was a bad idea, and the unemployed, elderly and disabled should be supported by the social security system. This is the origin of housing benefit.

Some people who receive benefits live in social housing. Plenty of people who work very hard also live in social housing. Unfortunately, at some point during the last conservative government, people became a bit vague about why we need social housing.

DP's wage is £16K pa. The average 3-bed mid-terrace house here costs £210K. A total of more than 13 times DP's annual income. We cannot afford to buy. If we private rent a 3-bed, the cost is £900pcm. HB would pay 50% of that, leaving us to find £450 a month rent out of £1000 take-home pay. Not do-able if we wish to feed the dc and pay our bills. To rent our HA 'social housing' costs £450 pcm. Which HB pays half of. WHich leaves us with £225pcm to pay as a top-up on our rent. Much more affordable as a percentage of DP's take home pay, although still a struggle. Raise our rent to the 'market level' we are homeless, or with a home we can't afford to pay gas/electric/water bills for. at how people can't understand what is essentially a simple concept.

I do thinkHA housing should be aassessed every 3 years or so. here's why......#

My parents have lived in their lovely council house for over 30 years. My mum has been keen for years to move to a 1-2 bed bungalow, but the council hasn't had anything nice on offer. If she formally puts her name on the list, she gets 3 offers then her name is taken off the list, and she stays in her nice 3-bed house. Yep, that a family would desperately need. Shes' tried harassing the council into giving her priority on 1-2 bed bungalows so that she can get out of thwe house. But thems the rules apparetn;y..........

meanwhile my sister, her bubby and her 3 children are stuck in a tiny 2 bed house, working nightshifts etc to pay their private rent.

Mad.

sistyer's hubby, sorry

if you are faced with being moved on so regularly,then it would need to work both ways

a 3 yearly reassesment would nean also providing larger properties for a growing family,just as downsizing a decreasing family!!!

how does that happen then? it wont....there isnt the housing stock

The new reassessments will only affect new council tenants, presumably so as to avoid the horror stories of old people being removed from their homes. So the benefits to be gained from freeing up properties will take a long time to come into existence.