Council Housing Lambeth rent increases

[Squgiggle]

Rent rises in Lambeth of approximately 17% 9% 9% 9% over the past four years (not to mention previous increases), mean in real terms my rent has doubled in under 10 years, I am a working single mother on a low income, not low enough to claim housing benefit and no desire to do so, although financially it would seem we would be better off.

When I complained in the past over the 17% rise along with many other tenants, I was told by Lib Peck herself that it was due to all kitchens and bathrooms being replaced.

More and more onus has been placed on the tenant for repairs, Lambeth does no decoration, has scrapped promise to improve kitchens and bathrooms, yet we're extorted with rent increases every year.

With the money taken from us we may have been able to improve council properties for ourselves employing tradesmen who take pride in what they do and treat the tenant like a client, as it is, we are left with no money to improve our surroundings and receive poor customer service from every department.

My kitchen sink unit fell apart whilst waiting to be included in aforementioned scrapped scheme, it took three appointments to get it replaced (including a revisit when my kitchen flooded as a result) and it has been done to a very poor standard.
Who makes these arbitrary decisions? I have been expected to find an extra £60 per month, £40 per month, £40 per month £40 I'm now paying £180 more a month than 5 years ago......When will it end?

Squgiggle I fail to understand what you working has to do with anything?, Are you insinuating that the majority of those in council housing are scrounging scum and you are somehow better then them thus your moaning is more valid then theirs?.

I come from an estate in West London, my retired parents still live there, the flat has asbestos in the ceilings/floors, no central heating, the bathroom is falling to bits and in the 34 years they have been there they have had the kitchen replaced twice and given up and made there own repairs to it for years, they don't have the original kitchen side anymore it's a piece of varnished mdf glued on top of the cupboards and they had to buy their own wall mounted cupboards because the council no longer provide them.

Still they don't complain because they know they are lucky to still have a 3 bedroom council place with a garden, balcony and two toilets, they know I can't get on the list. They know me, my son and my boyfriend live in a privately rented 1 bed flat for £800 a month. They know that hardly anyone can get a council place now and the councils are housing many people in cheap bed-sits or hotels until they give up on getting a council place and go private or move in with friends instead.

Point of the matter is Council/HA housing is still cheaper then private landlords and they can't shaft you like the landlords can, if the rents have to go up to pay for repairs far enough, if they put them up to pay for the building of new council places even better.

Round here the council housing is being reduced, they kicked people out of the older blocks under the lie of renovation, finding them new places in other borough and the like and then instead of renovating they knocked the places down and replaced them with the scam that is affordable housing under the part rent, part buy scheme.

You know what they say, you don't know what you got until it's gone.

oh yes the ha you think you've got it hard with one leg i've got none and i work 22 hours a day after dragging myself there on a skateboard so you should be grateful argument.

i can't get a council house so you should pay more and suffer.

nice logic.

blu the housing association that took over the council housing stock here on the premise that they'd do renovations such as you list immediately took 5 years to even get started and years on they're still not finished. they all talk a good wall when they're after getting millions of pounds of housing stock for peanuts.

I started this thread making the point that council rent is being paid by people on low incomes, that it is more and more difficult to find the money as it continues to rise way above inflation. Tenants also are expected to pay for a lot of repairs and all decoration.
I am not, nor would I call anyone names. In fact I sympathise with those who are unemployed and long-term unemployed. People in that position with their rent being paid by housing benefit may not be as keenly aware of and fighting this issue right now, it will be ever more difficult for them to pay the new, far larger amounts when they come to find a job.
If those of us who are already really feeling the rent increases, try to do something, we may be able to help each other and those in need of social housing in the future.
'If you tolerate this, then your children will be next' springs to mind.

I'd also like to point out that a large number of people who work in the public sector who live in H/A or council housing have had their hours cut, jobs deleted or pay frozen, this move to continuously raise these rents whilst also poorly managing (lack of overseeing work and contractors, then selling off stock in disrepair ) properties makes little sense and nobody seems to be standing up and explaining where they expect this money to come from or 'saying' where it's 'going to be spent' this time.

Thank you for all your positive and constructive comments.

It's Lambeth.

They're renowned for it. I live in the borough too.
Voted for our street to be made residents parking after being assured it would be a flat rate annual fee of £60 for all cars.
five years on we're paying over £300.

Thanks Betelguese, I did contact my MP, Chuka Umunna. My OP was an excerpt from that letter, which I also copied to various others.....
When I finally received a reply a couple of weeks ago, it was disappointingly vague and failed to address the points made : 'Thank you for your email. The cost of living is rising at an extraordinary rate and I am doing everything I can both locally and nationally to make sure that the effect of this is mitigated and that the Government acts to prevent the squeeze that many people in the constituency are experiencing.
If there is a specific payment that you think is owed to you by the Council I or one of my caseworkers may be able to help, so please let me know the details if this is the case.'
You may not be surprised at that, nor that my reply (stating that his response had not answered my questions....) has not been answered .... Perhaps more people will be moved to write to him or their MP. when he appeared on Question Time, I sent in the same questions to no avail. On a lighter note I am in the process of contacting the London Assembly members (although I am of course aware that it's happening all over the country). I have also been contacted by a journalist who is writing a feature on housing. Will let you know how that pans out.

Hi Nancy66, I agree, after the congestion zone was created, all the surrounding unrestricted streets became 'car parks', this was unpredicted, unforeseen ??! For over a year, it was a nightmare to park, people arguing and circling waiting for people to leave to take their kids to school, schools that they'd have been walking to if the council hadn't sold them off . So then they charge people (and any family or friends visiting) to park outside their home, a reasonable rate at first then hike it up to a ridiculous rate. It is extortion, I don't understand why if a car is registered and insured to a resident, the permit should be free or cost a nominal fee, with a friend's 2/3 hour permit that you can reuse. Instead now we have traffic warden cars (driving around with cameras on the top), scooters and bikes, not exactly keeping costs and pollution down with our money.

"Betelguese Sat 14-Apr-12 19:21:35

The Council tenants are the most needy and disadvantaged because they have no other chance to find an affordable roof and their incomes are low. Those renting privately can move at any time somewhere else. More social housing is needed - but unfortunately much social stock is sold to those who resold it to make a fortune"

Thats simply not true,I'm in London and the majority of Londoners are shut out of social housing simply because they are in work, people are being fleeced by private landlords left right and centre, constantly hunting for the needle in a haystack that is the rents they can afford, have you any idea how many people working ful-time live in shared accommodation and tiny little shoe box sized studio flats/bed sits?, have you any idea how hard it is to find an affordable rental when you have children?.

When my parents got their council place 34 years ago, the point of them was to ease the over crowding problem of the private rental sector, to give working families a decent sized place to live, the mentally ill and disabled where housed elsewhere by other schemes.

Now families of 4 are living in one bed over priced rentals, the quality of our properties some of the lowest in europe, illegal housing springing up in the back gardens of the wealthy, while councils use their properties as nothing more then dumping grounds for the disabled, mentally ill, unemployed and immigrants, little ghettos where the less productive can be forgotten about while the rest of us full tax paying saps are thrown to the wolves.

I find it deeply insulting that you say that "those renting privately can move at any time", that is just plain wrong.

Can you believe a private tenant who pays 800- 1k for a deposit (money given to them by their parents upon moving out of London because they can no longer afford to live here). pays £400+ a month for a bedsit/studio flat with minimal furniture that looks like it came from a junk shop (bed, sofa, wardrobe and coffee table, secondhand fridge and a hotplate it pretty much the norm).

From landlords who take months to fixthings when they break ( I spent 2 Christmases without heating and hot water at my last place) and think they can repair everything themselves when they don't have a clue (my kitchenette worktop was a piece of MDF bolted to the wall and held up at one side by a bit a copper pipe and my smoke alarm which was fine when I moved in was later connected to the light switch so it went to the battery power when the lights went off). Landlords who don't give a crap about mice, carpet beetle and bed bug infestation.

You try moving at "any time" in London and how are you to pay for a court case when you don't earn enough to save and are just scrapping by, plus your landlord has your deposit which you need back to help pay for the next place after you have borrowed the money for the deposit for the new hole to live in (and when you do manage to get your deposit back they have taken off a load as a admin fee) and until you get it back there is all ways the fear that you start anything they will come out with some bullshit reason to keep all of it, what are you to do when all your calls to the council over H&S issues fall on deaf ears?.

Why do you think there are so many Payday lenders in London?, most people renting here are workers just scraping by, look at the old houses as you walk by most have multiple door bells because they have been split into as many tiny flats for workers as they can manage, most people I know are just scrapping by.

The Landlords know that, they take the piss because we are trapped, we are all very well aware that our rents our higher then mortgage payments on much larger and nicer places, but most young working people in London are trapped in the catch 22 of don't have the money to save for a deposit, can't save because all the money goes on the high rents, Can't move out to cheaper area of the country because that would be making yourself intentionally unemployed with no guarantee you'd be able to find another job and no savings to fall back on.

Honestly you are living in cloud cookoo land with a very rosy view of the private sector that hardly anyone enjoys, there is a whole load of people/families on minimum wage being treated like shit and living in crap holes thanks to greedy, useless, damn right nasty and in some cases threatening Landlords.

As for the thing about nice flats round good schools you are joking right? most people are not renting penthouses in Kensington, the hard pressed workers being taken for a ride by landlords are above a Ladbrokes in Kensal Rise, in an old house converted into 20 bedsits just off Acton high road. or in the case of me now between an A road and an industrial estate, above a pub.

I definitely think there should be regulations and standardisation of private rentals, the most common argument against rent control in the private sector is the free market etc... the freedom of all people is surely the most important issue. An enormous number of people feel trapped in substandard living conditions and I have to agree with Blu 'As for all the griping and sniping - rather than have everyone on sky-high rents and reliant on low-security rentals which use housing benefit to pay someone's buy-to-let mortgage I'd rather see more people in social housing. On fair rents.'
Housing benefit has ensured the regularity of payments, which for landlords has provided peace of mind. I was shocked to find that the cap on housing benefit rents was at £400 per week, that means more was being paid, a totally ludicrous situation when a majority of working people couldn't even dream of paying that much.
I would add that with rent control, when rent is paid, any mortgage shortfall should come from the owner, it is after all, their investment. The benefit to the owner could be that the council efficiently carry out safety checks and help with collection of rents and any arrears ?? This would allow the housing market to be more settled as would perhaps discourage buy to let. I also believe that landlords should be held strictly to those standards and compulsory purchases for social housing should be brought in for private landlords currently providing accommodations that are below standard. Compulsory purchases are made for roads to allow a flow of cars..... People on minimum wage or low incomes do have to live somewhere. Humanity and logic should prevail. Not the capitalist, dog eat dog coupled with lazy management/bureaucracy and hiding behind 'freedom for some' way of thinking that has got us in this mess.

We need capping on house prices and rent pure and simple, we are in the stupid situation now that people on benefits have more disposable income at the end of the month then those who work full time and thats just plain wrong.

I work in housing and have seen council housing sold and not replaced which is part of the reason for the massive shortages today. At the same time housing associations were seen as the vehicle for social housing (as not counted as public sector debt) but the grant rates provided to build new houses have been reduced and reduced to the point that rents had to increase to pay for new housing. This happened under the thatcher governenment when they switched the funding from bricks and mortar to people. At the time they were clearly warned about the rise in rents. The Tories response - Housing Benefit would increase and could carry the weight.

The crisis in HB payments - make no mistake this the Tories caused this. It's horrendous when the most vulnerable people are housed and when they get on their feet they can't afford to work, due to the high rents and the need for 100% Housing Benefit.

You need to look beyond now and learn from history. The Tories also brought in assured and assured shorthold rents which were designed to be higher than fair rents.

The solution: rent control and more house building. We are going back 1900's when social housing was introduced on a large scale to deal with the problems we will face over the next 10 years if things go on as they are.

I hate the way the Tories con everyone into a spiteful scrap over the crumbs from the rich man's table, rather than asking how come he's grabbed the biggest slice of the pie. Private rental can be shit, so protest about that, don't slag off social housing tenants. No point those at the bottom and middle of the heap turning on each other - aim your fire at the government and the players in the housing market who have made it so shit (the banks, for starters).

So you were born in Lambeth so what? 1000s upon 1000s of people who rent privatly or buy have to move from the area where they were born and live somewhere cheaper, I had to do that, I was born in Wimbledon, all my familiy and friends were there but I couldnt afford to live there when I got married we had to move to another area.

Here on The Island the young people are leaving in droves due to the high cost of housing and low wages and lack of jobs, the same is happening in places like Devon and Cornwall where young local people have to move away, just becuase you were born somewhere does not give you a God given right to live there thats a fact of life

Islandlady - and the lack of affordable housing for young people is a problem which damages society in Devon and Cornwall as much as in Lambeth. Instead of greeting a problem with 'it's just as bad somewhere else' shouldn't we be trying to solve the problem?

Thing is there isn't anywhere inthe SE cheaper than south Lambeth where the OP is!
I live in the same constituency and rents and house prices are the lowest in London pretty much. Still extortionate but given so few jobs in rural areas there really isn't much choice.

Lone parents on a single income, people without family backing, those on minimum wage..... need to live somewhere, perhaps we should leave those on comfortable incomes to sweep their own streets, serve their own meals, take care of their own children.....

We are looking at coming together to solve the same problems in different areas, a roof and community is all some people have as security to help them meet their responsibilities to society. You can't predict what may happen to you, the ones you love or rely on...those who cannot afford to insure against the difficulties life may throw up, through death, illness or abandonment. Sadly the decisions that are so casually made that affect those in more vulnerable situations are made by those with absolutely no comprehension, consideration or compassion. 'I'm alright Jack'.... For example the proposed cuts in the NHS, do you think that those making the decisions to do away with A&E and maternity wards will foresee any personal difficulty in themselves or their families being seen for any medical emergency?

The fact that some people were given the opportunity rightly or wrongly by Thatcher to buy their own homes, whether they have stayed in them or sold them is absolutely their business. This was seen as a chance for people to change their lives for the better, the government of the time like many others acted without foresight. It's worth remembering that some also fell by the wayside, they couldn't (like others buying in the usual way) keep up with mortgage payments and lost their homes to the private sector.
Many other council properties in Lambeth (and probably elsewhere) were left to fall into disrepair (deliberately or through mismanagement, we'll never know), with or without tenants in them and then sold off to developers.
Because one person makes a statement or a choice doesn't mean we all should or can do the same. We are sharing personal experiences to find common ones, to help effect change.
Personal attacks are not helpful.