Council vs Private Rent Unfair

[UnfairSociety]

Hello

I have a few friends I met in London living in a council/housing association in zone 1/2 and paying lower than the market rate. They had the apartment many years ago but now earning way above average workers' salaries, yet the rent doesn't increase at a similar rate to the private sector.

For example, there is one bedroom apartment that only pays £600 a month. Another 2-bed rooms apartment only pays roughly £700 a month. Do taxpayers have to subsidise the remaining cost of their rent? One of the couples earns a combined salary of £90k per annum and pays this much rent? Note quality of the apartments is pretty good. I hear you they would put the home as a single tenant to earn extra income from their partner and also pay council tax at a 25% discount.

I feel sorry for those in the private sector living in s*tty quality homes and dealing with rogue landlords. Housing crises are a mess in London, and those rich council tenants should pay in line with the private sector or move elsewhere to allow those in need to live there.

Also, they get a massive discount if they buy their council house.

Nope . Council housing is not subsidised by the tax payer . It is designed to break even , that is the cost of those homes and the maintenance and admin are covered by rents. So in real terms they are the correct price of housing, private rents are high because the landlord , the bank and the letting agent are all making some profit on it . I live in north London , I pay a little over 550 for a small semi detached house ( driveway and garden nice leafy avenue but about half the houses are still council and as far as I know everyone works or is retired here ) we have a combined household income of about £55k . We could never afford the £1600 per month for the same property though privately I assure you we are absolutely going nowhere, we have the old style tenancy so we can reasonably expect to leave this house in hearses.
social housing is good for the country and good for the economy and creates stable communities that are nice to live in because people stay put . They should build more of them and stop selling them.
the majority of private lets here are by greedy landlords who send most of the money ‘home’ and therefore that grand a month from some poor soul for a rotten little bedsit is being spent in the landlords home country and is costing our country ££££!!
the government should make a small profit from social renters (20%?) and use it to reinvest in housing stock so more people can enjoy affordable homes and secure lifestyles .

@VampiresWife teachers? But so many although I know heads off department that are on £60. Head teachers easily above that. But GPs? Many. And teachers earning £50 with a partner earning similar puts you in a bracket above 'need' imo. You are being very selective in the points you refer to. Why focus on teachers when I am taking about high earning professionals in general. It high earning trades people. I know a fair few trades people on £200+

your dh should post his own opinions if he wants- it doesn’t add weight to an opinion because it’s a man saying it

He didn't want to post his opinion though, I did, so all good.

And lol at you implying I'm sexist for mentioning his opinion 😂

He's right, though. You are misinformed. Almost every post illustrates this. Others have also explained why this is so. Your past experience of working in govt finance clearly doesn't mean you know how SH operates now.

Its just another social housing bash really isn't it OP not appeared back funny that
Heaven forbid anyone in HA property betters themselves aye, how we can we all look down on them
I bet many against it are the private landlords who are concerned if more were built there profits may take a hit
I mean really no one needs to own two homes do they we would of been much better regulating that and also rent controls , then who knows maybe more people would be able to buy if house prices actually reflected the average wage in most places
But no easier to bash those in social houses rather than accept where the real issues arise

So because some teachers are on £60k, that means all of them are? The teacher who lives in my block happens to be my DD. She's a NQT and earns not much more than a third of that. I didn't mention a partner, did I? I'm talking about real people, not hypothetical what ifs.

And yet again (why do I keep needing to say this?) - SH isn't exclusively for people in need (by which I take it you mean in low incomes/poor or no housing currently). Those who are in the most acute need are prioritised, but that's it.

👏👏👏

If the taxpayer doesn't pay for this then why are the government not able to build a gazillion more? Oh. Because it will cost the government money. How does the government raise their money? Taxes. Ultimately SH costs the taxpayer

Isn't the market rate determined by market forces?
Because if not, then nothing would ever go up or down in price.
So if councils keep rent the same, but locally private rentals go up in price, then the council rent is essentially subsidised, as the council isn't making what they could.

Instead of asking why shouldn't you get to live in housing that is provided at reduced cost by the state, why not ask, why should you? What should you have to work hard and pay your own way now that you. An when thousands of others currently in inappropriate temporary housing can't.

@pocketvenuss its not provided by the state though is it at least get your facts right
Its just plain old jealously and snobbery , I got the house for a reason and qualified as many others do, I still qualify as I have a life time tenancy

@Sarahcoggles the rent goes up every year same as private and its linked to inflation / index or similar

@pocketvenuss i also did my time in temporary housing and what we should be campaigning for is mire social housing not chucking people out, where would I go there isn't much private around here suitable for our needs , i may have to move every 6 months and find removal costs which we cannot afford,
What figure to you put on earning too much ? Where is your cut off

@pocketvenuss the goverment could help finance more houses yes and actually that could help the taxpayer
How much do you think is being paid in housing benefit to private landlords ?
It would actually cost the taxpayer less in the long run
Social housing associations also build their own houses from the rents and incomes they have, my house is 10 years old it was build by the HA infact my Ha has built a fair amount over the years and its used to be easier to get a ha property here but now house prices have exceeded average wages and all the ideal ftb houses are snapped up by private landlords yet your issue is still me

Hang on, do you think SH rents don't go up? Sorry if I'm misreading but that's what I think you're saying?

When I moved in 19 years ago my rent was £140pcm. Now it's £400. SH rents were raised to be in line with at least 80% of market value some years ago - in reality mine is on a par with MV.

I think I understand what @mummybearcub2022 is saying, and to my mind it is essentially a subsidy of sorts.

Say I have 100 hairbrushes. I bought them years ago for pennies, so they're long since paid for. I don't need to cover my costs because that's all done and dusted.

I could sell them for £2 each, like the identical ones in the shop in town.

But I don't. Instead I choose to sell them for 20p each.
So when I've sold them all, rather than making £200, I make £20. Which is fine, because as I said, I don't need to cover my costs for the hairbrushes.
However, I could actually do with a new carpet. If I make £200 I can buy a carpet, but if I only make £20 I can't. So by selling the hairbrushes cheaply, I do myself out of a carpet.

So essentially, the people who bought my hairbrushes had them at a subsidised rate. Subsidised by me sacrificing my new carpet.

The cheaper the council house rent, the less money councils will have for other public services.

I think that's what OP is saying.

As well as secure, self funding affordable homes. Housing associations also create secure, well paid employment for its workers. Private landlords are just creating wealth for themselves at the expense of someone else. Pretty much the Tory philosophy.
Housing stock should be for people to create a home, not greedy people to make excess profit.

This is a bad minded view. It's not just London. Private rents in the North have risen to a crazy price too this year around £700/£800 for a rubbish area and a house that is in bad condition.

It's how the cookie crumbles you shouldn't grudge people because relationships break down and circumstances change. People's the people earning well.... don't have enough to save for a deposit and look after their families at the same time.

@Realityloom

This thread isn't about people in desperate need of social housing, it's about people earning a high salary (above average), living in social housing. We have a chronic shortage of social housing in this country, and it should go to people who need it.

Why should people on good salaries benefit from reduced living costs compared to everyone else? It's the equivalent of randomly allowing some people to pay less tax than other people on the same salary, and it creates divisions and unfairness in society.

Taking about begrudging people whose relationship has broken down it totally irrelevant to the conversation

It’s not right to blame social housing tenants for astronomical rent and profoundly stupid to do so, especially when the Tories have created this situation.

Are you all as concerned about the billions they waste on their cronies?

These threads are very thinly veiled aren’t they, to anyone with a single brain cell. Probably best to ignore the feigning of it being about being ‘fair’.

Private rents are astronomical and unaffordable yet people think the solution is to charge social housing tenants more. Moronic.

What’s your figure for ‘higher’ incomes by way of interest? What kind of figure do you think a family needs to make before being able to rent privately?

I agree. My support is for those in society who are struggling but are being holed up in awful inadequate temporary housing. And it's all very well saying the solution is to build more housing but that doesn't to resolve anything for the poor people stuck in appalling conditions now. No where else in the rifle do people get a leg up and then continue to benefit above everyone else just because once upon a time they struggled. If they still struggle then they should stay in SH but to argue that once you have SH you should have the right to retain it regardless of personal circumstances is just weird. I want the limited stock of SH to go to those in need. Not middle class earners who happened to struggle once 25 years ago Breyer will always be a shortage as people are living into their 90s do if they retain them for life and there are constantly new people at the bottom then there will by definition always be a shortage

Dear oh dear…

Thinks @Sarahcoggles doesn't grasp subsidies. Plus, no, nothing to do with cheaper the council house rent, the less money councils will have for other public services - we're all paying £2K a year council tax!

Let's look at it another way.

Why should private LLs benefit from being able to charge vastly inflated rents when people are in housing need? Why should they be allowed to benefit from someone else paying the mortgage on their investment?

People seem to just accept that there's a shortage of SH in parts of the country, as if there's nothing that can be done about it. And that the only way to change it is to turf people out of their homes when they earn 'too much' (and what is this nebulous 'too much', anyway? You can guarantee the Tories would place it as something ridiculous like £30k or even less).

Abolishing RTB would have a far more immediate effect. There are a vanishingly tiny number of SH tenants on the high salaries bandied about on this thread. The number of tenants who buy their property - and often then rent it out at an inflated price, often paid for in benefits by LAs (so in effect the LA is being charged at a higher rate to rent out essentially its own property, how nuts is that?) - is far, far higher. It's a little bit like demonising all benefits claimants because a tiny minority claim fraudulently.

Which is something that I'm guessing a lot of people on this thread do, too.

My support is for those in society who are struggling but are being holed up in awful inadequate temporary housing

Very noble and I applaud you for this.

Can I ask what you've done to support people in this situation? Have you, for example, campaigned against poor, substandard temporary accommodation? Have you contacted your MP wrt to private LLs raking in extortionate rents, often via the benefits system, for such housing? Have you asked why right to buy still exists, meaning that a huge percentage of housing stock has been bought up, often ending up in the hands of private LLs who do not maintain their properties and charge extortionate rents also?

If you have done things like this I'm genuinely grateful, as someone who lived in terrible temporary accommodation myself.

If however you've simply taken aim at people who have paid their rent for years and have managed to increase their salary in that time (and in the current CoL crisis, let's be honest, wages don't go as far as they used to, particularly when your SH rent is equal to MV), then no, not grateful at all.