If I want a council house...

[madamez]

because I can't see myself ever earning a huge income even if I went back to work fulltime, and because I would like to live somewhere we are not at risk of being evicted with a couple of months notice at any time, and I would like a place that feels like I can redecorate or change things or put shelves up if I want to, etc etc etc....

But do you have to be absolutely homeless to qualify even to go on the waiting list?

Brie, if you've paid your taxes and insurance but you end up 73 and homeless should you just starve? Thats how my mother is right now.
I would love to buy her a house with a warden but my husband is a full time carer for me and our severely disabled daughter plus works part time and has a way below average income (he's a research scientist with a PhD)
The benefit system was there, as were council houses, for the poor and for those for when terrible things happnened. Like having a brain damaged child. I don't feel a 'sense of entitlement' over benefits. I feel embaressed and would swap my daughters brain damage ina heartbeat for DH to be able to work. Mind you, even working full time he only pulled in 35K. The cheapest bungalow I have seen was 300 sq ft and £140,000.
So my mother waits for sheltered accomodation in a single room in a shared house. She has been asked to leave. The homeless hostel here is an ex-hotel full of junkies with steps (!)
We'd have her here but dh already sleeps on the sofa while dd shares a bed with me (she has seizures so can't be alone)
So yes, my mum needs a council house. Until those people who made a fortune pushing up house prices out of the reach of normal people (indluding those with full time jobs) bring them back down, there is going to be need
And for what its worth, when my dd reaches 18, she will get a residential place plus full time assistance costing about 100,000 a year. Any taxpayers care to grumble?

You know what? I have huge sympathy for your family. But you know who pushed up house prices, don't you? Not people like me who bought a house to be a home and have watched it quadruple (or more) in value in the 16 years we've been here. No... it's the building societies, who are prepared to lend people increasing multiples of salary. When we bought our house you could only borrow 2.5 one salary plus 1 of the lower salary. If lenders refused to loan people silly multiples like 5x joint salary then prices could never have rocketed ahead to where they are now. Now that the American Banks have had their fingers burned and there's a squeeze on credit, hopefully prices will fall to more sensible levels and ordinary people will be able to buy again. I'm far more interested in my sons being able to afford a home in a few years' time than I am in losing a chunk of the paper profit that we've gained on the house.

'Until those people who made a fortune pushing up house prices out of the reach of normal people (indluding those with full time jobs) bring them back down, there is going to be need'

Bravo!

I get sick of people assuming everyone who can't afford to buy a place of their own or needs help with rent is a low-life scrounger who just didn't pull themselves up by the bootstraps because that's what people did 100 years ago.

Yeah, well, women couldn't vote 100 years ago, either, and marital rape wasn't a crime, do we want to go back to those days?

The fact is that the cost of housing in this country - even to rent - is so out of proportion to the average wage that if you're on of those on it, or worse!, you're stuffed.

having lived on a council estate, a very deprived one, i can say i didn't know anyone who lived in a household where no one at all worked.

most worked at least part if not full-time, or had a partner or children who did.

often enough, several of the people in the family were working different jobs, but they were low income, or someone had a disability, or they were helping another family member financially.

Too right, expat!

I know I've said before that I work for local council in Housing and it's heartbreaking to see the frustration of lovely, ordinary people.

Of course some people in rented housing are 'low-life scroungers' but they are in the tiny tiny minority and people sholuld appreciate that. And what's even funnier to me is that quite a few council tenants seem to think that hpusing association tenants are a lower form of life! That infuriates me.

I think I ma very glad that I didn't read this thread.

I am now going to hide it as I already have a headache.