Under occupied council. HA property

[tweedysue]

When a woman & 2 children live in a council house and the children grow up and leave, thus leaving 1 woman living in a 3 bed council house do you think they should move into a smaller property ??? Personally I do especially as the rent is subsidised by the tax payer and a family could be living there.

The rents on housing association houses are also covering the huge debts housing associations have built up.

I'm a former landlord and I can tell you that all tenants have repairs and improvements to properties for free. In the time we owned our flat the tenants had a new boiler, the flat redecorated, a new bathroom, kitchen sink and new kitchen doors on the cabinets. All necessary work required to make the flat nice and to allow for resale when the market improved / we were certain we wouldn't be moving back.

My parents live in a council house. The have been waiting for a suitable smaller property for 4 years as they don't really want or need a 3 bed house. There's nothing and they have been told to hang on for another couple of years and just go for a bungalow if one becomes available (my DM has health issues). They pay market rate for the area. When their boiler didn't work last winter they had to wait 3 weeks for repair. I ended up phoning their local councillors to resolve the issue because it was taking so long.

Compare to when the boiler in the flat we rented out broke down we had a plumber there the same day and a replacement boiler in 2 days.

Oh and you are clearly either bitter or a GF.

Council house envy is so petty and ignorant.

I agree with you morally. The housing near us is awful and families with children put in b&bs for months while single people or couples remain in big homes (that there aren't many of). A couple I know have their two children in temporary one bedroom flat waiting for 18 months.

They do have to pay full rent (if employed), and bedroom tax though and getting free repairs is standard of letting a property, council or private.

It's probably worth pointing out for the interested that housing policy forcyears insisted on building family sized homes and not 1 beds thus resulting in a shortage now when the bedroom tax was introduced.

The housing crisis is not the fault of a woman living in her family home and everyone should have the right to security in where they live.

Council/social housing in my area is not subsidised by the bloody tax payer.
I live In council accommodation op
I to the house on a mutual exchange as nobody else would take it even though it’s in a low crime green area.
The council over the years had failed to maintain the property inside and out.
By taking it on a mutual exchange I signed to say I would take financial responsibility for getting it to a habitable state and trust me when I say it wasn’t when we took it on
All works we have taken out have had to be put through planning and signed off by the local authority every step of the way.
The only thing the council fund is the gas safety check each year. That is literally it and that’s because it has to be signed off by their own contractors.
Our boiler breaks down every single year,is nearly 15 years old and yet I have requested,offered over the years to financially replace with a newer more economical model yet it is turned down every time.
I appreciate not all tenants are like us and rely on all the services provided however we are a full time working family PAYING OUR TAXES like lots of others.
We aren’t bottom of the pile and that awful assumption people have that if you live in council housing it must be squalor and we must claim everything g going is absolute bollocks in a lot of cases.
We got thanked by our local authority for the years of finances and hard bloody graft we have and continue to put in to get the property back to how it should be.
Don’t be so bloody judgmental op.
I do apologise to other posters if I’m ranting but it really gets my goat when hideous twats like op think they can make a judgement on a situation they know nothing ablout.
I have elderly neighbours that are stuck in a three bed property desperately wanting to move to a smaller flat or bungalow but there is a shortage of them.
If these people are moved out of the area yes someone will get houses in the three bed house however the neighbours will no longer have their support network around them and will have to rely heavily on state funded round the clock care.
How is that solving a problem.
What a twat you are op

Private landlords do all repairs and improvements to a property at no extra cost to a tenant.

Yes, I know this will produce blubbering about crap private landlords that dont, but there are also plenty of crap housing associations and councils.

A private landlord is running a business so is trying to make a profit. Same as food sellers. Mn doesn't yell for all food to be sold at cost.

any repairs are carried out FOC for the tennant.

I'm a private tenant and I've never paid for a repair. You clearly have a problem with council housing in some form so spit it out so we can get to the bottom of it yeah?

it is very hard as there is a lack of council houses as most have been bought and now sold off for profit. Personally I do not think anyone should be allowed to buy their council house as if you can afford to buy it you are not poor enough for a council house in the first house. I know lots of people who bought their houses for 18,000 back in the 80 and now the houses are worth something like £750,000. It is crazy as it means one less house available for the next generation of poor people. I was brought up in a council house now a housing association house and my parents never had enough money to buy it. My mum still lives there on her own and I do think it is too big for her and it is sad that she has the whole house (maisonette) whilst hundreds on the waiting list but she is 83 and has been in the house for 51 years . She is lucky as she has the bus stops across the road shops are 5 minutes walk and she was to move the council would prob send to a high rise flat in a bad area. There need to be more one bedroom flats built .

The OP sounds very angry

LOL dear me just look at the way some of you spout. Foul mouthed, what the matter have I hit a nerve with you. Where do you think the money comes from to build the houses in the first place... TAX PAYERS!!! most council houses tenants are getting housing benefit.. again supplied by the TAX PAYER!! maybe some of you are not and have not ever been a tax payer . Why should a nice decent family have to live in cramp conditions when there is 1 single person living in a house with 2 spare bedrooms. When you are living in state owned property then you should be fair to others in the same position .

Social housing is and always has been subsidised by the tax payer. And as for saying why should the tenant pay for repairs is ludicrous.

I am not angry what a silly thing to say

No council rates are not subsided , private rates are inflated . HTH.

Council tenants work and pay tax.

This is from an article by John Perry of the Chartered Institute of Housing in 2012 which pointed out that from 1st April 2012 Council housing, far from being subsidized, was making a profit for the Government:

"Council housing charges low rents in part because of historic subsidy for the loans to build it, but in fact much of this has now been paid off; the average council debt is only about £17,000 per home and few new homes are being developed.

In fact, council housing has been making a profit since 2008, which has been paid to the Treasury. When council housing becomes fully self-financing on 1 April, all subsidy to existing homes will cease. Councils will actually take on extra debt at that point, to reflect the future surpluses they would have paid to the Treasury. This cost will be met from rents."

Let me guess you are a DECENT family, guess what love so are many others you want social housing get on the list, if you need bigger get a swop.

"if you can afford to buy it you are not poor enough for a council house in the first house"
Since when has anyone needed to be poor to rent a council house?

Housing Benefit is more likely to be paid to people in private rentals than council tenants by dint of council rents being cheaper.
And hb is paid out from a mix of local and central funding which includes council tax and business rates. Many hb recepients are working people in private rentals and paying tax on some of their income.

Using lots of exclamation marks makes you appear to be worked up.

My ha house has had around 20k spent on it by us in 2 years, the previous tenant (mutual exchange) converted the loft so what was a victorian 2 bed is now a four bed.

Like fuck will i move later in life for someone more deserving.

And no we claim no benefits not even child benefit.

Smile youre on reddit.

Well actually a large amount of social housing built in recent years has actually come from funding from the EU. I'm pretty certain private housing construction companies also receive money from the government to build homes too so by your reasoning those are subsidised by the tax payer too.

You sound lovely OP

Do you read the Daily Mail per chance ?

Why do you seem to think that all council residents aren't paying tax?

I know council tenants who are paying full rent, full council tax and full income tax.

Taxes are supposed to be used to help the country run. Part of that is affordable housing for those in a worse financial situation.

Are you in the waiting list for a 3 bedroom house OP?

I sometimes think I live in a completely different country to some on MN.
Around here we have lots of bungalows and sheltered housing schemes for the elderly but not many family houses (very very few 3 beds, 2 beds go through phases).

Many people bought through the right to buy scheme years ago and now are pensioners living on benefits but who own their own homes. This means that if they sell up and move into the council accommodation, they will have too much in savings so will have to pay full rent and council tax. It also means that you get single people in their 80s living in 3/4 bed houses.
I suppose they're the typical asset-rich, cash-poor.
It also means that these homes won't ever be available for local authorities to use again.
It was a good idea at the time but not so much with hindsight.

We need to look at now and the future rather than the past.

I do agree that once the property is too big for you , you should be offered a smaller more appropriate property. Presumably this is what the much maligned bedroom tax was meant to do.

So yes I agree but OP you don't sound very pleasant.......