Empty social housing

[Hollygolightly86]

I live in a village/town in the SE on a new build housing estate. When we purchased our house 4 years ago there were a row of 6 HA owned affordable living houses in an adjacent close which I walk past nearly everyday and were all occupied when we moved onto the estate. Now 2 of them are unoccupied and 1 has definitely been empty for nearly 2 years. I’m so shocked that given the lack of affordable housing for families especially those suffering from huge rent increases that HA are allowed to leave property empty like this. My neighbour seems to think the other house has been empty for about 9 months. Both properties are very overgrown so I can only assume the HA haven’t visited in quite a while. About 3 months ago I spoke to the council & was basically told it’s nothing to do with them & to contact the HA so I called and told them but nothing has been done & they don’t respond to my emails.
Surely this isn’t right & there must be some legislation or rules about leaving affordable housing empty? They are 3 bed fairly largish properties with private drives & large gardens, it just seems is so wrong to leave them empty when so many families need homes. But not sure if there is anything I can do other than what I already have, if anyone has similar experience or has any information about where I go next it would be greatly appreciated

So are these affordable rents? Maybe no one is meeting the criteria and can afford the rent? We have these on our new build estate and I believe it's only 20% lower than market rent. And as rents are really high at the moment maybe this could affect it. In the ones on our estate there are lots of taxi drivers, a few care workers. I mean I don't know everyone's jobs, but from the obvious observations. We have no issues in my road, some of the other HA houses in other areas of the estate have massive issues with the residents, rubbish, antisocial behavior. I don't know if those are a different scheme to affordable rent.

@Hollygolightly86 Im a social housing tenant and im willing to bet the arseholes in that meeting were all "we are all in this together" when it came to lockdowns masks and vaccines. However some communities knew better!!!

I assume you mean they refused to wear them & are anti vax? I’m honestly not sure about that but I found their opinions of social housing residents appalling especially as none of them have experienced any negative behaviour from those who are on the estate. In fact the only poor behaviour I’ve experienced is from ‘home owners’ who are so petty & small minded

What i meant by "some communities knew better" is that we knew the "all in this together" rhetoric only applied to Covid and it would be back to treating us like shit soon enough.

I understand now what you mean & probably yes but please I certainly didn’t engage with the twats on the estate during covid. I’m sorry if you have experienced that where you are, I certainly don’t have any preconceived opinions of anyone. I like to think I treat as I find

@Hollygolightly86 Sorry. It just that the cognitive dissonance really pisses me off
This guy is exposing whats really happening in social housing
twitter.com/KwajoHousing/status/1524317629535727617?s=20&t=d3OSs4wawCVyJquLwkgNMg

Housing associations and councils can be incredibly inefficient and wasteful. Via my work, i know of one that leaves properties empty for years due to poor admin. They also sell properties with minor defects to the public rather than fix them and knock down and rebuild perfectly good properties. They have a huge waiting list for tenancies as a consequence.

knock down and rebuild perfectly good properties

Yep Been going on for many years. John Boughton talks about it in his book Municipal Dreams The Rise and Fall of Council Housing.

We had a whole row of bungalows pulled down and replaced with flats Nothing wrong with them. They just needed the odd new kitchen or bathroom. There is a real lack of accessible housing and then they do this.

i saw opposite happen - now even bigger shortage of housing and pensioners don’t want to live in the bungalows as the council houses a number of anti social young tenants in there. I also saw them compulsory purchase a load of flats to widen a road only to cancel the project. Instead of selling the flats or renting them, they then demolished them anyway.

there is definitely a lack of accountability and efficiency for both councils and housing associations in this area.

bigissue.com/news/environment/it-cant-be-sustainable-the-hidden-costs-of-demolishing-council-housing-estates/