New build on a new estate and social housing. I expect I’ll get torn to shreds but can I have your experiences please?

[ohwhats]

We are looking at buying the last house on a street that backs on to an area of the new estate that will be 50 plus houses owned by a housing association.
The house will be a real bargain, they are throwing all sorts of incentives in as I’m sure they want it sold asap as it will be ready in about 6 weeks time.
The sales advisor explained that the tenants will all be working and they won’t be misbehaving as they will lose their tenancy if they do.
DH thinks it will be fine and we should take a chance but I’m really not sure. Had anyone bought next to AH on a new build estate?

Good decision to walk away OP. We rented on a new estate for a year, and the part which had this type of housing also had a playground. It and surrounding fences, benches etc were constantly being smashed up, with neighbours posting photos of the offending kids - yes from the council houses. The cost of repairs was added to everyone's service charges, which kept going up and up, but as the council tenants did not have to pay this, they didn't give a fuck. It caused a lot of aggro on the whole estate. Thank god we were only renting. Yes I am adding the obligatory statement that of course it is not all tenants who are like this.

I live on a new build estate and we've got heroin addicts and dealers living opposite, three streets over there have been guns confiscated and there have been 2 stabbings in the past 6 years. Even the houses that aren't anti-social tend to keep overflowing rubbish bins out the front and do not maintain their gardens in the same way the owned properties do. There is one single mother who has a garden full of flowers and beautiful antique furniture in her lounge and she is disabled living in social housing - she is 100% the exception to the norm in our experience.

I’ve sold them and honestly, every estate is different? I’ve had estates where all of the HA are absolutely lovely, make an effort with the fronts and you wouldn’t know they weren’t owned outright, I’ve had others where I have had non stop complaints, naughty children, disrespectful, rude, and fronts look like a metal yard/ jungle, you honestly won’t know unless you can find a local Facebook page for the estate or go and knock on peoples doors who already live there and ask the question! Good luck! Oh and what I would also consider is if it really wasn’t what you wanted after a year or so, how easy would it be to sell?!

But they ARE seen as desperate The anti social alcoholic underneath me is classed as vulnerable. The people who only wanted the most desperate to have SH have helped to put me and other older SH tenants into these situations.

North Essex Commuting distance to London

Lower income ppl are less likely to vote now due to not having photo ID No passport or drivers licence Try to catch up

Reform and their voters talk about SH tenants in the same way they are talked about on here. Middle class MNers have got more in common with Reform than they would like to believe

Surely there's good and bad everywhere? I live on a mixed estate, terraced housed and small 6 flat blocks, NW London. No real issues, friendly neighbours, kids play in park in the middle, dogs on leashes. Rubbish sometimes, but that's more to do with insufficient space. Everyone checked in on each other during covid. Not sure why location might determine what people are like necessarily? I lived with a boyfriend in Fulham in my 20s in a 'nice' house in a 'nice' street, which also had some good people, but who in retrospect, were not as friendly, a neighbour a couple of doors down with 3 barking dogs, and a man arrested for beating his wife into a coma. I just thought 'that's folks for you'. Never attributed it to where they lived?! You just never know!

I am sorry to hear your housing situation is so difficult.

Walk away, save yourselves from the huge stress this kind of life would bring. I was brought up on a council estate from teens to early twenties. I couldn’t get away fast enough. So I’m from a council estate and became quite snobby, life dealt me a bummer later in life and I thought I was headed back there. I fought tooth and nail to ensure I didn’t have to. I now live in a reasonably nice, but definitely not posh area, but I have good peace of mind every day. Not perfect but better than looking at neighbours filling their gardens with beer cans, and having parties every weekend..

You have such a huge chip on your shoulder. And that’s not funny at all.

“earning too much”. Yes, why would anyone bother.

Please tho k carefully on this and be prepared for the worse. You only need one or two families to be problematic and it will affect everyone. My friend had an awful time, in the end a drug dealer house very near her beautiful home was set on fire. The poor old lady next to this family had a breakdown with it all.

hes ok ish if he gets his booze. But if his benefits were cut he wouldnt be the only one affected.

It’s not homeowners against renters. I rent privately I’m also not being a snob because I earn minimum wage. These days you have to be next level fucked to get a council house I mean I was homeless for a year (with kids) and didn’t get one. You have to be very dysfunctional.

And this shows if I walk to where there are council houses the kids park is rife with bullying and there’s rubbish and people arguing everywhere accusing you of looking at them etc. yes there’s a few peaceful people but they’re outnumbered.

Personally if I’d spent hundreds of thousands on a house and had to watch people move in on the other side of the street into the same house with very cheap rent and then proceed to turn the neighbourhood into a war zone I’d be pissed off. This is one thing that new builds get wrong they have to build a certain amount of social housing and it turns into this scenario.

We are on a 20 year old private development and a large new building mixed ownership development is up the road (owned, part owned, full rent, affordable rent and yes social rent) no problems from them at all 3 years in whereas the expensive owned apartments on the private development (not sub let) have been raided for drugs multiple times

@zov if you read Middle Ground by Joe Carpenter it shows that these attitudes towards SH tenants also come from inside the sector

There is a reason they are offering you these incentives.
My friends moved into a lovely house on a new build estate and the stress this has caused them has meant my friends DH has been hospitalised with heart issues, caused, in the medical professionals opinion, due to stress.
They aren’t even in the same street as the social housing but close enough to have had 3, yes 3, protests due to sex offenders being housed there.
Children are left to their own devices causing damage and havoc and the police are never away from the drug dealers.
What should have been a quiet retirement house is now virtually unsellable so they are stuck there

Not sure when it began but it for sure got worse after Covid in my immediate experience. I grew up on a council estate too - late 70s through 80s - and even with the local drug addict it was nothing like this.

During Covid we were told we were "all in this together" I knew it was bollocks at the time

I don’t think anyone’s saying everyone in social housing’s a problem, they are saying that in many social housing estates there are enough problems that it spoils the quality of life of everyone.

It doesn’t take many feral families to make life hell for all their neighbours.

Its what ppl wanted Do i really need to pull the threads screeching for five year fixed tenancies. They wanted housing estates to be treated like hostels with ppl being moved around like chess pieces.
When this happens there is no chance to build communities and you get the very ghettos people are complaining about. Never has the phrase "be careful what you wish for" been so apt

I was definitely targeted as a single woman.
The disabled woman next door even more so.
The drug dealers were ignored by the police.
The noise until the early hours was enormous, mainly from one household.
Feral kids were up until all hours.
Gardens were smashed and weed/killered.
The playground was vandalised the first weekend; in full view of the vandals parents homes.
Two women put each other in hospital after a fight which left one of them paralysed.
Everyone there was white British.

Blaming people in here for the feral behaviour of a subset of council tenants is the very epitome of left-wing idiocy.

People like you seem incapable of assigning any sense of agency to the families who choose to predate on the rest of us.

Of course, very few who spout this shit actually live amongst it.

Not always. I got a council house just last year after only waiting for a month and I'm not 'very dysfunctional' at all, I have a disabled child and my private rental was unsuitable for him.