Camerons plans to reform social housing.

[DJKillaQueen]

silverfox Wrote:

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> So it is subsidised rent. It's not market value.

It's not subsidised - it is not for profit....unlike the private sector that is all for profit and investment. Why is that so hard to understand? The council is not paying capital or interest to banks because the property they own is mostly now paid for so they don't need to charge the same rents as the private sector to break even.

> But there's plenty of people in council property

> who probably, objectively, don't need to be there

> as they earn above average wages.

I think the truth is that in most cases, when a person does get to an imcome level where they can afford to buy a house or move they do. Even some council tenants aspire to own a house with a garden as opposed to boxey flats. Also be careful of thinking need is based purely on salary. There are special needs, be they physical or mental and many other reasons why social housing and the security it offers is better for a person.

> As you've previously said about overcrowding,

This is a problem. As I said before, in cases of succession the council can force the tenant to downsize....but Southwark seems not to do this as I know many suceeded tenants in three bedroom flats to themselves. I agree that is wrong. Also there is the issue as you say where maybe a children have left home and just a parent or parents remain. Councils try to offer incentives in those cases to people to downsize but I think something could be done to make councils use the legislation that already exists. I'm sure that some movement within the system would ease the overcrowding issue. Having said that....it usually takes legal action to force someone to move if they are not willing and it is not a quick process.

There are other abuses. I know of one flat where the tenant was moving abroad and so he arranged for his mate to buy the flat which he now rents out. In other words that flat was bought from the council by someone who was never a council tenant.

I think the right to buy needs an overhual. There needs to be strict restrictions in place - prohibitting subletting for say 10 years after purchase and so on...so that those that do buy their homes buy them as homes. Too many leaseholders used the purchase of their council homes to then buy-to-let a preferred property to live in, whilst renting out the leasehold council home. All of that is wrong. In fact I'd go further and say stop the sale of council homes altogether and stop the sale of part buy/ part rent - along with some regualtion of mortgage lending and let the housing market naturally adjust to slower markets forces. We'll be a lot healthier (housing wise) in 20 years time for it.

> These are delicate questions that most people

> would prefer to shy away from.

I completely agree but hopefully it will lead to a major public debate on housing in this country - a debate that's need to be had.

[DJKillaQueen]

There was an assessment after his mother died saying he could stay but that is what I have the problem with. Yes, it is his home but he does not need it and he admits that.

That assessment probably considered his right to suceed the tenancy only. A council can't tackle the downsizing issue for the first six months after the death. But there are no grounds on which he would have been allowed to stay in a three bedroom house as a single occupant had the council moved to repossess the property and rehome him in a one bedroom flat. They only have a six month window to do that and sometimes because they don't have a property to offer (or too high a workload), they miss the window. That could be looked at by the government and extended maybe to a year (with a limit on how many properties the tenant can refuse before forfeitting their right to be homed).

I think your plasterer was a bit of a fantasist tbh. He'd need to be constantly working for ten years to be able to save enough to buy anything outright. Again how did he come to have a three bed flat to himself - another succeeded tenancy maybe?

Private sector rents are high because house prices are high. That is not the fault of council tenants, councils or the poor. Anger would be better directed at the mortgage lenders that have artificially inflated the private housing market for three decades and the sucessive governments who have been warned periodically and chosen to do nothing to address it.

[sophiesofa]

> They only have a six month

> window to do that and sometimes because they don't

> have a property to offer (or too high a workload),

> they miss the window. That could be looked at by

> the government and extended maybe to a year (with

> a limit on how many properties the tenant can

> refuse before forfeitting their right to be

> homed).

that sounds sensible

> I think your plasterer was a bit of a fantasist

> tbh. He'd need to be constantly working for ten

> years to be able to save enough to buy anything

> outright. Again how did he come to have a three

> bed flat to himself - another succeeded tenancy

> maybe?

Yes I think he definitely had a tendancy to extend the truth - I think his plan was to move out of london with his money to buy somewhere - but still would need to save for a very long time. I got the impression he did a lot of cash in hand work so that would speed things up a bit! No idea how he got a three bed but like you, assume it was via a family link.

> Private sector rents are high because house prices

> are high. That is not the fault of council

> tenants, councils or the poor. Anger would be

> better directed at the mortgage lenders that have

> artificially inflated the private housing market

> for three decades and the sucessive governments

> who have been warned periodically and chosen to do

> nothing to address it.

I'm definitely not angry. I just want things to be fair for everyone, which unfortunately is probably impossible!

[frierntastic]

Damn. Just when I thought this board had become readable, DJKQ starts spouting nonsense again. The following are DJKQ quotes:

Coucil (sic) housing is NOT subsidised.

For a one bedroomed flat it is ?986. The average one bedroomed council flat is around ?360 per month.

The only benefit a council tenant has is the lower rent.

If, as DJKQ suggests, we need more social housing, then Cameron's proposal to remove people who can afford private housing is a sensible one! I think both DJKQ and Brendan would feel very differently if they were on a waiting list and saw wasted space in council properties...

Surely, if there is a family on a waiting list and a single person in a 3 bedroom house that individual should leave, be given smaller accommodation and allow the family to move in? Surely we should be using relatively scarce council resources in the most effective way possible? Surely to god we should look at the issue and think before deciding we hate it because a rich man came up with it?!! Surely we should, just for a few seconds, put aside the huge prejudices we have and judge the man on his policies rather than his lineage?

If we can put aside our visceral hate for a man who, as far as I can tell, is just trying to make the best use of council properties we might see that, whether you like it or not, we can do better than we are now and he has the balls to make it happen.

And then there is the usual misuse of statistics...

[Ladymuck]

SeanMacGabhann Wrote:

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> Someone should have told Thatcher and successive

> governments - might have prevented them selling

> off so many of the damn things

Quite!

Margaret Thatcher's Right to Buy scheme (enforceable through legislation) was a massive error of judgement (IMO). That policy is a major contributing factor to the low levels of council housing stock today.

[DJKillaQueen]

In reply to Friern

Private rents are high because the landlord (unlike the council) is in debt to the bank for the price of the house....not rocket science or are you too dumb to understand that?

Trouble is that the vast majority of council tenants can NOT afford private rents...and indeed a third of those in full time work need HBenefit to pay part of their private rents....THAT is what p's me off..TAX PAYERS money being used to prop up private rents. What do you say about that friern? That's why there are 1.8 million people nationwide on waiting lists for social housing.

It's nothing to do with prejudice.....(usual typical right winger line) ....if you actually bother to read my posts properly you'll see that I do agree that shuffeling within the system would help with over-crowding and I point out that the law already gives councils the power to force some tenants to downsize. In fact the only prejudice is yours against anyone that criticises Cameron.

Simon Hughes tonight has also condemned Camerons ideas.....he like me has a full understanding of council housing issues and finance whereas Cameron and yourself clearly don't.

[DJKillaQueen]

In reply to LM...

It has almost halved the council stock in the last 30 years......

[Ladymuck]

Halved? That's a pretty startling statistic.

Anyway...posted this on another thread, but applies equally here.

[Keef]

I totally agree there needs to be more public housing.

My gripe is that once a family is in a council house, it is felt that it can automatically be passed down to the next generation. This to me is wrong.

Yes there should be housing for everyone, but there isn't, so what we do have should be used for those who need it most.

[Brendan]

But that?s not what they want to do. They want to address the problem by pushing people out of their homes and forcing them to enter, ?the private property market? ie to rent a house at exploitative prices* and never have any security over where they live and never have the chance to achieve any security.

People deserve the opportunity to have their own secure homes. Ideally they should be available in the private sector but they aren?t. You don?t solve the problem by taking what little access to property people have away without replacing it with something.

But the human cost to peoples? lives means fukall to arseholes on some sort of ideological campaign to take away from people with less, packaged up as some sort of social engineering but really motivated by the fact that they hold people who are poorer than them in contempt and resent them having even the little that they do.

And this shit about the how tory attitude being somehow good and worthwhile to everyone trotted out by people who are comfortably unaffected is just fuking insulting to the thousands who have to deal with the human cost every day.

* Probably off one of their cunt supporters who believes in the free market so long as it keeps him free to exploit other people.

[DJKillaQueen]

Keef...the property is only allowed to be passed down once (upon death) so after that it can't be suceeded.

I would go further and say that if eligibility to remain in a council home is to be linked to salary - then the same should be true for the private sector. So if you rent a house with a salary of say 37K (with a rent you can afford) in the private sector...and then suddenly get a Job that pays ?60k...you also should be forced to move to somewhere with a higher rent......

That's efffectively what we are talking about here.......linking the rent people are allowed to pay to what they earn. If anyone really things it is unfair for some to have proportionally cheap rents they they must agree it is unfair for ANYONE to have a rent that is below a certain percentage of their income (be that in the public or private sector).

Council rents rise every year, usually at around the 3% level (although Lambeth were allowed to raise theirs by 11% recently for various reasons). The rise is regulated by law. So the growth in rents over the last twenty years is what a sane housing market would expect. Similarly, twenty years ago the role of council housing was different. It provided secure accomodation to tenants who were eligible under a variety of criteria. And many council tenants saw their homes as temporary until they could afford to buy somewhere.

The real issue here is that private sectors rents have ballooned in a growth scale that is just ridiuclously steep, and have no relationship to wages or other market factors (apart from the artificial inflation of the housing market)......it's a bubble.

As a result social housing has become the ONLY option for many people to EVER have any type of SECURE accomodation. It's an important point to make.

[Brendan]

Today's indy cartoon sums it up pretty well: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/the-daily-cartoon-760940.html

[DJKillaQueen]

:))

[Ladymuck]

Only it's not really funny though - is it?

But yes...funny in the sense...

[DJKillaQueen]

It isn't funny if it's YOU being turfed out of your home and for what? Having a below average income deemed too high for social housing.

So I stand by my point....if we are to link salary to payable rent then it should apply for EVERYONE (private or public)....after all that would only be fair.

[Ladymuck]

Yes, that was my point...(albeit a bit too brief)

[frierntastic]

There is an article in one of today's papers about an MP who lives in a council flat (honestly, I am not just mixing two really provocative stories!) - I think he illustrates my point pretty well:

If there is a waiting list of >1 million people, isn't is reasonable that a guy who earns around 70k pa be asked to find accommodation in the private sector? In order to make room for needier cases?

Whilst I accept the point that we run the risk of creating ghettos (and no one would want that), it cannot be right that rich (and if you ear 70k you are, in my book at least, quite rich) stay in subsidised accommodation. In my view, DJKQ, your comparison on public and private sector...

'So if you rent a house with a salary of say 37K (with a rent you can afford)...and then suddenly get a Job that pays ?60k...you also should be forced to move to somewhere with a higher rent...'

...is false - council houses should be a safety net, not a way of life. The idea of passing on a council house seems to me to be as crazy as passing on jobseekers' allowance or housing benefit.

My view: everyone who needs a council house should get one, but in order to allow that, everyone who does not need one should get out and make room for more deserving cases.

[DJKillaQueen]

There are 1.8 million people on waiting lists. Wouldn't a better solution be to stop the sale of council homes? We have after all lost 8 million of them through the right to buy scheme over the last 25 years (and most of them were sold under market value).

On the MP example....most council tenants who work (because 60% nationally of them don't according to stats) don't earn more than ?7 an hour. It wouldn't actually free up that many homes anyway and would only apply to new tenancies. Plus most tenants would be more likely to exercise their right to buy before being turfed out so it isn't workable whilst the right to buy scheme still exists anyway. Waiting lists are also regional - so in some parts of the country there are short if no waiting lists.

And when you add the legal costs of evicting people it doesn't make financial sense either. If you were a council tenant, working or not, wouldn't you be inclined to not take a job that risked you losing you home? So it would have the impact of stopping upward mobility.

I just think you can not justify eviciting people based on salary. Because it really is a home where they may have lived at for decades...they have friends there and belong to a local community....maybe they are involved in a Residents Association and so on. The impact and upheaval isn't just about forcing them to move - it has deeper implications.

Jobs don't last forever. That MP for example could lose his/ her seat next time round and be unemployed again. Social housing exists to prevent homelessness - turfing people out effectively makes them homeless again and for that reason I doubt Camweron will ever succeed in changing the law (which he would have to do) to make it happen.

I don't know why this MP prefers to stay in his council home...but in my experience most council tenants aspire to be home owners too and if they are ever lucky enough to get on that ladder they usually leave council accomodation.

On the sucession of tenancy front...take the example of one chap I know. He lived with his mother as her full-time carer until her sudden death one day. He had no job and and had effectively given up his life to care for her (and saved the NHS and tax payer thousands every year by doing so). Under the current rules he was allowed to succeed the tenancy. 8 months later he has had a breakdown and is under treatment for depression (the impact on him of his mother's death). Are you really sure that he should have been turfed out of what had been his home too for at least six years? (he was rehomed into a single bedroom flat).

[frierntastic]

I certainly agree that we should stop selling council houses - absolute madness as far as I can tell.

I think we will have to agree to disagree on - to take my example of the MP - whether people who can afford to live elsewhere should do. That MP could lose his job, but then so could everyone, and I don't think that 'just in case' is a strong argument for someone who could afford to rent privately not making room for one of the 1.8million.

[DJKillaQueen]

I agree 'just in case' is not a strong argument......

I personally take a long term view and think that we need to follow the example of some continental countries where rents are regulated in both the private and public sector...with an aim to close the gap over say the next two decades. So that would mean slwoing the inflation of the housing market while salaries and council rents catch up. The problem is that sucessive governments don't think that far in advance.

In the short term we need more social housing and perhaps some kind of legislation that forces empty and disused properties or buildings to be put into use whereby maybe a local authority could compulsary lease a property at a set rate. Controversial I know and there would need to be get out clauses for owners, but there are many foreign owned buildings for example that sit empty for years.

[GinaG3]

sophiesofa Wrote:

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> I think it's a good idea to re-asses the need. A

> very small majority simply do not need large flats

> at cheap rents.

>

> My boyfriend's friend earns about 34k and has

> about 100k in the bank and lives in a 3 bed

> council house on his own. He's 40 something and

> had lived there with his mum and I appreciate that

> he grew up there etc but there are people who

> really need a 3 bed flat and a single man on a

> decent wage isn't one of them. I know this is

> only one example and it must be quite uncommon but

> if a new review system helps make room for people

> in genuine need then great. I don't know what the

> earnings threshold cut off would be but I'd like

> it to be high enough that as soon as people move

> out they then get into debt etc. as a result but

> can live comfortably. I don't know much about

> these things though so I probably am missing

> important factors out and therefore completely

> wrong!

I too have heard/witnessed situations like this. I know people who are still living in council homes they grew up in with their parents. The council just let them take over tenancy it would seem. Also 2/3 bed properties being lived in by just one person by themselves. This really gets me though, sorry for the rant (I don't wish to be judged on my situation either please) but..

I live with my partner and our 18 month old daughter, we tried to get help with housing from the council as we were previously living with family in a snug 2 bed. At the time of our assessment the council told us we weren't considered to be living in overcrowded and inhumane situations although their was 1 toilet to be used by 7 adults at the time (I'm aware this counts as inhumane living conditions and it should be 1 toilet to every 3 adults? Am I wrong? I was told this previously by someone else at the council) and just 2 bedrooms for 7 adults and a baby. We lived in the living room for nearly the first year of my daughters life. We were allowed to bid for social housing but were told to expect to wait anywhere up to 4 years for housing as we weren't as needy as other people in the community (I understand this, at least we had a roof over our head, even if we couldn't swing a cat). We finally got housing in the private sector through Southwark councils housing incentive scheme, but the landlord wanted more money than they could offer, after a year of looking I couldn't risk the one place I had found, I paid out my own savings to my landlord on top of the council payment 'in secret' to secure reasonable accommodation for my family (I am 99.9% sure I will never see this money again). So my in laws rent council, we rent private. Our combined household income (albeit from benefits) is 3 times less than them our rent is just under 2.5% higher than they pay. I'm stuck in private housing that I cannot afford to live in, I'm due to resign my tenancy in October but I just don't know what I'm going to do, my partner is currently seeking work after training in a skill which will hopefully provide him good work. When he starts working we will no way be able to pay our rent, neither a deposit to move. I would need a nest egg to get out of my situation and there is no way I can save ?2000 for a deposit on another tenancy. I know of vacant council properties on Southwark, a good few of them too and they are just sitting there empty. I wouldn't have a chance in hell, I often feel to ring them up and ask whats happening with these places. I just want to get off benefits and be able to pay for things myself (I hate relying on benefits), this was never my life plan.

DJKQ you have made this thread very interesting for me so thank you for your input. Its much appreciated.

[Keef]

I would go further and say that if eligibility to remain in a council home is to be linked to salary - then the same should be true for the private sector. So if you rent a house with a salary of say 37K (with a rent you can afford) in the private sector...and then suddenly get a Job that pays ?60k...you also should be forced to move to somewhere with a higher rent......

That's effectively what we are talking about here.......linking the rent people are allowed to pay to what they earn. If anyone really things it is unfair for some to have proportionally cheap rents they they must agree it is unfair for ANYONE to have a rent that is below a certain percentage of their income (be that in the public or private sector).

I know what you're saying,and would agree with you if we lived in an ideal world, but we don't. The simple fact is that public housing stock is way too low. Yes Thatcher sold a load, blah blah blah, whatever,it was over 20 years ago. In the here and now, we have very limited housing, and it shouold be used for those who genuinely need it most.

I am no Tory, and I agree with all the points being made, that we need more housing, and there should be housing for all, but there just isn't, so we do need to look at who is living in the limited housing we do have.

Even the nice blocks in places like Greenwich, built as affordable housing for keyworkers. Do you really think that they are full of keyworkers? A lot of them are full of people that have played the system, and are taking the p!ss. I know that is a different think to public housing, but the problem is the same.

[Keef]

GinaG3, just read your post, and yours is exactly the sort of situation that people shouldn't find themselves in.

[DJKillaQueen]

Ty Gina and you are exactly the type of person that suffers most form the current state of housing in this country - and there are millions of people like you.

I don't know why some local authorities (including Suouthwark) don't exercise the legal right they already have to forcebly rehome suceeded tenants in properties too big for them. That could be looked at by government. Succession itself is not unfair imo for the reasons I pointed out above. It always involves bereavement and most often protects people who have lived there for a decade or more, either as a partner or spouse or offspring. The alternative would be to make those people effectively homeless and the law does not allow that, except in cases of rent arrears and/or anti-social behaviour.

On the overcrowding issue. I've long called for a change in how we measure overcrowding. Local authorities can only measure it according to the law, but that law has not been ammended in more than 100 years. The reason why the council did not consider you to be overcrowded in your 2 bed family home is because by law, 2 adults can sleep in the sitting room, and the child can sleep in the kitchen or bathroom (yes the archaic laws say that). They also have the smallest living space measurements in Europe as they were written at a time when families regularly lived in one room and were devised to address that - not to deal with the situation we have today where a family of five, where the children are under 11 can live in a one bedroom flat and that is NOT considered as overcrowding. It's ridiculous.

So why hasn't any government tackled that or wanted to tackle that? After all, the Housing Act was ammended and updated in 1985/ 1987/ and 1989....but no mention of overcrowding. I guess it's becuase it would suddenly make so many people eligible for rehousing under the law that instead of finding a solution, successive governments (BOTH Labour and Conservative) prefer to do nothing whilst other factors in the Housing Market have made the situation increasingly worse.

On the toilet issue...that is the local authorities own guidelines but not enforcable in law....the Hosuing Act does make provision for what is deemed 'unfit' but it does not stipulate anything on overcrowding.

The next thing that has been detrimental has been the right-to-buy scheme. As a result there is a dire lack of 'houses' as opposed to flats accross all social housing stock - that also is a contributary factor in overcrowding. Southwark Homesearch recently had a council house on offer for tenants to bid for. It had over 56 bidders - and those are just existing council tenants looking to move into a bigger property. The stresses on the system are there for all to see.

You also make the very real point about rents in the private sector (by far the biggest reason why young families like yourselves are forced to live with parents). This is the area that something desperately needs to happen in.

At present, housing benefit will only pay up to a maximum limit linked to the average rent for your area (so all those who think Cameron's idea to cap HB is something new is wrong as it already is capped). There are around 15 million people like you Gina, and 8 million of them are working and need HB to pay part their rent. The HB bill to the country and tax payer is twice what it was 30 years ago...and will double again over the next 20 years if something is not done to curb the inflated growth of the Housing market.

Experts predict annual grow on houses prices of 5% every year for the next for years (and that's in a climate of increasing unemployement and recession). It is way above infaltion and expected salary rises. Any economist can tell you that is insane. Essentially tax payers money is making up the shortfall in salaries and private sector rental growth. Not only is that immoral but where will it stop? We currently spend ?20.8 billion on HB every year - that's money going into the pockets of landlords, many of them private, so that they can continue to reap the rewards of bouyant property investment.

And you are right...the stress to you and your family is unfair. If you and/or your partner work, the stress doesn't go because you are just as poor and will continue to need top up benefits to live. You are not alone. One third of those in work are in the same situation as you.

There is a gross imbalance in our economy. The greed of those at the top has caused these widening gaps, only they are not gaps anymore because so many people are now suffering in the middle too. Indeed many homeowners feel squeezed too as they have higher than ever proportions of their salaries invested in their homes. And it's an unprecedented level of debt.

The solutions need to be long term and need to start now. We've got to get a grip on banks, mortgage lenders and the housing market. It is possible to limit annual growth of house prices to 1 or 2% through regulation and a change of attitude to the housing market, which makes it perform more like other sectors, under natural market forces. The buy-to-let schemes need to be restricted (I think the FSA are going to move on that by outlawing interest only mortgages, favoured by buy-to-let investors, but it won't be enough - as they'll simply increase rents to cover the capital repayments).

We need to scrap part/ buy part rent schemes as well and all of these schemes mortgage lenders come up with to keep people buying (rather than letting a natural shortage of buyers cause house prices to slow or dip even). If you can't afford to buy a house you can't afford to buy it...offering the part buy of a house is simply a rouse to keep property profits high - whilst increasing numbers of people become out priced. It can not go on indefinitely.

And we also need to regulate private sector rents (as indeed happens very successfully in other europoean countries). Buy-to-let investors need to start having some capital investment in their property. At the moment it is a free way to get tenants to buy you a house. I would favour some regulation that requires a minumum capital investment by the investor on the property.

Property owners won't like it but they need to start understanding the detrimental impact of such unregulated growth on the rest of us and the economy. We can not continue to fund their profits in part with ever increasing levels of HB and essentially tax payers money, when wages and other sectors lag so far behind.

[DJKillaQueen]

Even the nice blocks in places like Greenwich, built as affordable housing for keyworkers. Do you really think that they are full of keyworkers? A lot of them are full of people that have played the system, and are taking the p!ss.

You are making an assumption based on what?

To get a keyworker property, you have to be just that....nurse, fireman, teacher etc. You can't fiddle that. The problem is that keyworkers can buy property at way below market value and then make ?100k clear profit on resale in as little as three years. So there's an issue there as well.

Of course the idea behind it is to not price key workers out of living in the capital - and therefore causing a shortage of keyworkers, but at the same time we are giving them a golden handhsake because of the lower paid job they do. Given the other perks of public sector workers in terms of pensions and so on I think they already do far better than their private sector equivalents who have to continue in low paid misery, unable to ever own a property and without any kind of pension either.

Again all of this points to complete unwillingness to tackle the REAL problem....that being the gap between salaries and rents. It's as though we do everything we can to keep the housing market as it is (even if that means practically giving away property to key workers and council tenants) instead of starting to tackle the core issue.