[Closed] Social housing

there is social housing where i live.
what exactly are you asking?

Define "situation"

There is some.

There isn't enough, in terms of quantity and type/size.

NIMBYs have stopped a planned small (12-20 houses) in our village.

I will vote for any party that provides decent quality, affordable social housing that cannot ever be sold off into private ownership. The appalling lack of investment in the sector by all parties since the original right to buy has created and/or compounded all manner of social ills in the last 35 years.

I've got a HA house, it's lovely, perfectly maintained, everything you need, very little you don't and usfully affordable.

Sadly we've got to move because we've outgrown it, so we're looking at private renting, roughly twice what we're paying now, most look tired and unloved, Landlords want 3 working day just to acknowledge a request for maintenance (great if the boiler breaks on a Fri evening in Feb with 2 kids at home) and I'm hearing lots of people pretty pissed off because they want a 30% hike in rent at renewal.

We don't qualify for another HA house, we both earn decent money now and even if we did we'd have to wait 5 years or so on the combined list - you wait, if the first houses that come to the top of the list are council houses in warzones and you turn down 3, you back to the bottom of the list, fair enough I guess. We don't need help anymore, others really do - you're looking at 800-900 a month for a 3 bed near us and most people under 30 are earning £15k a year or so.

We had it bulldozed for our ménage.

This, as MCTD has said.

affordable social housing that cannot ever be sold off into private ownership

Surely selling it off is a brilliant move? It allows people to develop over time and own their home rather than renting in perpetuity or moving, provides a more varied social strata, and frees up capital to build more social houses.

The only mistake was that the money was not allowed to be used to build new ones - it should absolutely gave been ring fenced tor that.

Bring back the workhouse I say.

Where I live it's either the truly deserving, great people who need the leg up

Or

People that cheated the system, and park their 65 Plate G-Wagen in their allocated space

Or

Drug dealers (yes)

Used to live in an ex-council house in a medium sized village, about half the houses in the village were originally council houses (about 150 houses). When the council rolled out the new external insulation and re-rendered all the council houses, it was a real eye-opener, you could suddenly see very clearly how much social housing there was left. It was less than 10.

The only mistake was that the money was not allowed to be used to build new ones

Thats far from the [i]only [/i]mistake. Fraud and money laundering losses from exploitation of Right to Buy runs into billions every year (it makes losses from benefit fraud look like pocket money)- public assets being pretty much gifted to criminals and unscrupulous developers with council house tenants in the middle being conned out of their homes and replaced with private tenants at inflated rents who themselves often then have their rent funded by the benefits system at greater cost to the public purse.

Expanding RTB to housing association stock is going to lead to a massive money-laundering gold rush. The scale of fraud is already extraordinary.

We don't have nearly enough, as @ ninfan says housing sold off should have been replaced. When I was living in central London we had many types of social housing around us, council flats, HA and Charitable Hosuing Trusts. I did think the occupancy wasn't making the most of the rescource for "key workers" as a very high percentage of residents where retired.

As an aside if we have say 350,000 net migration per anum and say this leads to a requirement of 100,000 rental properties that's conservatively £25bn pa to build them

The only mistake was that the money was not allowed to be used to build new ones

So it didn't free up capital for more social housing?

No, Governments of all colours did not allow proceeds to be spent on new council housing. Any future rent controls will make situation far worse reducing interest in providing rented accomodation, at that point the Government will be facing a bills for many £10's of billions

So it didn't free up capital for more social housing?

Bless. No of course it didn't.

maccruiskeen - Member
The only mistake was that the money was not allowed to be used to build new ones
Thats far from the only mistake. Fraud and money laundering losses from exploitation of Right to Buy runs into billions every year (it makes losses from benefit fraud look like pocket money

Do you have a link to something explaining that in more detail?