Really quick question, are there any rules stopping a Housing Association tenant from owning and renting out a separate private house?
Eg I’m a HA tenant and I buy and rent out another property, becoming a landlord.

see what it says in your tenancy agreement.

For me it would sort of negate what the point of social housing providers are for.

For me it would sort of negate what the point of social housing providers are for.

^^^ This. Ethically it feels wrong I’m afraid.

it’s an odd one as these days the only benefit over private rental is a more secured long term tenancy. Here at least there’s no rent differential between HA and private.

Here at least there’s no rent differential between HA and private.

Is it not that they can have restriction on who can rent them so making homes available for locals etc.

I know some people who do that where I am. Not sure if its allowed or not, but I think its wrong. If you can buy your own house,buy it and live in it and leave the HA housing for those who can’t.

HA rent here is half the price of private renting.

A monthly payment for a Mortgage can be half of what Housing Association or Private rent is around here. What do you secure the Mortgage with?

It seems unethical to me, surely the whole point of a HA is to house those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get somewhere to live?

The morality of it does depend on locality/ property suitability.

Might own a property in the North of the UK – typically lower property price and associated mortgage but have relocated to the South-East where the costs are a lot higher… What would be the moral issue with that…? Or may need a larger property than can buy – say a 3 bed because of a growing family but owns smaller 1 bed property and wants one day to have capital to buy own house. Again – not sure why that would be problematic.

Social housing is now for vulnerable people.

Its not for tenants to profit (unless Tories are in power and an election is looming).

Social housing is now for vulnerable people.

Maybe where you live, but not up here. Social housing is great if it’s done right, the country needs more social housing to rent not more ‘affordable’ houses to buy.

OP’s breaking rule #1 though.

cynic-al

Subscriber
Social housing is now for vulnerable people

If you want to stigmatise people and turn the areas into Ghetos.

Morally it’s all to shit. Honestly the BTL market is a large contributing factor in why we need HAs and why social houses isn’t just druggies and scroungers who can’t be arsed, in fact with most HAs you need to be working.

I’m a former HA tenant, we stayed for longer then we needed too, but despite being too small for us really we liked it, our neighbours for the most part were lovely and the HA were excellent Landlords.

I can’t comment on the rest of the UK, but here HA rent it a lot lower than private, 40-50% lower I would say, they also sell new houses at around 75% of ‘value’ if you qualify.

As a system it worked well, for us and our neighbours we got a ‘functional, but not flash’ place we could call our own without the fear of your Landlord getting greedy and whacking up the rent by 20% a year or turfing you out because they decide one day they’d like to sell now. Rent went up at a set rate just over inflation. We managed to save up some money for a deposit and left for the next family to have a go. Some of my neighbours are still there, most have moved on to their own place.

The OP’s rental property is an investment. Just like any other investment; building society account, pension fund, stocks and shares. No reason why you should only live in a housing association property because you have no money.

The OP’s rental property is an investment. Just like any other investment; building society account, pension fund, stocks and shares.

Not really, it’s a profiting from an market in a basic human right that’s been massively over inflated by speculative investors, whilst at the same time benefiting from a system that designed to protect people from it.

Ask the Housing Association you rent from they will all have different rules I would imagine. I work in social housing and it’s the full spectrum of people who need affordable housing to people with issues to people who are absolutely loaded and live abroad most of the year. How would The HA ever find out even if you did do it?

Not really, it’s a profiting from an market in a basic human right that’s been massively over inflated by speculative investors, whilst at the same time benefiting from a system that designed to protect people from it.

This. Anyone who thinks otherwise is breaking rule #1.

In terms of actual rules, the tenancy agreement would usually say something along the lines of, you need to inform the LA when you have a change of circumstances. It’s about your need for the property and where you sit in the queue / heirarchy of needs in a given area. It’s rarely specific, e.g. that you can’t hold a mortgage, because you could have a divorcee who has 50% mortgage who needs to find alternative accommodation and risks becoming homeless. The criteria is about the risk of homelessness. If it is a simple case of an individual who was in LA housing who had a change of circumstance where they can now buy suitable accommodation for themselves, they should move out of LA housing and the LA can throw them out and take civil action to recover their costs. But very little in life is that simple.

I’m not actually the person doing it, it’s someone I know. Lived in London in a HA property but bought an investment property that was rented out to students. I was one of the tenants.
I agree completely that morally it was on dodgy ground, but didn’t know if it was illegal or against any HA rules.
My wife and I bumped into the landlord again after many years and we were talking it over the other evening.

Housing Associations (the ones who use HCA money at least, building the new ‘council houses’) access public money to provide cheaper than market rental houses, so the tenants are effectively publically subsidised. If those tenants then have private wealth they’d effectively be claiming a subsidy unfairly.

Those HAs that are just businesses capitalising on planning gain from commercial developers (so building on crap land that was given to gain planning permission for luxury homes) it’s less clear I’d say.

If you want to stigmatise people and turn the areas into Ghetos.

I’m not trying to make policy (yawn) just my experience of housing and quite a few HAs and hundreds of their tenants across 4 local authority areas.

Spoke to MsMoose, she used to work for WDH, that’d have you evicted under their tenancy rules.