Getting a council house! is it possible anymore?

lewt

Grimbo_Green wrote: »

Ok I just want to address some of the points made here:

Firstly, I dont listen to hearsay regarding how much money people on benefits get, and who gets housed etc - I know people who live off benefits and they are alot better off than us and many other people who work. They DO have flat screen tv's, holidays, and nice clothes etc. It's not a myth.

That bloke who said I have no right to have kids if I cant afford it? well when we first got pregnant we COULD afford it. It's not our fault that everything keeps going up in price.
He said how his mum struggled and they didnt have a bathroom etc, etc well does that mean she shouldn't have had you then? and i'm sure if she were given the chance of a council house she would have jumped at the chance? where's the crime in that?

We are on the list at the moment and have been on it for just over a year now.

The house we rent currently is extremely damp but our landlord doesnt do anything about it other than to tell us to keep the windows open which we wont do as we have a young baby.
I suffer from asthma and it has gotten worse since living there to the point were I am needing to take my inhaler very frequently during the night!
We have also had to throw a lot of clothes away because they were covered in mould! and everytime we take a plate or cup out of our kitchen cupboards they need to be washed again because they smell really damp and musty!

I work for our county council on the education dept but I dont know if this is considered a key worker or not?

I have written to our local MP who wrote to the head of the housing department on my behalf because he agreed with my views on the way they prioritse the housing but I got a snotty response back from the housing dept.

After informing them of all of this we are still told we stand no chance!

Here are our monthly outgoings:
Rent: 650
Ctax: 100 (that is stretched over 12 months, still v expensive for a band
Groceries: 200
Diesal: 170 (partner works 23 miles away and has been looking for a job closer to home for over a year)
Car costs: 100 (that is for repairs, road tax, insurance, MOT)
Gas: 60
Elec: 60
Water: 38
Phone: 20
Lnternet: 15
TV liscense: 12
Debts: 120
Childcare: 275
Total: 1695
AND I DID NOT DEDUCT TAX FROM OUR WAGES, its £21k before deductions

At the end of the day who wants to spend their whole lives working hard for nothing? we all want easier lives hence why you are on this website in the first place so why the hell are some of you getting hernia's over my question??

Yes so what I admit that I do find it annoying when I watch shows like jeremy kyle (lol!!) and there is some chav moaning because he is a drug addict and cant work because of his addiction (as if its an illness) and he is given every benefit going and a council flat
It's just wrong.
Council houses should be for hard working people who are struggleing to afford to live.
I totally agree if you are homeless then of course you should have priority, what I dont agree with is the people who have never worked a day in their lives, got themselves addicted to heroin, or got sent to prison for being a paedophile then getting housed.
I cant change the way the houses are prioritised so as I said before, if you can't beat 'em then join 'em.

Why the F dont you move ? why are you paying 65o for a house with damp ? you rent you can move!!!! you attitude is very typical of a coucil worker. and the fact you work in the education department and dont see addiction as an illness is worryin. you 21k figure for both of you suggests at least one of you id working full time.. you can change that.

Cant beat em, join em... lol. dunno if you would say that if they put you in a two bed flat in a towerblock.

clk299

Sounds like you live where I work, two-for-one!
If you don't meet the criteria then you won't get a place. Seriously. People also really do exaggerate or miss out details as to how they got their house (or they don't really understand why they got it). Or it's an illegal sublet, and they don't want anyone to know. Believe me, I've been in them all to visit clients. And I have also had clients from all backgrounds go through the housing system (pregnant or with newborns) and have experienced women being told to move at very short notice with a newborn into a dodgy hostel; women not given anywhere else to live because the council know they've got 28 days till after the baby is born actually to evict the woman from the unsuitable place, so they wait till the last minute to rehouse, etc. Women who have to move from the area where all their friends and family are to 2 bus rides away, into an isolated block of flats where they are at serious risk of isolation and postnatal depression.

If you are in this country and you are entitled to public funds then you can get onto the housing list and if you meet the criteria you will be able to bid on houses or you will be allocated a house. If you've come here with nothing, with a family, but you manage to stay here long enough to get eligibility etc then you are as entitled to claim as everyone else.

I recently had a client who was not eligible for public funds and she was homeless, and she ended up being repatriated with the baby to her home country, because it was that, or have the baby taken into care, because there was no duty of care to her as she was not eligible for anything.

neverdespairgirl

hethmar wrote: »

Oh come on Global, how many of the Eastern Bloc, Polish and Portugese immigrants are likely to be killed in their own countries?

EEA nationals can't be asylum seekers. Nor can they just turn up and get social housing.

neverdespairgirl

GlobalSquare wrote: »

well didnt the jews begin in rome area if being technically and sarccy?

If you are being technical, get it right - Jews are originally from Israel!

neverdespairgirl

stargazer59 wrote: »

I have a 9 year old child, and i have to walk him 1.5 miles to school and back each day

At 9, surely he can walk or cycle on his own?

SingleSue

two-for-one wrote: »

Hi Grimbo green, I completely sympathise with you and where you're coming from. I'll add my 2 pennies worth to this already heated discussion and no doubt get slated. but here goes:

I have been fortunate enough to get a council flat in a very desirable part of London (zone 1). Where I live, I seem to be completely surrounded by immigrants, in particular bangladashis. I have yet to meet someone in my block who speaks English with an English accent (indicating they have been brought up in this country). I think the system is so unbelievably unfair. It's all very well being honorable and saying you shouldn't lie in your attempts to getting a council flat, but I can tell you now, a large majority of the immigrants I come across all seem to know how to play the system, and are all very happily enscounced in this great London location. From talking to my neighbours (all immigrants; their friends and family are all also living in council flats in nice parts of London as well).

My opinions have been formed by my personal experiences. Here are a few examples: I live in a large 2 bed flat. There is an east african family living in an identical flat above me. I found out the man got the flat before he'd even had kids (god only knows how he managed that) and his wife was still in Africa at the time. Another one of my neighbours is also from east africa. He lives in a one bed flat, his ex-wife lives in a 3 bed round the corner with their 2 kids.

I have an italian friend who's partner is also italian and they have 2 young kids. She pretened to be a single mum, was living on benefits and so got a lovely council flat in central london as well. I have an American friend who's only connection to this country was the fact her mother had been born here. Anyway, 2 and a half years after arriving in the UK, she got a 1 bed council flat in again a fantastic location in london because she was a single mum to a 4 month baby. The one bed flat next to her's sold for 350k a couple of years ago. My dad had an albanian friend who now lives in a London council flat with his czech wife and baby. He claimed asylum, but once he got his Brit passport, he started making trips back to Albania, family in tow as well. What a joke!!

The list is endless!! The people I talk about all live in the same area as me. I have a malaysian friend with a filipino partner and young child again in a council flat near me. I go to the sure-start drop-in's and again it's full of immigrant mums who have council flats in the local area. It's all very well saying the lack of council housing is due to councils selling off their stock, but where I live, council flats tend to be far to expensive to buy and so are still rented out by the council and are basically occupied by immigrants. I grew up in this area, and the only way I would have any chance of staying here is to get a council property as 2 bed flats on the private market go for about £400 per week at least.

Anyway theres my in put. No doubt I will now get loads of condemnation and abuse, so I'll brace myself!!

Not flaming or being abusive but merely replying to give the other side as well.

I live in social housing (think I will make myself a placard soon, seem to be saying that loads!) :rotfl: and on our estate, we have no immigrants/asylum seeker etc. Everyone living here, was born in this country. This is not to say there is a policy to not to house these people, it's just that in our area, there are just not many...so it comes down to area too.

We do have a fairly large Polish contingent in the area but they all seem to private rent.

I do feel that people from other countries coming to this one get a raw deal with how they are perceived, same as the single parent. I once worked with someone who claimed asylum many years ago and to hear his stories of the tortuous route he had to take to get himself and his family to safety certainly made me think twice before jumping to conclusions about the intentions of coming here. This man, once allowed, threw himself into our society and work blooming hard to provide for his family, refusing all help and when I was working with him, paying way more in taxes than a lot of others because he did not want to claim entitled family benefits for working people, so he worked extra jobs as he felt this country had given him a place of safety and he wanted to pay some of it back.

At no point did he take a council property, instead he and his family slept on other people's floors until they had sold enough of their belongings brought over with them to get a bedsit for them all to sleep in....they worked on from there.

stargazer59

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

At 9, surely he can walk or cycle on his own?

Unfortunately it would mean crossing some very busy roads, but we are working up to it! The school runs a walking bus on wednesdays which is great.

Please note i wasnt complaining, you just do what you have to do!!

lowis

i lived on a very mixed estate, it is well-run and the majority of the tenants are normal, hard-working people. the few trouble tenants that exist are white, complete layabouts who have massive chips on their shoulders, and they seem to think the world owes them a living just because 'they were born in this country'.

in contrast, the 'immigrants' who live in my block seem to work hard, take care of their families, bring their kids up properly and respect the neighbourhood - all they want is a better quality of life it seems, and are willing to work for it.

another thing that I have noticed and I am sure this contributes to a person's well-being and how they live and how they feel about themselves: the 'immigrants' all seem to make their own food from scratch, cooking proper meals (the smells wafting from some of the flats are mouthwatering), whereas the troublesome tenants all seem to be fat and unhealthy and exist on bargains from Iceland.

GlobalSquare

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

If you are being technical, get it right - Jews are originally from Israel!

erm not being stupid (or maybe i am?) but wasnt israel created after the second world war?
(didnt the jews come from (sp) judea - well that would be my guess if i had to say they came from anywhere .. but to be honest my religious knowledge could be written on a stamp) *edit* thinking about it you might be right as i seem to recall something about israelites aswell (though that could be from a song) - religion causes so much good and so much bad i turned my back on all of it years ago

I did say that i wasnt to sure about where the jews came from but it still proved the point that we are all imergrants in this country

and if you re read my post i wasnt the one being technical .. i made a random guess at roman decent as most of the 'im a brit immergrants have no rights etc' are typically white people and most of those are roman or viking decent ... the point i was making was he was an immergrant to ... it doesnt matter where he came from to me ... he was the one that made the sarccy comment about no free homes in rome and that he was of norse decent (technically agruing against the whole roman thing even though it made no difference as hes still from immergrants - who both him and the op seem to have a problem with if you read there posts with them getting housing/help

Welshwoofs

lowis wrote: »

crikey...where is this place? sounds like hell. my council estate is quite nice, great mix of tenants and the place is well-managed by an efficient TMO.

I live in N.Wales and there's a whole host of Beirut style council estates to choose from. A quick drive (and I'd recommend quick...give the !!!!!!s less chance to have your wheels away) through towns such as Flint or Rhyl and you'd think Dante's Inferno sounds appealing in comparison.