High time for more council houses

lostinrates

re quality, some of the council housing stock I've seen is solidy built, with decent sized rooms. a lot of them round here have the larders stillin them: having survived the period where storing and home cooking was unfashionanble nd not povided for in new builds (council or private) and this are increasingly proving their worth. a friend of mine who owns such a solid old ex LA property, has turned his larder into a small utility/laundary area. Interestly this friend shoce old solid ex La over available new builds. also interestingly he is yet another professional (albeit in the provinces!) with a decent income and this is what was within his price bracket. Yet I agai I wonder what about the people for whom the need for this housing was foreseen...where are they? This property, BTW, was sold to pay inheritance tax: it exceeded the threshold at the time of the owners death.

Running_Horse

zappahey wrote: »

Can I be in your Nirvana, where a marriage certificate instills social responsibility?

Maybe that's the answer, make all the chavs get married.

As opposed to them getting pregnant at 16, living on the dole, and passing their failure down from one generation to the next. Great idea. We should try that one!

Lotus-eater

Running_Horse wrote: »

Immediately take the house back for any anti-social behaviour, or non-payment of rent.

People would soon learn how to get and keep an affordable home.

I think alot of us would easily work out what is trash/scum and not.
Not paying them benefits or throwing them out of their house does what?
We still have to house them and keep them alive. There has to be a safety net somewhere, we have it where the politicians think it is the lowest level of living available to keep alive.
What would you do otherwise? Let them die?

Running_Horse

Ask them to support themselves? What do you say to hard working couples on low incomes who have no hope of buying or council housing? Please pay more tax to build houses for those who won't work. Perhaps there is no clamour for new council housing because people know exactly who will get them.

sjaypink

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

People that breed for benefits.

People that deal drugs for a living, AND claim benefits.

People that shoplift, vandalise, brawl, !!!! on doorsteps, shoot up in alleys, let their brats run wild all night, etc etc etc.

People that spend all their time worrying about how much they can get in benefits, and no time worrying about looking for a job.

People that expect the state to pay their way, and have no sense of personal responsibility.

In short, a large percentage of your typical council estate. .

:rolleyes: Thats a really poor post Hamish, even by your standards

StevieJ

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Actually Generali is correct about quality.
There is a graph somewhere showing the increase in rental quality over the years as private rental increased and social housing increased.
.

I thought someone posted an article about the council turning their noses up at some private build flats because they weren't good enough quality

Generali

wageslave wrote: »

Remarkably this is the first time I have disagreed with one of your posts Generali.

That is remarkable!

wageslave wrote: »

High quality rented housing. Get real here.

Most BTLs are poorly maintained and the tenants have little or no security of tenure.

Social housing may not be a perfect solution but, before politicians started interfering, it provided decent secure housing for at least two generations of ordinary people.

I disagree that most BTL are poorly maintained. Some are and some aren't: my experience is that if you pay a little more then the LL is more inclined to keep the place up, if you get a bargain basement place, the LL won't spend anything if he can avoid it.

Security of tenure is a problem. If you grant security of tenure you have to have rent controls or tenants can be thrown out by being priced out. If you have rent controls then you limit supply and that means very poor quality housing with little choice as was the case in the rented sector before BTL came along.

BTL isn't perfect but it's better than other models tried in the UK.

StevieJ

Lotus-eater wrote: »

I think alot of us would easily work out what is trash/scum and not.
Not paying them benefits or throwing them out of their house does what?
We still have to house them and keep them alive. There has to be a safety net somewhere, we have it where the politicians think it is the lowest level of living available to keep alive.
What would you do otherwise? Let them die?

I do wonder how people existed in the early part of the century with little social support and large families :eek:

sjaypink

Generali wrote: »

BTL isn't perfect but it's better than other models tried in the UK.

I think though that when most people back the use of private renting, as opposed to social housing, for those on very low income, or on benefits, they are unaware of exactly how much this costs. Eg, a Local Authority can pay out £750 pm here in Housing benefits for a 3 bed private house, or £350-400 pm on a HA property. Also, the Council Tax benefit will usually be much higher as HA houses tend to be band A or B, whereas similar private will be C or D

It seems to me to be far cheaper long term to encourage more Housing Association building/ purchasing. There is also the further issue for me as to whether local rate payers should be paying into A BTLers empire... but thats OT I guess!

Generali

StevieJ wrote: »

I do wonder how people existed in the early part of the century with little social support and large families :eek:

The Road to Wigan Pier is a good starting point. It's a fascinating look at the poorer end of working class life in the 1930s as well as being a pretty viscious criticism of Socialism (despite what the wholly innacurate description of the book on Wikipedia states):

http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/summaries/rtwp.html

But what about those middle-class people whose views are not reactionary but "advanced"? Beneath his revolutionary mask, is he so much different from the other? Are there any changes in his habits, his taste and his manners, his ideology, as it is called in the communist jargon? Is there any change at all except that he votes Labour or Communist? It can be observed that the middle-classed communist still associates with the middle-class, still lives among the middle-class, and his tastes are those of a bourgeois person.

The main thing Orwell criticises is that middle-class communists and socialists often speak against their own class, but that they evidently have the behaviour and manner of a middle-class person. The socialists who make propaganda for "proletarian solidarity" generally don't even have a lot of contact with the class they are "fighting for". The only contact with the working-class that socialists generally have is with the lower-class intelligentsia at the various political workshops. Generally, Orwell says that socialism is a nearly impossible thing.

If you ever get the chance to visit Wapping Library, the local history section has lots of very interesting things about how people used to live in Wapping and Stepney. Life was very hard for the poor in those times, mostly because of underemployment. For many unskilled workers, it wasn't possible to get enough work to support your family and put aside any kind of a cushion, especially if you drank or gambled.