High time for more council houses

StevieJ

Generali wrote: »

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):

ed.

I read that many moons ago, different world and puts todays troubles in perspective.

cuddlymarm

Hi

I grew up in the 60s in a small village on the edge of the lake district. There were about a dozen council houses and there were a few families that had lived there for years but the majority of people lived there until they had saved enough for a deposit on a small house. Then they moved out and the next people moved in. This worked really well but property prices rose and the right to buy scheme happened and now the young couples that live up there now move away or tend to rent because for quite a few will never be able to afford to buy a house there.
If the right to buy scheme had never happened then there would still be enough council housing.
Perhaps if the government stopped the right to buy scheme and built more council housing then this might help people in need of accomodation.
But I think that it needs to be pointed out that you don't have to live in council accomodation to have problem neighbours, kids running wild etc or that it compulsory to be scum to live in council accomodation. There are lots of decent people that haven't a choice.
Cuddles:rotfl:

chopperharris

What happened to the billions from the rtb scheme?I can beleive that the downfalls of councils , their staffing levels and buiding prgram all going into decline was around the same time.

If we bemoan the scum , using a paraphrase of some posters comments here , then we should be FOR council housing , after all would you want them in your street or in a maggies corall system?

If we bemoan them living and sponging off the state then surely we should have jobs for them that actually work out better than getting benefits equalling what i spend on holidays every year?

Perhaps those unemplyed could be put to good use actually working for the councils , at least in a work to benefits scheme.This works two wasy , one being making them active enough to not claim additional health related benefits and two to give them bloody pride in polishing the turds of ares they stay in.

I grew up council , I can understand the generalised animosity towards those that stay there because of it.In our street was large families staying in two bedroom houses , crime , drugs , drink and unemployment.However in the same area , in the same houses were working families of the same size.....and through the rtb they were able to get out , perhaps that was another reason for implementing it.

Councils used to employ , and train its staff , generations would work there all their life.Now it subcontracts everything and trains nothing.Instead they have been fractured by private charity enitites that are mini councils within a councils border...the housing asociation.

I beleive that mass employers were deliberately wiped out to prevent the power of the unions , shipywards , steelworkers , car manufactur and mining and of course the councils.It is no suprise that in these areas are the highest unemployment , the worst housing , empty housing , highest crime , highest areas of long term claimants and health related benefit claims , lowest life expectancy and are all areas were the big employers are no more.

Of course we blaim maggie for all this , for a generation of culls all directed at the lower and working classes merely for the profit of the upper middle.

But has three terms of nulabour made any moves forward in reversing all that they opposed for a generation , the only answer can be no.Then why havent they , the simple answer is that they are but labour in name , more like the saccarhin version of conservative.Did they nationalise the death throes of british car manufacturing , no , instead they let it go and then left themselves at the will of the hangman looking for a bailout to safe gaurd jobs and now selling off what little of the countries assest in a fire sale......but had they not bailed out the banks though then we would have been up sheet crick with a chinese canoe and an imf paddle , living on the streets as there isnt any council homes for our home lenders to turf us out to.

silvercar

I define scum by how people behave not how poor they are.

vivatifosi

My father built council houses in the 1960s and early 70s before starting his own building firm. They were solidly built, large and actually done to pretty high standards. Living in a new town, the social housing model stretched beyond housing those on the lower rung of the ladder and was an exercise in social engineering. Larger houses (often detached or big semis with garages) were also built for the managers and supervisors in the new firms. They would be on the same estates, but set apart from the housing for the workers. Ironically when RTB came, these were the first houses to sell as they were the most desirable. I'd be amazed if there were any in council hands now.

I would not say that the build quality was particularly different to the private housing stock. What was different was that there was no deviation from plan. The frontages all looked the same, everyone had the same bath and kitchen fittings. This enabled them to build far more properties than they do now. My father tells a story of how he left his bike on some foundations one morning and when he got back there was a house built round it. Not finished grant you, but they'd gone a long way.

Growing up in a council house we were pretty lucky. The house was new when we moved in. There were never any of the issues that people complain about now (damp, etc), though they have long since been remodelled to have central heating rather than a back boiler and gas fires, plus double glazing. Even today those houses are pretty solid.

If you look at the stock in the country now, all houses will have to last about 200 years in order not to create shortages. I think my old council house will manage that better than a lot of new-build boxes.

StevieJ

chopperharris wrote: »

.

But has three terms of nulabour made any moves forward in reversing all that they opposed for a generation , the only answer can be no.Then why havent they , the simple answer is that they are but labour in name , more like the saccarhin version of conservative.

More like an authoritarian version of.

Morglin

Thanks to the Tory:rolleyes: (and then Labour:mad:) policy of not releasing funds gained under RTB, we now have serious, if not dire, housing problems.

Those in high cost areas, such as the South/London, cannot get a mortgage (the average home now needs a 90k income, apparantly:eek:), private rents are high cost and usually ghastly, and social homes are as rare as hen's teeth.

Until enough homes are built to replace this shortfall, and cater for current need, there should be a stop to RTB - it's lovely when there are enough social homes, but thanks, in part, to Thatcher etc., there are not enough now to continue to sell them off.

Lin

Oldernotwiser

Generali wrote: »

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

And for the earlier period, you can't do much better than read Robert Tressell's "Ragged Trousered Philanthropists".

wageslave

StevieJ wrote: »

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

I strongly suspect they survived because of those large families and the practical and emotional support they offered. Up until a few decades ago it wasn't unusual for three generations of a family to live within walking distance of each other.

Gorgeous_George

I'd love to see more council houses being built. But I don't want to pay for them.

RTB saw the good tenants buying their homes. This left councils with a higher percentage of scum tenants than before. It is not 60's housing estates that are the problem. It's the residents.

GG