High time for more council houses

michaels

Surely RTB has not resulted in houses being knocked down or taken out of use. London house prices depend on the number of people wanting to buy a home and the number of properties available. RTB if anything will have increased the number of properties available for purchase so resulted in a reduction in prices. Please explain how you see RTB having increased prices?

Morglin wrote: »

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

michaels

Council housing is subsidised - most properties if the council were to rent then out as 'private' they would get more rent.

Thus everyone living in council housing is receiving a subsidy from local tax payers, this is regardless of income, so a low income individual living in a private rented studio is paying tax so that a family of potentially 4 working adults on above average income can live in a detached 4 bed council house and pay probably less rent than than the studio.

Please someone who favours council housing explain why it is fair that those with a council house continue to receive subsidised housing however high their income becomes without having to give up the property whilst those who for whatever reason are not 'priority' can not get a council house?

I am not looking for an argument or suggesting their should not be provision of housing to those who can not afford to house themselves but the current system seems entirely unfair and potentially regressive.

fc123

Gorgeous_George wrote: »

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

I agree with latter part of your post as I lived on a scum estate and, yes the quality of build was dire (concrete complete with pharoah ants, damp, mould and cockroaches and poor layout/views etc) but some neighbours were horrendous. Only a minority though....say 5%? The rest were just like us...nice and neighbourly .

Instead Geoerge, you pay for the alternative via tax credits to subsidise private rents.

We got a cheapish place...was dire but could work our way out of it....took 3 years of slog.

My good friend has had baby late in life and partner earns only 16k ish. They rent privately @ £800 pcm 2 bed flat. Manageable on 2 X F/T wages...but with baby and childcare etc..not so much. However tax credits pays towards rent, CT etc.
It traps them though.
Why push yourself to earn more when everything is covered by a Govt subsidy?

I know of a few people on low incomes in expensive (in my view) private rental of approx £1000 pcm all paid for with HB and tax credit as their wages are low.

Affordable housing gives people a chance to improve their earning prospects if they choose to.......tax credits etc just trap people IMHO only.

fc123

michaels wrote: »

Council housing is subsidised - most properties if the council were to rent then out as 'private' they would get more rent.

Thus everyone living in council housing is receiving a subsidy from local tax payers, this is regardless of income, so a low income individual living in a private rented studio is paying tax so that a family of potentially 4 working adults on above average income can live in a detached 4 bed council house and pay probably less rent than than the studio.

Please someone who favours council housing explain why it is fair that those with a council house continue to receive subsidised housing however high their income becomes without having to give up the property whilst those who for whatever reason are not 'priority' can not get a council house?

I am not looking for an argument or suggesting their should not be provision of housing to those who can not afford to house themselves but the current system seems entirely unfair and potentially regressive.

One of the reaosns we own was because we got given a grotty place years back. I used to get eaten up with envy by those in amazingly nice places paying the same rent as us....and earning loads too.....and having hols etc on top. Then they bought them under RTB @ 70% discount.


I always thought it would be fairer if the tenancies were given on a 5 year basis, so if income went up...you had to move?. Hard to implement though.

MrsE_2

wageslave wrote: »

So the system is at fault yet the people who are dependent upon that system are trash?

There is no traditional industry left in this country. An entire generation who would have gone into factories, shipyards or down the pit are left languishing on a benefit system that actively discourages taking a job and somehow this is their fault?

In past generations we had a working class that was second to none. We built a frakking empire on their ability to work and die for this country.

Do you really, seriously imagine that these people, the backbone of Britain, bred trash?

Politicians and their social meddling created an underclass and in the process destroyed god knows how many lives. And here we sit , with our decent jobs, nice cars and comfortable lives and condemn those we should be defending.

Trash is disposable and we have allowed the great and the good in this country to create a generation of disposable people.

The shame isn't theirs, it is ours.

I was a child (of the south) of the Thatcher era & thought her an amazing woman & an inspiration to girls.

But looking back at what was done in that time to the non "south east" parts of this country disgusts & saddens me. The hearts were ripped out of cities/towns & villages in the north.

We've reaped what they've sown.

fc123

I have posted this pic before of my block (they painted it green shortly after we moved in in 1988.....and the other 10 blocks, all different bright colours.....so we could tell which one we lived in after a heavy night out).
It had a name but everyone then referred to their block as 'the green one'' or ''I live in the blue one''. Clever of the council that.

The whole estate is being blown up...has started already I heard.

It was so bad, hardly any sold under RTB but some bought the houses....and turned out to be not such a good move financially.

I think our flats could be bought for £10k during the late 80's but the service charges were huge....we had communal heat/hot water.
I don't think anyone bought them. Probably were impossible to mortgage too as they were concrete build.

My old neighbour owned a house behind us. Had to pay crazy money for a new roof years back....about 6 times what it should have been...and son was a roofer by trade too
We bump into her son occasionally and he told us she was offerred loads less than it would cost to buy another similar size house in the area.

Don't know what happened about it. Her house is probably dust now.

sjaypink

You won't get an argument if you accept that the vast majority of these:

michaels wrote: »

someone who favours council housing.....

Would not suggest this is fair:

michaels wrote: »

...explain why it is fair that those with a council house continue to receive subsidised housing however high their income becomes without having to give up the property whilst those who for whatever reason are not 'priority' can not get a council house?.

And would agree with you on this

michaels wrote: »

I am not looking for an argument or suggesting their should not be provision of housing to those who can not afford to house themselves but the current system seems entirely unfair and potentially regressive.

There are relatively simple measures that could be put in place to create a fairer system, and also create stable, pleasant communities

Eg, a increased rent in line with income policy- you pay a higher rent on a sliding scale dependant on wages. This gently encourages people to move on when financially able, but also allows higher earners to remain in their house if they wish (as opposed to a set income cut off eligibility or a 'time out' idea). This both increases money back to the Council / HA, and ensures you don't have areas filled with those on very low incomes, and people moving in and out frequently, destabilising the community and causing further disadvantage to residents

Phew, argument avoided

wageslave

MrsE wrote: »

I was a child (of the south) of the Thatcher era & thought her an amazing woman & an inspiration to girls.

But looking back at what was done in that time to the non "south east" parts of this country disgusts & saddens me. The hearts were ripped out of cities/towns & villages in the north.

We've reaped what they've sown.

She certainly started it. No such thing as society and a short mental jump from that to no such thing as family or any kind of responsibilty to anyone other than yourself.

Who amongst the political pygmies on offer is going to sort out the social and economic mess we are in?

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

I would settle for someone, anyone, who actually gives a frakk about this country and not about short term political gain.

fc123

I might indulge myself on this thread.
This pic is quite arty in a certain kind of way/

wageslave

The whole scum thing really annoys me.

Any countrys greatest asset is its people. We have allowed a whole generation to become addicted to benefits, sold off their houses and broken up their support network.

We lost an empire and America became the richest, most powerful nation on the face of the earth on the strength of the kind of people we seek to reject.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me

We really need to rethink what we imagine we know and where we imagine we are going