What is a Housing Association?

verytricky69

A property that we were very interested in 6 months ago has come back onto the market as the chain collapsed at the bottom. Since we looked at it a new road has been built perpendicular to it. This road consists of about a dozen semi detatched houses. These houses are all going to be housing association. Does this mean council housing? Will the people living there need to be in employment to pay there rent? No one is living there yet so we've no idea who will. The area is so nice at the moment- some of the houses on the street are worth in excess of £1million. Do you think the new properties will have an impact on the price of the house we are interested in?

Nosht

Yes, probably downgrade the area.



N.

princeofpounds

Housing association is not council housing, but generally speaking they hold a similar group of tenants. However, instead of secure tenancies and funding from council budgets they are generally operated on a more commercial basis.

By the way, it's practically impossible now to find new developments of any size without an 'affordable' element - even in Chelsea and Kensington Labour made it a condition of planning to put up flats for housing associations, councils, shared ownership schemes and so on. Which has spoilt quite a few developments (one near me, been open a year, the HA flats neat the back of the site already have junk all round the block).

But not everyone in HA will be out of work. Many do work on low incomes, but it only take one bad family to tar the rest with the same brush.

evilmonkeychops

Hello
I've been lurking for ages, but just had to reply. I have lived in areas with housing association property before (twice, in 2 different parts of the country) and i have to say that the housing association tenants generally bring down the area-both in terms of value and in terms of Anti Social Behaviour etc
There is little or no council housing now as it has been transferred to housing associations
Good Luck with your decision

Jowo_2

Housing Associations operate similarly to council housing in that the allocation of their tenancies is based on need and the needier a tenant is (disability, homelessness, those with children), the higher priority they are for housing.

Some, though, offer low cost home ownership so will at least attract a proportion of occupants that are in employment.

Milliewilly

The Labour Government made changes to planning law in that any developer building more than 15 houses had to include social housing.

Jowo_2

Milliewilly wrote: »

The Labour Government made changes to planning law in that any developer building more than 15 houses had to include social housing.

and some developers prefer to pay compensation to the local council rather than include social housing in their construction because it puts off their prospective buyers.

Milliewilly

Jowo wrote: »

and some developers prefer to pay compensation to the local council rather than include social housing in their construction because it puts off their prospective buyers.

Yes some new developments I have viewed are turning into ghetto's around the 'social' housing areas. I pity the people who have paid £3-400K for their 'executive detached' to have it plummet in value because of people who don't give a !!!!!! about getting the opportunity to live in a nice new development and thus have a bit of aspiration (and I don't mean to get on Jeremy Kyle and get the latest mobile phone).

Wee_Willy_Harris

So, the answer would appear to be that Housing Associations are the target of ignorance, prejudice and discrimination! Which means the next logical step is a strongly worded letter to the Daily Mail!

princeofpounds

ignorance, prejudice and discrimination!

Haha well prejudice and discrimination yes... but ignorance I'm not so sure about. The thing is a lot of this dislike of HA developments is based precisely on knowledge of what they can be like.

Different developments seem to take on different characters. There are three near me - one is a single large building which looks really quite nice and tidy. The second is the one I mentioned above, which seems fine but has already become a dumping zone for the tenants despite it being a newbuild. The third is older and HA-only and has the odd shooting. So they aren't all bad, but the risk factor is higher!

Milliewilly

Wee_Willy_Harris wrote: »

So, the answer would appear to be that Housing Associations are the target of ignorance, prejudice and discrimination! Which means the next logical step is a strongly worded letter to the Daily Mail!

I am dipping my quill at this very moment.

So you would be happy to spend 1/4 - 1/2 a million to live next to a problem social housing estate would you?