Council tenants with too much room forced into smaller properties

carolt

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1298172/Council-tenants-room-forced-smaller-properties.html

Degenerate

Lord Freud said the restrictions, which will come into effect from April 2013, will only apply to people of working age, sparing pensioners from the trauma of having to move from their homes.

So it's ok to under-occupy if you're over an arbitrary age limit?

If you're going to implement such a policy, have the guts to follow through with the logic. Pensioners are probably the biggest group under-occupying social housing. Younger people are more likely to be in a position where their needs increase in future.

tincans

Degenerate wrote: »

So it's ok to under-occupy if you're over an arbitrary age limit?

If you're going to implement such a policy, have the guts to follow through with the logic. Pensioners are probably the biggest group under-occupying social housing. Younger people are more likely to be in a position where their needs increase in future.

pensioners vote !

lisyloo

So it's ok to under-occupy if you're over an arbitrary age limit?

There are good reasons not to move elderly people.
Many will be disabled and will possibly have hand rails, bath lifts, possibly stair lifts etc.
Some will have good a good network of friends and relationships with local doctors.
In extreme cases people can die if they move (it has happened).
It could be both expensive (in terms of fitting new stair lifts) and extremely disuptive.

What we need is common sense and social justice.

As a taxpayer I don't want to pay for people to live in Mayfair on the other hand I don't want elderly disabled pensioners disrupted over a few feet of space.
I would like sensible decisions made in these case rather than fixed rules.

carolt

Certainly, I have a distant in-law in a 3-bed council flat she brought her family up in; now they've grown up and she's on her own.

She's over 80 though, and I wouldn't want to see people like her moved away from her home, community etc.

On the other hand, I overheard a conversation in a post office queue recently with a young 20 something bloke complaing his council flat was too big (and therefore expensive) and he wanted to move, but they were failing to find him anything smaller.

So there does need to be a more sensible redistribution of existing (limited) stock.

Fiddlestick

carolt wrote: »

Certainly, I have a distant in-law in a 3-bed council flat she brought her family up in; now they've grown up and she's on her own.

She's over 80 though, and I wouldn't want to see people like her moved away from her home, community etc.

I understand your concern, but there are working families with lack of room that could benefit from her two rooms that are sitting empty.

How is that fair?

Can the local authority not offer her a smaller property within the same community?

robin_banks

Fiddlestick wrote: »

I understand your concern, but there are working families with lack of room that could benefit from her two rooms that are sitting empty.

How is that fair?

Can the local authority not offer her a smaller property within the same community?

Depends where you are tbh.

I was at a conference once where an FD of a large london based HA suggested that paying up to £50k to some tenants to give up thier tenancy was cost effective if the property had 3+ bedrooms and was underoccupied.

drc

carolt wrote: »

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1298172/Council-tenants-room-forced-smaller-properties.html

Makes sense :T.

silvercar

So who gets the bigger properties, existing council tenants who are technically over occupied or those on the council waiting list?

ninky_2

about time too. it's ridiculous that people stay in council homes that are too big for them. longterm this shouldn't impact pensioners anyway as generally the home will be too big before retirement so they will have had to downsize prior to this.

as for 'forcing' people out of their homes....i don't notice many complaining when the property they are moved to is bigger.

ninky_2

According to official figures, a total of 234,000 households in the social tenant sector are overcrowded while 456,000 are under-occupied, meaning people have more than one extra spare room.
A further 1,159,000 households have more rooms than is standard for a family of their size.

isn't that crazy when there are people in the private rental sector having to use the 'lounge' as an extra bedroom to reduce the rent by having more sharers?