is social housing subsidised?

Wee_Willy_Harris

tomstickland wrote: »

There's an area of Gloucester that was recently built and they hived off a large proportion to housing associations who then dumped a lot of problem families from the West Midlands there. People who paid top market rates for their houses weren't too happy about it.

My gripe is that how can the market ever correct for the rest of us who don't qualify if the bottom end is having money pumped into it.

I know two people who worked for housing associations btw.

Poor management is a different issue which effects all housing sectors, including owner/occs.

How can you call it the bottom end when so many aspire to it. The problem isn't the security of tenure in the social sector, it's inflated prices in the private sector. Removing security from social housing will have no impact on that at all.

tomstickland

I call it bottom end in terms of price. It aims to be "affordable", by which I assume that those eligble couldn't afford to pay more.
My grips is that it ignored how unaffordable housing might be to the rest of us.

Wee_Willy_Harris

tomstickland wrote: »

I call it bottom end in terms of price. It aims to be "affordable", by which I assume that those eligble couldn't afford to pay more.
My grips is that it ignored how unaffordable housing might be to the rest of us.

There are, of course, degrees of affordability.

However, I agree that houisng in many areas, if not social housing, is effectively unaffordable. But that isn't an issue with social housing. It's an issue with the wider housing market and stripping the rights of social tenants away will do nothing to address it.

PasturesNew

It took me ages to find the information, but in my area, rent in social housing would be £75-80/week for a 1-bed flat (strangely, it's about the same for a 3-bed house); the LHA in my area is £111.

molerat

tomstickland wrote: »

Yes, and recover those costs from the houses they sell on the open market.

Edited to show where the money comes from.

One reason why new builds are often sold at more than "market price" ? Retailers don't work out a selling price based on the cost of one item. They use the cost of the lot and how many are going to get pinched or damaged and clearance reductions to come up with the retail price. By the time the mug punters have paid full price for enough of them the pinched and reduced ones are paid for. Same principal applies.

Wee_Willy_Harris

PasturesNew wrote: »

It took me ages to find the information, but in my area, rent in social housing would be £75-80/week for a 1-bed flat (strangely, it's about the same for a 3-bed house); the LHA in my area is £111.

There you go. As I said earlier, approx £30 difference between social housing rents and the median private rental. Hardly the yawning chasm some would have you believe. Half the problem is that the horror stories are always taken from the South East, esp London, then "logically" projected on to the rest of the country. But they simply don't apply everywhere.

I'll bet, if the median is £111, that rightmove will have properties advertised for the same or less than social housing rents.

Wee_Willy_Harris

molerat wrote: »

Edited to show where the money comes from.

One reason why new builds are often sold at more than "market price" ? Retailers don't work out a selling price based on the cost of one item. They use the cost of the lot and how many are going to get pinched or damaged and clearance reductions to come up with the retail price. Same principal applies.

Selling new houses is slightly different to selling sweets. Developers work out the highest price they could possibly get, regardless of the cost of the build, and that's what they go for.

neverdespairgirl

Wee_Willy_Harris wrote: »

There you go. As I said earlier, approx £30 difference between social housing rents and the median private rental. Hardly the yawning chasm some would have you believe.

that's £1,500 a year. You'd need to earn more than £2k a year (pre tax) to pay the extra.

A fair whack, I reckon.

Wee_Willy_Harris

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

that's £1,500 a year. You'd need to earn more than £2k a year (pre tax) to pay the extra.

A fair whack, I reckon.

That's the problem when rents mirror house prices as they do in the private sector, rather than being more closely linked to inflation, as they are in the social sector. Still hardly a good argument to increase social rents so that everybody is worse off. Far better to reduce private rents so that everybody is better off. And, if you do that by deflating house prices, everyone's a winner.

neverdespairgirl

I agree. I just don't agree that £30 a week is insignificant.