a third of brits lived in council housing

Loughton_Monkey

ILW wrote: »

In my opinion, Thatcher only made two big errors.
1. Selling off council houses at a big discount.
2. Not standing up the the riff raff regarding the poll tax.

Agreed.

Although to be 'selfish' my only regret is that having been brought up myself in a 'decent' council house, my father died before I was able to step in and buy it for him [I had just committed extremely heavily on my own property].

Had I done so, I would have made the most stonking profit. Mainly because we would have got it for a song, but it was (is) an excellent corner property, with lots of land.

It is a matter of extreme irony that some of the 'CHAVS' who bought, and made a massive profit, couldn't resist the temptation to sell the thing as soon as they could, and then rented. [Remember the 'loads-a-money' era?]. Flash car. Holidays in Malaga. Sky package with double fries......

Predictably, didn't take long to blow the lot. Sitting there creaming huge benefits now.

ninky_2

Generali wrote: »

. Who do you think was subsidizing the rents?

not-for-profit is not the same as subsidized. i don't know the figures but afaik council housing rents were not / are not subsidized. the idea is that the rents of the tenants would cover the costs. in the 1970s only 11 percent of tenants were out of work (and therefore on benefit / subsidised). the massive rents charged by the private sector these days might make you assume they were but given the low costs of acquiring housing stock and the length these houses would serve the costs to provide would only be maintenance.

of course selling the council houses did not get rid of the costs of subsidising housing for those 'in need'. in fact it only shifted them to the private sector rental market and actually raised the costs as a result.

Generali

ILW wrote: »

The disounts were not necessary.

ninky wrote: »

not-for-profit is not the same as subsidized. i don't know the figures but afaik council housing rents were not / are not subsidized. the idea is that the rents of the tenants would cover the costs. in the 1970s only 11 percent of tenants were out of work (and therefore on benefit / subsidised). the massive rents charged by the private sector these days might make you assume they were but given the low costs of acquiring housing stock and the length these houses would serve the costs to provide would only be maintenance.

of course selling the council houses did not get rid of the costs of subsidising housing for those 'in need'. in fact it only shifted them to the private sector rental market and actually raised the costs as a result.

Great theory. Got any data to back it up or are we going to chat about what you imagine to be true.

How about this for a different theory. You had an economy based on people working in nationalized industries either making things nobody wanted or worse making things very badly that everybody needed. These state run enterprises were deliberately run (via 'marginal cost pricing') to make a loss.

Workers making products that nobody wanted that were being sold for a loss were then returning to a badly maintained home that was rented to them at a loss.

All this was expected to be paid for by 'The Rich' via confiscatory tax rates.

IveSeenTheLight

Generali wrote: »

Council housing by the end of the 1970s was generally of very poor quality and you weren't allowed to make any changes or improvements even if the place was falling apart.

Selling off social housing was possibly the single biggest improvement in the UK's housing stock since Homes for Heroes in the post WW1 era.

When my Uncle bought his council house he was able to paint it for the first time in over a decade and replace the rotted front door.

Hence the reason for the sell off.
Would you buy a place that was in need of major maintenance and repair.
The government didn;t want to be left holding the problem of the upkeep of social housing, thus instead tried to pass this to the private sector by selling off their stock.

Sure the discount headline appears to be a mistake, but do people really consider the fundamentals that made them want to get this off their books as soon as possible?

ninky_2

Generali wrote: »

Great theory. Got any data to back it up or are we going to chat about what you imagine to be true.

.

are you saying it is not cheaper to provide housing in fully paid for and taxpayer owned housing whilst also getting rents to cover maintenance compared to paying high rents to house people in the private sector whilst having little control over the quality of those homes?

i could get into the stuff about nationalized industries but it's a bit off thread.

IveSeenTheLight

ninky wrote: »

you are making a massive generali-isation - i'd like to know what you base that on and how that compared to the state of private rented accommodation in the 1970s.

what is better about private rentals now? there were many alternatives to improve the maintenance of council homes rather than sell them off at massive discounts.

There are reports which show that the quality of both private and social housing increased since the sell off.

Your report states that there are 1.4 million propertes rented reported as "non-decent"

this report show that in 2000, there were 1.5 million "officially unfit for occupation"
http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/state-uk-housing-2nd-edition-factfile-housing-conditions-and-housing-renewal-policies-u

With rental property numbers increasing since 2000, this represents that the percentage is actually reducing

ninky_2

Radiantsoul wrote: »

To be fair it does seem regardless of your political persuasion allowing people to own their own small home is likely to be a good thing as they will invest more, take pride in, etc.

afaik there has never been a government that didn't 'allow' people to own their own home. been 'allowed' and being 'able' are two very different things however.

i'd say people were more able to get on the housing ladder in times when there were large stocks of social housing than now. obviously in a short-sighted way the 1.5 million who bought their council homes got on the property ladder but that doesn't seem to have trickled down to future generations.

so as a policy for enabling home ownerships i'd say selling off the council houses has failed big time.

Generali

ninky wrote: »

are you saying it is not cheaper to provide housing in fully paid for and taxpayer owned housing whilst also getting rents to cover maintenance compared to paying high rents to house people in the private sector whilst having little control over the quality of those homes?

I've got no idea. Do you?

You don't appear to have any data to support your theory except 'it must be cheaper'. Having some recollection of how the Public Sector used to work in the 1970s I have my doubts as to whether council housing was cheaper to run than paying private landlords.

Jowo_2

ninky wrote: »

...
what would the country be like if we hadn't sold off all that social housing?

.

less polarised.
without the stigma now attached to social housing tenants that now associate them with neediness, worklessness and deprivation.

without a housing benefit bill now heading north of £20 billion per annum.

with less social tensions because the switch to needs based social housing allocation became racialised.

ninky_2

Generali wrote: »

I've got no idea. Do you?

You don't appear to have any data to support your theory except 'it must be cheaper'. Having some recollection of how the Public Sector used to work in the 1970s I have my doubts as to whether council housing was cheaper to run than paying private landlords.

of course it's cheaper just as a logical business model.

does it make sense to own assests such as social housing or to have to rent them from the private sector? currently we ('the taxpayer')have to rent massive amounts of 'social' housing from the private sector via housing benefit. this is dead money as far as the taxpayer is concerned.

the stupidity of such a system is demonstrated by the need to intervene with social engineering in the form of housing benefit caps.