Do you support social housing?

CLAPTON

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

Its not.

Of people who where born outside the UK are arrived between 2001-2011 the majority live in private rented housing.

25% live as owner occupiers
61% live in private rental
14% live in social housing (either council or housing association)


For people born in the UK, 16% live in social housing.



http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/CT0069/view/default?rows=c_tenhuk11&cols=c_yrarrpuk11

that is truely an extraordinary statistic

of people born and raised here only 16% have social housing whilst 14% of people here for such a short get social housing

newbutold

ringo_24601 wrote: »

In the words of shelter : http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/why_we_campaign/Improving_social_housing/what_is_social_housing



Yes, i support it.

However, I don't entirely support social housing for 'key workers'. This gets completely abused by those on higher salaries

I too support it. I was brought up in a council house, started my adult life in my own housing association home. However I bought my own home once I could afford it & gave my housing assoc. home back.

I agree with Ringo about the high salaried key workers.

Baroness Uddin and others with similar salaries should not be living in social housing.

I also believe there should be no right to buy option for any social housing. (Part buy/part rent properties are different.)

Kennyboy66

CLAPTON wrote: »

lets see:

you get a nice property at much below the normal market rent

But most people on this board seem to think social housing is on sink estates, the properties are badly repaired and damp and your neighbours are dealing drugs.

Suddenly council houses are "nice". How strange.

CLAPTON wrote: »

you can pass it on to your children

Assured tenancies in housing association properties are not normally able to be passed on to children.

No tenancies in council properties created after April 2012 can be passed on to children, so how can this be a motivation ?

CLAPTON wrote: »

you can buy it at a 60% discount

Only if you have been a tenant for 30 years but I agree, its fairly idiotic.

I'd suspect that this isn't a motivation for most people.

Kennyboy66

CLAPTON wrote: »

that is truely an extraordinary statistic

of people born and raised here only 16% have social housing whilst 14% of people here for such a short get social housing

70% of people born in UK own their own home.

There are 17 times more people in social housing who were born in the UK than those arrived in the last 10 years.

Probably only extraordinary if you subscribe to the Daily Mail.

Hooloovoo

Jenny001 wrote: »

Yes but only for those who need it and are entitled.. My friend and her Husband have 1 child and have applied for a council house and have been on the list for years and have to live in a 2 bed privately rented which they cannot afford

Shame people don't think about this sort of thing BEFORE having expensive children.

gazter

MrsE wrote: »

Yes, lol, I work for the local gov, finance dept :-)

I understand exactly what you mean about the likes of Barrett's, I'm not suggesting councils can squeeze every £ in the same way Barrett's can, but they could adopt some of the model.
We could also have a standard factory fit 3 bed house, that's replicated all over the uk & a 1 bed bungalow.
You would make savings on buying such huge numbers of materials & fittings.

OOPS!! lol.

Well working within a local authority you should know much better!! How do you think costs will escalate when all employees are incorporated into the LGPS, central recharges are apportioned, council's policy on using local labour, unionised bargaining, sustainable procurement etc etc.

The only way the local council could get in on the act is freeing up land that it owns and gifting it to a builder/social builder to sell the properties at the necessary discount.

In terms of standardised house building, what you suggest is already how the large builders control costs. They dont have a new design for each area. They have a set of reference designs and use a mixture of two, three, four and five bedroom mixes as the local area demands are anticipated.

There are very few costs that have not been taken out of the whole process. The profit is not large enough to cover the difference that would follow the loss of control of costs once a local authority gets involved.

gazter

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

1) Councils have not been able to 'subsidise' rents from council tax for 25 years - since the Thatcher rental reforms.

2) Councils don't build any new houses these days, this is done by housing associations.

3) Housing associations provide more social housing than councils. Roughly 2.7 million HA homes and 2 million council houses. These numbers have transposed in the last 10 years, largely as more and more stock is transferred to HA from councils.

4) Housing associations are not for profit, however in 2012/13 they collectively ran a surplus of £1 billion on rental revenues of roughly £13 billion

5) The percentage of people who own their own homes peaked a while ago, and its now less than it was in 1991.

The main government subsidy to social housing is capital spending to build more (although this has been dramatically reduced).

I would ask this, if social housing is so bad, why is there such a large demand for it (both for council & HA properties) ?

There are roughly 1.8 million households on waiting lists for social housing.

All of the above i know, and have made specific reference to several in this thread alone.

The main government subsidy is *not* the capital spend, but the rent subsidy paid to councils and RSLs via the housing revenue account and its equivalents.

gazter

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

1) Councils have not been able to 'subsidise' rents from council tax for 25 years - since the Thatcher rental reforms.
.

Im sorry, re reading this you seem to have entirely misread what i said. I never mentioned the use of council tax to fund social housing rents, or implied it in any way.

N1AK

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

I would ask this, if social housing is so bad, why is there such a large demand for it (both for council & HA properties) ?

There are roughly 1.8 million households on waiting lists for social housing.

It's a pretty stupid question Kennyboy66. If there was a waiting list to be handed £10,000,000 then how many people do you think would be on it

If there was a large waiting list for gastric band surgery the 'smart' thing to do isn't just to plan to get as much of it done as possible, it is to look into why people are in such a desperate situation to begin with.

N1AK

I've ended up voting no. The answer depends on what the question is taken to mean. Personally I think council housing as an idea is a bandaid to hide a problem we should address: There isn't enough housing available and people can't afford it.

Clearly we have a need for social housing now, however we should be looking at how we can get enough property into the market so that it is affordable and there is competition amongst landlords for tenants.