Benefit fraud

Mersey_2

Lanzarote1938 wrote: »

I have to take issue with this comment. Once upon a time there were no public funds to have recourse to! Council housing was meant for workers.

Do you think that nowadays only state funded applicants are allocated social housing?

Lanzarote & missbiggles1 are right (in response to dktreesea's incorrect assertion that council housing was never intended for working people).


Indeed the 1920s outer council estates in Liverpool I was referring to (which are now 50% owner occupied) were of course built decades before the welfare state.


The criteria - I was told by my grandmother as well as my parents' neighbour (who both moved in in the late 1920s) - was that they were 'family houses' where the man worked. They had to be in order to be able to afford the rent. Indeed some on the main road were reserved for police officers. Hardly the welfare estate that dktreesea thinks they were designed for.


[A little known fact is that the first council housing in Britain was provided by the Conservatives in Liverpool 20 years prior to that]

dktreesea

Mersey wrote: »

Lanzarote & missbiggles1 are right (in response to dktreesea's incorrect assertion that council housing was never intended for working people).


Indeed the 1920s outer council estates in Liverpool I was referring to (which are now 50% owner occupied) were of course built decades before the welfare state.


The criteria - I was told by my grandmother as well as my parents' neighbour (who both moved in in the late 1920s) - was that they were 'family houses' where the man worked. They had to be in order to be able to afford the rent. Indeed some on the main road were reserved for police officers. Hardly the welfare estate that dktreesea thinks they were designed for.


[A little known fact is that the first council housing in Britain was provided by the Conservatives in Liverpool 20 years prior to that]

Yes, originally housing funded by the public purse was done to provide affordable homes. But in 1951 the government of the day decided council houses should be provided only to the poorest people/families. Quality of construction went out the window. Instead we got prefabricated housing and estates like Heygate in London, built in the 70s and now in the process of being demolished. Good quality council housing for those who worked? That might have been true pre WWII but by the time we got to the 70s the quality of council housing being produced was cr*p.


If I were a council tenant would I buy my 1920s/30s/40s council house? Probably. Would I buy anything constructed from the 1950s onwards? Probably not.

GaleSF63

dktreesea wrote: »

Council housing was never intended for people who are able to support themselves without recourse to public funds.

missbiggles1 wrote: »

Unless the history of social housing was very different in Scotland, you're totally wrong on that.

Council housing was always intended to be used by workerswho paid their own way - in fact that was often the basis on which it was allocated. Rewarding those who don't work by allocating them a property with a low rent and secure tenancy is a comparatively recent development and not an improvement, in my book.

I was recently reading a book about the growth of some Nottingham suburbs. Originally council houses were for Nottingham residents who had to be working, with wages below a certain level; they had to be married and produce satisfactory character references. After one large estate was built, there were found to be some families with salaries above the limit living on the estate and they were instructed to move elsewhere.

dktreesea

We do seem to be moving back towards the original ideal, of affordable homes for working families with modest household incomes. New housing developments up in Scotland seem to have a percentage of the new homes set aside as affordable homes, be they to buy or rent. And there are various initiatives, such as shared equity and mortgage guarantees for those who have quite small deposits, even as low as 5% of the purchase price but who earn enough to be able to afford to pay the mortgage on a home. But unless we also start to build more housing for those who are poor, working or otherwise, dependence on housing benefit to fund accommodation is going to continue to soar. Maybe "soar" is an exaggeration. The number of claimants has only risen 126,000 in the last 7 years (source: DWP Stat Explore). And maybe the £25 billion housing benefit is expected to cost in 2017 (source: the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/14/housing-benefit-coalition-people-claiming) just sounds like a large figure but is really just a drop in the ocean compared to total expenditure.


If the government doesn't start to build affordable housing, say something people with a household income of £30k to £60k can get a mortgage for, those people may just up and leave and take their skills to another country where they can afford to buy, rather than rent, a home. Somewhere like the rest of Europe, Canada or the States. One of our neighbours is trying to buy their flat, for which they need a mortgage of around £250k, just over 4 times their combined income. They've got a reasonable deposit, around £30k or so, but their bank came back with an offer of £128k for the mortgage. Their reasoning is that the wife is still of child bearing age, so they didn't take her income into account. The repayments for this lower mortgage work out at about 50% of their current rent. To say they were a bit miffed is putting it mildly. Then the bank suggested they could increase the amount if one of their parents would go guarantor. This annoyed them even more, understandably imho.


People who earn above average earnings and can afford a large mortgage, evidenced by the amount of rent they are already paying, don't want that kind of grief and disappointment when they come to buy a house. I would have thought they were doing the right thing, buying before starting their family?


At the other end of the scale, people who might never be able to afford to buy, we have people in sub standard accommodation, e.g. homes with no central heating, mould, damp, all manner of hazards. All apart from the housing benefit paid into the private sector, mostly, to fund such homes, the cost to the NHS must be getting into the billions rather than millions.

sangie595

dktreesea wrote: »

Yes, originally housing funded by the public purse was done to provide affordable homes. But in 1951 the government of the day decided council houses should be provided only to the poorest people/families. Quality of construction went out the window. Instead we got prefabricated housing and estates like Heygate in London, built in the 70s and now in the process of being demolished. Good quality council housing for those who worked? That might have been true pre WWII but by the time we got to the 70s the quality of council housing being produced was cr*p.


If I were a council tenant would I buy my 1920s/30s/40s council house? Probably. Would I buy anything constructed from the 1950s onwards? Probably not.

This is still not entirely true. Prefabricated housing in the post-war period was intended to have a short life, and was built to house large numbers of people who had been bombed out during the war. People forget that right through the late 40's and early 50's the UK was still very much suffering the effects of the war. Rationing, for example, did not stop until 1954. I recall passing, as a child, an estate of prefab housing built of corrugated iron (imaginatively nicknamed "tin town" by the locals), and far from being dire housing, they were beautiful - vibrant with colour and care. Housing is not just what it is - people make it. I happened to pass the estate a few years ago again, and was surprised to see it still there. And actually, now listed! And it is just as nice - they are considered desirable homes (although much improved on the original bare designs.

In a similar vein, many of the high and medium rise blocks that are derelict today were built in response to massive rates of slum clearance and were highly desirable properties that had huge waiting lists. And equally lovingly cared for by people who thought they had died and gone to heaven because they had indoor toilets and bathrooms. I am not exactly ancient, but as a child I lived in a house with no bathroom and no indoor toilet. My auntie never had an indoor toilet in her entire life, and she died in the 80's!

I do agree that, often thanks to corruption, some of the standards of building, were poor. But the decline of these properties was equally due to a shift in social attitudes wherein people came to care less for social housing (and themselves). When I was a child, there were unemployed people, but very few would have lived in the conditions that people now routinely accept and blame everyone else for! They may have been poor, but they had pride. A slovenly house or lifestyle is not a consequence of low income. I clearly recall that my mum would carefully parcel up some of my old clothes and toys and slip them to Ruth's mum at the school gate, because Ruth's dad was out of work. But I never saw Ruth or any of her family turned out in dirty clothes, and their house, demolished a decade later as a slum, was spotless.

Poverty does not equate with the sort of chaotic lifestyles and communities that we have today. And there are plenty of areas of social housing that are fantastic, including some of the new build properties. We once described slums as places where the housing was inadequate - and it really was. But nowadays, in this country, slums are what people make. Having travelled the world, and visited slums across it, I have seen better cared for slums than some of our council estates, and tidier homes too.

Caroline_a

But nowadays, in this country, slums are what people make.

Hit the nail on the head. A town I used to live in had several 'sink' estates. Every so often the council would move everybody out, do up the houses with new exteriors as well as interiors and move some of the people back in. The estate that they had been move out to was left with, shall we say, the less than desirable tenants. Within a very short period of time that estate became a mess, certainly on the outside, goodness knows what the insides looked like! The council would then carry out the same exercise using another estate and round and round it would go.

There is no excuse for people not cleaning unless they are too ill to do it. I shudder at some of the houses seen on the benefit programmes. I think our grandmothers and great grandmothers would shudder too.

Lanzarote1938

Caroline_a wrote: »

Hit the nail on the head. A town I used to live in had several 'sink' estates. Every so often the council would move everybody out, do up the houses with new exteriors as well as interiors and move some of the people back in. The estate that they had been move out to was left with, shall we say, the less than desirable tenants. Within a very short period of time that estate became a mess, certainly on the outside, goodness knows what the insides looked like! The council would then carry out the same exercise using another estate and round and round it would go.

There is no excuse for people not cleaning unless they are too ill to do it. I shudder at some of the houses seen on the benefit programmes. I think our grandmothers and great grandmothers would shudder too.

I believe many Housing Associations carry out periodic checks on properties. Tenants who do not look after properties and keep them in good order should be evicted and considered intentionally homeless so the council has no obligation towards their future housing.

I also cannot believe the absolute tips shown on some of the benefit programmes. Clothing and toys piled up everywhere, filthy kitchens with washing up covering all surfaces. Some people simply do not deserve nice homes and appear to have far too much money lavished on them if the piles of 'stuff' everywhere is to be believed.

borkid

dktreesea wrote: »

One of our neighbours is trying to buy their flat, for which they need a mortgage of around £250k, just over 4 times their combined income. They've got a reasonable deposit, around £30k or so, but their bank came back with an offer of £128k for the mortgage. Their reasoning is that the wife is still of child bearing age, so they didn't take her income into account. mortgage, evidenced by the amount of rent they are already paying, don't want that kind of grief and disappointment when they come to buy a house. I would have thought they were doing the right thing, buying before starting their family?


.

Did they really say that? If so surely that is sexual discrimination. It used to happen back in the 70s but now? If it were 2 men looking to get a joint mortgage would they say the same incase they would adopt and one become a SAHP?

sangie595

borkid wrote: »

Did they really say that? If so surely that is sexual discrimination. It used to happen back in the 70s but now? If it were 2 men looking to get a joint mortgage would they say the same incase they would adopt and one become a SAHP?

I didn't notice that paragraph, but yes, that would be direct discrimination and totally unlawful. And a bank would be crushed for something like that, so I can't see that the information is accurate. I can't see any bank being stupid enough to say that, but if they did and there is evidence of it, the woman should get a lawyer. They won't need a mortgage by the end of it!

There is no reason to believe that a woman would give up work these days - if her income is needed to pay the mortgage, even less so. By the same reasoning, nobody should get a mortgage because they might be made redundant, dismissed, or contract a disabling illness. Equally, they have no way of saying that a woman is even capable of child bearing, or wants to. So really, they should perhaps be doing fertility tests just to work out the odds?

Madness.

Bogalot

dktreesea wrote: »

One of our neighbours is trying to buy their flat, for which they need a mortgage of around £250k, just over 4 times their combined income. They've got a reasonable deposit, around £30k or so, but their bank came back with an offer of £128k for the mortgage. Their reasoning is that the wife is still of child bearing age, so they didn't take her income into account. The repayments for this lower mortgage work out at about 50% of their current rent. To say they were a bit miffed is putting it mildly. Then the bank suggested they could increase the amount if one of their parents would go guarantor. This annoyed them even more, understandably imho.

I would suggest you're not getting the full story here. Not only would such reasoning be discriminatory, thousands of working age women are granted mortgages with a partner and on their own. Lenders do not decline mortgages to women solely because they are of child bearing age.