Should better off council tenants receive subsidy

Norman_Castle

AdrianC wrote: »

No. Housing association, low income, housing benefit, pension credit etc etc. He pays virtually nothing.

So his rent isn't "a LOT less than 10% of market rent". 90+% of his rent is paid by other benefits.

TheGardener

Miss_Samantha wrote: »

The point of social housing is to help those in need.
You are rather narrow-minded in your view. It is not required to stuck every one into a ghetto. You also have a rather negative view of the poor by implying that they would just not care for anything.

Are you seriously saying you believe a whole estate of unemployed/disabled/single/elderly low income households makes for a balanced community?! Take a walk round a few estates and tell me you still beleive that. I'm not 'narrow' in my view - I'm a pragmatist old enough to remember the mess many council estates were in in the 70's and 80's (some still are) with plenty of experience of life on council estates.

Too many or too few of any demographic means you have unhealthy communities - rich or poor. When the working families are forced out - whether its private or council housing - ghettos (or gentrification) is what you get.

Council housing is not a means tested benefit - it is and will continue to be alocated on the basis of need (and that usually includes low income) . However, in order to ensure it is not 'subidised', tenants - not benefits - need to pay the rents.
High income families who stay on council estates are few and far between anyway.

gycraig_2

Just stop selling our housing stock so people can hold em for 5 years and sell them for a massive profit.

The problem isn't the price they are being rented out at or people living by themselves in big houses it's the fact we are selling houses for a fraction of what we can build them for

gycraig_2

TheGardener wrote: »

Are you seriously saying you believe a whole estate of unemployed/disabled/single/elderly low income households makes for a balanced community?! Take a walk round a few estates and tell me you still beleive that. I'm not 'narrow' in my view - I'm a pragmatist old enough to remember the mess many council estates were in in the 70's and 80's (some still are) with plenty of experience of life on council estates.

Too many or too few of any demographic means you have unhealthy communities - rich or poor. When the working families are forced out - whether its private or council housing - ghettos (or gentrification) is what you get.

Council housing is not a means tested benefit - it is and will continue to be alocated on the basis of need (and that usually includes low income) . However, in order to ensure it is not 'subidised', tenants - not benefits - need to pay the rents.
High income families who stay on council estates are few and far between anyway.

I'd love to live in some of the housing association houses my dad deals with for his job they are about 200 quid a month cheaper than private rentals and often in parts of town I couldn't afford

Concerned75

So OP. What is the policy you want to put forward? How will you manage this policy? How much will it cost to manage the policy? How much will it save?

They tried a 'pay to stay' policy to charge social tenants rents based on their income. Until they realised someone would have to assess household incomes and this would cost money.

As its not a cost effective policy so it was dropped

I've never been a council tenant, so I don't know all the rules or ins and outs of the past proposals and trials.
Straightforward immediate action would be to stop housing benefit for the higher earners where possible. Maybe try something like the old shared ownership scheme. Applicable to those in council houses 5+yrs and if they are able to pay rent on percentage and mortgage the rest. If their situation betters, they could afford to buy more of it, especially if they have young children and build up genuine rights of ownership.

Pixie5740

Housing benefit is already means tested. Being a social tenant does not mean you are automatically entitled to housing benefit. There are many people claiming housing benefit who live in private rented accommodation.

Chrysalis

Miss_Samantha wrote: »

So you think it is fine that the lucky ones who get into social housing should be able to stay for ever?

What is the purpose of social housing, then?

The ceiling is a political decision to be taken by the government.

There can be an hysteresis: When your income is less than £x then you qualify for social housing. When your income increases above £x + £y then you must leave.

Social housing is to help the poorest. People should be grateful to have benefited and yield so that others who are now in the situation they once were can also benefit.

I understand where you coming from, but looking at how various parts of social security are broken, I think kicking people out is not the solution.

e.g. lets say the ceiling is set at 20k year income, someone on 19k in a council house will more then likely be better of than someone on 21k in a private rented property. It will discourage people to better themselves. Not to mention what happens when the 21k salary person moves to private sector then loses their job the next month. They then faced with LHA which wont cover private rents and insecurity.

My view is everyone should have the option of affordable secure rented property which the private sector has failed to provide. So on that basis the solution is to simply build lots and lots of council housing.

Rents are already variable in that housing benefit is reduced on a sliding scale as income increases so those on very low income get some help.

An alternative option is to crack down on the private sector such as tenancy security and rental rates, the problem is I dont think thats fixable, private landlords would just exit the sector, they there to make money and nothing else.

There is small things happening to try and fix the private sector, but they are very gradually been introduced and are not enough, examples are the deposit scheme, the soon to be banned fee's and the now disallowing evictions when a council officer has deemed a property to need work on it. Of course the letting fee's will just get absorbed into rents and the council officer's whilst they can prevent eviction's they cannot prevent a landlord simply choosing to not renew a tenancy.

The MSE election poll is interesting, the over 50 section, has housing security very low rating of importance for that age group, which sort of backs up my earlier comments where people just think of themselves.

Chrysalis

Pixie5740 wrote: »

Housing benefit is already means tested. Being a social tenant does not mean you are automatically entitled to housing benefit. There are many people claiming housing benefit who live in private rented accommodation.

Correct but just worth mentioning, new "claimants" in the private sector cannot get housing benefit, it has been scrapped, its replaced with Local Housing Allowance which as a rule of thumb it wont cover market rate rents, it tends to be set at a level not much above housing association rent rates which of course you wont find in the private sector. The people who get housing benefit now in the private sector will be those who already had it when LHA got introduced.

Miss_Samantha

TheGardener wrote: »

Are you seriously saying you believe a whole estate of unemployed/disabled/single/elderly low income households makes for a balanced community?!

I wrote that social housing is for the poorest (as is indeed the point of social housing). You are extrapolating that this should somehow imply "whole estates of poor people".

Large housing estates are a thing of the past, you will find. The advocated way these days is to build smaller units and to spread them around.

TheGardener wrote: »

My view is everyone should have the option of affordable secure rented property which the private sector has failed to provide.

There is no such entitlement, which would anyway have to be funded by the tax payer, so and endless loop.

However, there are indeed issues, which are caused by a lack of supply. This is what should be addressed.

Social housing is another issue. Its role is to help the poorest, not those who simply can't get a mortgage for their dream house.

TheGardener

Miss_Samantha wrote: »

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheGardener
My view is everyone should have the option of affordable secure rented property which the private sector has failed to provide.

Large housing estates are a thing of the past, you will find. The advocated way these days is to build smaller units and to spread them around.

MissSamantha - the first part of this quote is not from any post of mine!? its from Chrysalis

The 2nd part - although new social housing is not done on a grand scale - large estates are not a thing of the past, there are thousands of post war estates all over the country and they form the mainstay of social housing and I don't believe the handful of new SH properties will ever come close to rivalling the estates in terms of numbers of households. I'm fully aware that new SH isn't done like that. However, it doesn't change the fact that for communities to be successful and avoid the worst of the sink estate deprivations (or gentrification) - ordinary working families need to be settled there, if they are put in a position where they are forced to moved as soon as they get on their feet - sink estates are inevitable.

HA's and councils have worked hard over the last 30 years to build sustainable communities where a balance of demographics have made many estates valuable contributors to the area rather than drains on resources. They are not perfect and many still have huge social issues, but housing is only one part of a much larger issue around equality.
As other posters have said - more effort to fix the UK's 'broken' private housing systems will make more difference than beating up families who add balance.