General Discussion
A supposedly 3 bedroom (2 of the bedrooms just fit a single bed), living room , I bathroom with the only toilet, small kitchen. Ex Council now private how much per month?
LOL, just for fun to see what peoples perspections are of private rents in relation to social rents. Dont hold out much hope of responses tho
its a houseSpot on, 2 doors down exactly the same still social housing £390 per month. Shocked at the difference
and the point of this is I know the people renting this house and due to being low paid the tax payer (HB) will be paying the deficit. If more social housing was built the HB bill would decrease
Why not go back to the good old days and build 100's of homes in one place and call it a housing association estate (in my day it was council estate because the local council actually ran it, sort of). Now wouldn't that resolve the issue of people not wanting to privately buy on an estate where there are housing association houses? It would also mean that you could move in large numbers of locals in desperate need of housing at a time. Instead of having to wait for a small percentage of homes to made available at a time.
Back in the early 1990s a friend of mine put in to buy her council house at whatever discounted rate it was that she was eligible for. At the time that she submitted her application her local authority was in the process of installing new double glazed windows in all its properties. However, because she had submitted a RTB application her LA said it wouldn't be doing any more improvements to her property. My! Was she indignant!! She'd been banking on those new double glazed windows to increase her property's market value.
(Just looked up that property on Zoopla to see what it has since been sold for and its present value etc. Do you know what struck me? The number of other ex local authority houses in the same road (let alone the same estate!) that showed up on that Zoopla search as having been on the open market. Now.......extrapolate that scenario across the rest of the country...............)
@Lynne - i know when i was living in london around the early 1990's. council houses were being offered to the tenants from 65% current market value with a proviso they could not sell for three years from time of purchase. i remember one old girl who lived in a former council house behind me moaning that the council had not been round to install her new central heating system. she had already had the double glazing before she purchased. i cracked up when the council contacted her to say they were no longer responsible for the upkeep of her house. laugh, i nearly s*it a brick.
Yes I appreciate that some people who bought their houses/flats couldn't quite wrap their brains around the fact that the council were no longer responsible for their upkeep, repairs etc.
For a few years I worked in the housing department of a local authority. One day I received a phone call from an elderly lady who was quite distressed because the council wouldn't send out a plumber to sort out a problem she had. For a while I quietly cursed the repairs/maintenance section but when I couldn't for the life of me trace her as a tenant on any of our files I suddenly decided to look up our RTB property. And guess what? You know where this is going don't you. Yep, she had RTBd her property - apparently on her children's advice. Problem was her children didn't live anywhere near her to help her out and she still thought the council would. I spent ages on the phone explaining the situation, looking up private sector plumbers for her, suggesting a neighbour might be able to help her etc. I could see my supervisor eyeing me up non to happily and when, eventually, I managed to put the phone down I got it in the neck for taking so long to help out someone who was no longer a council tenant. Well, he (my supervisor) did have a point........
And then of course there were those who bought the leasehold of their local authority flat at what they thought was a good deal until that is the local authority, as the freeholder with an obligation to do so, undertook major capital investment works such as recladding of the tower block/the putting in of double glazing. As leaseholders them as had bought their flats were liable to pay a percentage of the bill racked up by the local authority. I've known it to be £000s per leasehold flat.
I had a relative who was seriously thinking of going for RTB on their local authority tower block flat. Seriously thinking about it that was until I told them the financial horror story that could be awaiting them. Needless to say they didn't pursue buying.
and finally in my tales of how RTB has panned out there is this.
I appreciate that once a property is bought via RTB it is lost to the social housing sector. That said, it is still a property used as a dwelling albeit now in the private sector. And you would think, would you not, that given we have such a shortage of housing in this country that although now in the private sector the use of such properties would remain that of dwellings. Well now, I don't know about anywhere else but I certainly know that in Bristol there are two semi-detached ex local authority dwellings that have been converted to a private pre-school nursery. Bristol not got a housing shortage then? Would be very interested in knowing the planning reasons this conversion from two semis to one nursery was given the go ahead.
Oh and as this nursery was formed from two houses on an estate built in the 1930s each house had a large garden. These have now been combined to form a very large garden for the kiddiwinks to play in.
@Lynne - same thing happened in harrow, wealdstone around 15 years ago. 2 semi's were converted into a childrens home. this was in a quite back street amongst other residential homes. both properties had sizeable back gardens. which when combined formed a very large play area for the rugrats. only thing is they always played on the street/road rather than the back garden. i don't know many people who would wish to end up living next door to 10 - 20 unsupervised rugrats. clewer crescent, harrow wealdstone, 84 and 86. just checked on google earth..still seems to be there.
But in the case that you quote OF, the buildings were/are being used for residential purposes, albeit for children only. In the case that I quote, the buildings are now being used as the location for a private sector business for pre-school age children.
And don't know about you but me and my mates always played in the streets and roads when we were kids. It's something that is very noticeable by its absence these days.
It's because people are less tolerant Lynne, or that's one of the reasons. We have a big area of grass at the bottom of our road and one old man takes issue with the children playing there, shouting at them. What are you supposed to do, have a stand up row with the local misery guts?
Down the road there's another bit of green with a big tree in the middle. The tree has been fence off because children were climbing it and people complained.
It takes everyone to be a society/neighbourhood.
Just been having a read of the latest Private Eye (no 1373 22nd August-4th Sept 2014 edition).
Thought I would share with you snippets of an article on page 11 entititled Housing News.
The article talks about how the tories are searching for a "populist housing policy in the spirit of Margaret Thatcher's Right to Buy".
One plan, according to the Eye, would "make Right to Buy look timid: simply gift every social tenant their hoime, for nothing, creating millions of new homeowners overnight" Such a plan could "be dressed up as helping the poorest while slashing the amount of housing benefit paid to social renters".
However, and as the Eye points out, it is unlikely to work "as Right to Buy itself showed: pretty soon those ex-social homes end up being rented out to people on benefits, at much higher private rents".
General Election due May 6th 2015.
Watch this space!