Take social housing away from rich areas

[Cyclone]

No they're not! What is most likely to have happened is that the original tenant would have bought it at a knock down price and then after a certain period of time (not 100% sure now what the actual timescale is before you can re-sell) sold at a vast profit to buy another property. But this house is now privately owned. Whether another buyer then buys it as a "buy to let" property is a different matter but selling off Council housing certainly hasn't increased the stock of affordable housing - it's just increased the amount of housing available in the private sector.

 

So the overall number of houses available didn't change, it just changed the balance between public and private ownership.

[Cyclone]

the problem with that would still mean that the tenants in Places like Hyde Park would not have the mobility that they would have had pre RTB.

 

Before RTB, if a family had a child with a disability, who, perhaps needed to be housed in an area with better air quality, say, or a specifically adapted property, they could access housing in Dore, Totley, or other suburban areas.

 

With RTB, those areas have hardly anything coming up of that sort of housing, because the social housing there has been bought under RTB, or has people clamouring to get properties in that area in order to exercise their RTB in that more desirable area. the people in need of being moved aren't getting the chance to get moved as there's no social housing available to them.

 

The other huge problem with RTB, as someone else mentioned in passing in an earlier post, is that the monies that were received from the sale of RTB poroperties was not permitted to be reinvested to provide decent social housing for those in need. (we have had members point to this very phenomenon elsewhere on the Forum, showing that the need for Social housing is far outstripping the supply/ availability.)

 

All that may (or may not) be true of RTB, but this is not about RTB.

[Cyclone]

And not just replaced but replaced as affordable to rent property as per existing Council housing but this is what I fear will NOT happen. i feel that the same will happen as in the 80's when Council housing was sold off but not replaced by other cheap, affordable housing to rent!

The entire point of the proposal is to sell of the most valuable in order to build more cheaper housing.

As long as they are not build in a different area, then the amount of housing available in that area goes up.

 

A lot of Council housing has been "sold off" to Housing Associations but I believe the the rent on Housing Association properties is more or less the same as the Council house rents but the "Buy to Let" housing is certainly NOT cheap housing. This is the property where rent costs need to be more regulated.

What's BTL got to do with it? Nobody is suggesting that some altruistic landlord will buy the houses and then let them out at council rates.

[Rupert_Baehr]

Only if they come with allotments on the roofs, are given free to everyone who earns the same/less than him and the land is stolen from everyone else who earns more than him.

 

Or something.

 

Don't forget the hydroponics cultivation system, the cultivation lamps and the free electricity

[NorthernStar]

This idea isn't a bad one in principal, the real question is how it is managed; I predict that councils will manage their own areas whilst central government forces local councils to spend monies that should be allocated for new construction on housing onto other local services by leaving those resources severely underfunded.

 

This will create revenue to prop up/cover up Osborne's failing policies whilst creating a distance for central government to blame the perceived housing ****-ups and missing money on local councils.

[poppet2]

You need to read both the lines and the and the space between them.I say this as you appeared to scold poppet for exhibiting superficiality.

 

Thank you gnvqsos

[Rupert_Baehr]

The entire proposal is to sell the valuable council housing in order to build more, so clearly (in this area) council housing in Dore would be amongst the more valuable, whereas in Hyde Park it wouldn't be put up for sale.

 

What has to be avoided is that all the council housing in Dore is sold and not replaced, otherwise the allegations of social cleansing and ghetoisation are valid.

 

I suspect that the council housing in Dore would be sold and replaced with council housing elsewhere - land prices in Dore probably aren't going to fall anytime soon.

 

Given that there are areas in cities quite a long way South of Sheffield where land prices and property prices are extremely high and given that there are some very expensive social housing units in those areas, then it's likely that those houses will be offered for sale.

 

I seem to remember (and I'm sure there are a number of people here who can confirm or deny this) that in the 60's, 70's and 80's some councils (in large cities) bought land in towns and smaller cities elsewhere and constructed social housing on that land.

 

They then moved their more depraved (pace, Hyacinth) tenants into that new housing 'to give them a better life'. Eventually, they handed over the housing to the councils in those towns.

 

If that was the case then, what is there to stop councils elsewhere who own very expensive properties from selling off those properties, using the money to buy land in cheaper areas (like Sheffield) building affordable housing on it and putting their own tenants into that housing?

 

They could, eventually, hand the housing over to local housing associations, who would not only get a supply of affordable housing, but would get a supply which was 'ready stocked'. (That would save them the trouble of looking for tenants. )

 

The councils moving people into that new housing wouldn't be able to tell people who had jobs "Leave your job and move into a nice new house elsewhere" but, in the event that they had one or two unemployed people who might benefit from 'a nice new home elsewhere', they might say: "If you're unfortunate enough to be unemployed and to be supported by the state, you may as well move into an area where housing is cheaper and be unemployed there."

 

Sounds reasonable (for about 2 seconds) but after that, some areas would find that they experienced a significant increase in the number of unemployed.

[puisseguin]

Since 1980, just under 2 million council homes have been sold in England, 344,000 council homes have been built and Housing associations built 450,000 new houses.

 

So far more have been sold off then actually replaced then? No wonder there's such a housing problem!

 

 

Hardly. It means an extra 894,000 houses plus the ones built by the private sector.

[Rupert_Baehr]

Hardly. It means an extra 894,000 houses plus the ones built by the private sector.

 

Plus a reduction of 2 million in the number of people wanting council houses.

 

When each council house was sold the council lost a house - but it also lost one tenant who needed a house.

[Dingus]

I think this is what the idea is meant to address.

 

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/neilobrien1/100177328/no-one-has-a-right-to-live-in-kensington-at-taxpayers-expense-its-time-to-start-recycling-social-housing/

 

You may have recently read about Nasir Muhsen, an 18-year-old gang member, who was jailed for his part in the riots last year. He was part of a 15-strong gang who, armed with bats and knives, carried out a mass mugging of people in a restaurant. His case made the headlines because he and his family had been given a £6,000-a-month basement flat worth £3 million in a Victorian mansion block in Kensington. Residents described his family as “neighbours from hell”, who reportedly trashed their home and were evicted at Christmas for not paying their subsidised rent. Despite this, his lawyer claimed that he had taken part because he was poor and “the money he took was to buy food.”