Shiregreen and Sanctuary Housing Association

[peterw]

I see from Google that a majority of Shiregreen tenants have voted for new landlords Sanctuary Housing Association. The reason given for this move by Sheffield City Council is that they don’t have enough money to carry out all the repairs to the homes on this estate.

 

Can anyone tell me, what happened to all the rents people have paid over the years? Surely, that money should be available to repair the homes?

 

I’ve asked this question many times over the years in other areas, and have never got a reasonable answer — councillors seem very reluctant to give one.

[peterw]

Okay, 14 viewers so far and no replies. Could that be because people are afraid of the word ‘corruption’? The Shiregreen estate was built before the war and any building debts must have been paid long ago. Money from rents is usually put into the Council’s Housing Fund, so what happened to it? Did they take it to keep the rates low and thus ensure re-election when the time came? Nobody ever gives a straight answer to this question, but if they DID take it for that purpose, one way or the other it’s corruption.

[Cycleracer]

Well it is difficult to proove any corruption conspiracies with the council but I personally think its a case of the houses are old, many have dodgy wall ties and the council can not be bothered any more with there up keep.

Its hard to understand what the council actually does these days apart from collecting our council tax.

Maybe they chose to spend our money upgrading the town centre and upteen white elephants we have seen built over recent years.

The houses on Shiregreen were built in the late 20s early 30s and cost just a few hundred quid.

They will need about £15.000 spent on them today to bring them up to standard and private housing asocciations can make big proffits from big rent charges in a very short time.

It still doesn't explain where the years of rent money has gone though.

[Longcol]

I'll try my best to answer seeing as nobody else has.

 

I'm not a councillor, don't work for the council, no political axe to grind.

 

Going back to the 60's and 70's and before, council house rents were subsidised from rates (money paid by business and people who owned their own houses) - ie the rent paid by council tenants didn't cover the cost of managing, maintaining, repairing and improving council houses (eg. putting in central heating) or any loans (mortgages) the council ha d taken out to build the houses.

 

From the 1980's onwards, council housing was expected to pay for itself - that is rent was meant to cover the full cost of council housing.

 

Many local authorities tried to keep council rents low at this time because, generally, more and more people in council houses where either unemployed or on lower wages - but at the same time costs of maintaining coucil housing was going up faster than rents because there was (and still is) a shortage of skilled craftsmen - eg plumbers.

 

That meant that local authorities tried to save money by cutting costs on repairs. All the time the houses were getting older and needed more work doing on them.

 

The rent council tenants are currently paying isn't enough to bring the houses up to the standard that people buying their own houses expect - and council tenants usually expect the same standards.

 

So now today we have a lot of oldish housing that is starting to get shabby.

 

 

To get to Cycleracers points -

 

Housing Associations aren't private companies - they re - invest any profit they make in new housing. There are no shareholders who get big dividends.

 

Housing Associations charge higher rents at the moment than the council because they have to pay the full cost of keeping the properties in good order. Plus they have to pay interest on the loans they borrowed to build the houses - bit like a mortgage.

 

In 2012 rents in council properties and housing associations should be more or less the same.

 

Council rents are going up by more than inflation, but under government rules, housing association rents are generally going up by less.

 

Sorry if this as clear as you'd like - I'm just trying to give you a fair picture.

 

If you want to read more then please try this link.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_house

[redrobbo]

The government have adopted a Decent Homes standard, which intends to bring all council houses in the country up to a recognised standard by 2010.

These improvements will, amongst other things, include an upstairs toilet, double glazing and central heating.

 

However, the government have stipulated that there will be a number of mechanisms by which council tenants themselves can opt for these improvements. The mechanisms are an arms-length management organisation (or ALMO for short), or stock transfer to a recognised housing association, or a private finance initiative. Simply giving the money to local councils to undertake the housing improvements was not an option allowed by the government.

 

Council tenants in Shiregeen have been balloted by the council, and their preferred option is stock transfer. Subsequently Sanctuary Housing Association has been chosen as the new landlord.

[peterw]

Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. Loncol and Redrobbo. I’m a lot of a cynic and your explanations are I think quite valid. But did the Council keep rents low because council house tenants were strapped for cash, or did they do it because they knew where there votes would come from? And what happened to the rents from the last 25 years, since the 1980s, I wonder?

[Longcol]

Hi Peter

 

The low rents policy was quite open to interpretation;

 

Either keeping rent down because thousands of Sheffield folk were thrown on to the dole or had big pay cuts, or as you said because the majority of council tenants voted labour. A bit of both probably.

 

As for the "where did the rents go?" question:

 

From the 1980's onwards there were very strict controls on what councils could do with rent. I would contend that rent could not meet the full cost to the council of managing, maintaining and, most importantly improving (ageing) council housing stock to standards tenants had grown to expect. Hence a lot of services (eg trimming grass verges) were cut, and large expenditure on improvements simply kept being put back. Which is why today we have "stock transfers" to the likes of Sanctuary - or ALMO's as in redrebbo's post.

 

I do not think there was any corruption - councils as I said had (and still have) rules imposed on them by central government about managing rents / housing - to the best of my knowledge this is called the "Housing Revenue Account" - although it is something that the layman can't easily understand - and something even "experts" have difficulty with! Council books of account have to be independently audited every year (and are open to any local tax payer to scrutinise) and I would say generally that higher standards are applied in the public sector than to say a private company.

 

In short I don't think rents paid by council tenants have "gone missing".

 

Regards

 

Longcol

[peterw]

Thanks for the reply, Longcol. It makes a lot of sense, which is more than most councillors do. Perhaps I’ve been asking those who don’t know exactly what happened to rents — and believe me, here in Manchester I’ve asked practically every council member!

[Longcol]

Thank you for your kind words Peter. Best of luck with Manchester councillors!