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To give my thoughts on the original question because it has been almost entirely ignored.Originally Posted by WJ99mobile
This is clearly an unexpected and unusual situation and for that reason unlikely to be replicated in the sense that councils are not going to go around buying expensive buildings and turning them into social housing, it just doesn't make sense.
It probably isn't productive to have large areas where ordinary people are completely priced out of the market but this ship has already sailed unfortunately. As a country we push home ownership to an obsessive level yet we have found ourselves sleepwalking into a situation where, in lots of different parts of the country, wages simply do not allow it if you want to live anywhere near where you work. I live in an town where a single teacher/fireman/policeman/nurse would be unlikely to find themselves in the position to buy a one bedroom flat, that wage:property price ratio is a complete killer.
And it's all down to simple economics. Supply and demand.
Supply has been strangled by the ridiculous planning system we have whilst we gave seen demand go through the roof.
Prices will continue to increase as the balance between supply and demand remains as it is. The planning system needs to be sorted out to allow development to happen, whilst there is little that can be done about demand as the population continues to increase.
Simple economics.
I feel like there is hesitancy from those in charge because they don't want to destabilise our massively inflated housing market. All governments seem to make the right noises on building houses and then fail to achieve it, maybe they don't want to. It can't all be down to planning 'red tape'
Planning is an absolute nightmare but housing developers can't really increase their output drastically. There's not enough tradesmen to handle the extra houses
I lived in zone 1 for 4 years and mine was less than £200 a month
Justine greening's Putney also apparently has a low council tax rate. I guess if you want a low council tax but cuts, cuts, cuts which hit the most vulnerable hardest then it's all good.
What is stopping everyone in social housing achieving? Some will be a lack of support and comfort, and if living in and around a more visually affluent and motivated area can help then good. It may also mean those affluent households are more grounded in the realities some face and encourage them to work harder too.
Do you really think that the family who have never done a days work ever and have 4 children and are happy in the life they have, rent paid and a few quid in the pocket will really see people in £400 K ( in the case above i posted ) houses and think " we really need to get our act together and aim for that type of house " ? ? ?
So it's fine to say the "affluent households" could be "more grounded in reality" and that they could be encouraged to "work harder" but when we speak of the less affluent households we all have to assume they're the hardest working, salt-of-the-earth individuals to ever walk the planet.
The fact of the matter is, a lot of these families are an absolute fecking nightmare to live around. You should have one of the nightmare families move in next to you, get you facing some realities too.
I'm guessing when the lead gets nicked off your roof, you're up till 3am because of their music & shouting and you're clearing junk from your garden that they've decided belongs there, that Kum Ba Yah opinion of yours will begin to melt right out of your brain.
I know what you mean mate, I once had a window cleaner move in next to me, and he totally lowered the tone of the neighbourhood!Of course she has a point, you must be blind to not be able to see it
New build estate have to have a certain % of " affordable housing " these days anyway
I find it crazy though, i know people will disagree with me, but hey ho
I Clean the show homes on a new build estate, the site is just finishing this month, anyways, prices start at just over £400 K, which isnt loose change
so you pay just under £400,000 for your new home, you are well pleased, its a cracking house, then at the rear of you ( a shared rear fence, which i can imagine Tommy, Tyson and Danny will be booting a football against not stop soon enough ) , you have social housing moving in at the same time as you, who arrive, the old washing machine doesnt work as they plug it in, it gets left on the driveway for 3 months, it is only moved ( to the front lawn ) when the old banger car breaks down and gets left on the drive on blocks while bloke of the house finds a mate down the boozer to fix it ( it'll be good for Tommy, Tyson and Danny to watch the geezer from the boozer work on the car, it might inspire them to want to be a mechanicevery situation has a plus eh )
who does that situation please ? ? ? the new 400 K home owners ? ? ? the affordable home family who dont really care about much ? ?? or anyone ? ? ?
and before anyone says " that situation of the washing machine and car would never happen ", i have worked on council / housing association homes for years, it does happen
they can do that, especially if they have a white van, it seems people hate them white vans
On the row of houses that I live on we all own our houses except for my next door neighbours who rent, they have been a nightmare from day one, their kids put paint stripper on Steve's van, cracked our kitchen window, they have had countless parties that have ended up with police there.
Even their chickens kept invading my garden at one stage, the chickens have gone now, dunno what happened to them, they probably sacrificed them or something.
Jeepers with thoughts like this we will have outrage demonstrations appearing everywhere,c'mon let's all be forgiving, love thy neighbour,migrant .
We should be ashamed everyone one at Glasto is putting up a room for those who are struggling .
However those already grounded and aspire to live in an affluent area of the country can work as hard as they like with absolutely no hope of ever living in that area
This is an interesting and revealing thread.
I wonder if there are any lazy caricatures, cliches or sneering put-downs we have missed? Surely scope to do a bit more around white vans, travellers and 'closed curtains'?
Of course some 'social tenants' are an anti-social nightmare. So are some owner occupiers, and private landlords and their (often transient) tenants. Of course there are more likely to be lifestyles associated with low incomes amongst social tenants. But as a former council tenant myself and someone who has known thousands of council tenants through my work over decades, I have also come across some of the hardest working and house proud people ever in council homes.
After the trauma and terror of the Grenfell fire I wish every tenant (maybe some Right To Buy owners too?) the best in their new social home. All the best as well to Donna if she decides to move to some other bubble of expensive exclusivity.
I'm afraid it's not that simple a model as the causes of demand side are due to irresponsible lending and possibly money laundering which the government sanctioned by their policies.
When we used to apply for a mortgage the responsible lending limit was based on your salary, and if you were in a partnership then their salary was also included. So the banks would lend you either 3 times the highest salary, or 2.5 times the combined salary for joint mortgage applications. Your mortgage was typically an "endowment" type, whereby each month you agreed to pay the interest on the principal lent amount, but also you would save money into an investment vehicle in the hope that, when the mortgage term is up, you'd have enough saved to pay the initial lien. The second popular mortgage type is the repayment type where you pay of both an element of original loan and also the interest on the loan until the lending term is up.
The "endowment" mortgage type was discredited after many investors did not save enough or found they were sold policies that did not return enough to pay the capital loan. The next generation of home owners used this problem to their advantage, taking out "interest only" mortgage loans with (as far as I can tell speaking with many of these financially illiterate) little intention of paying the loan off via saving into a separate investment vehicle. As this new irresponsible (not illegal) lending exploded in the late 90's so started the housing boom. This only served those people who had a foot on the housing ladder...and therefore by definition "all boats did not rise on the same tide". The people that bought houses at that time, including from right-to-buy social housing stock, which not only depleted the stock but turn traditional working class voters into now more affluent upwardly mobile and, soon to be, new Tory voters. This was Thatcher's master stroke.
The property boom continues. The people are elated (those who now have a mortgage) as they are grateful to be "homeowners".
Irresponsible lending, which led to more irresponsible lending (subprime loans) and another short-term economic boom. It's easy to loan more money if you have an existing loan it seems, regardless of your ability to pay....and this leads us to the '08 crash. The supply side of easy money to Joe Public was eagerly pumped into property...with the risk takers buying second and third properties to flip or more typically rent them out. The removal of housing stock by these coupon cutting speculators did much to drive the price of houses beyond reasonable pricing (based on the old safe 3 x salary limits) for new home owners who at this stage are taking out 5x, 6x salary interest only mortgages...putting themselves not only into a massive financial prison but trapping themselves in the prison when demand dries up and they go into negative equity.
The Keynesian model discredited in favour of monetarist policy. Monetary theory perverted to bail out the banks...print more currency into existence out of nothing...reduce interest rates to effectively negative rates once inflation (inflation is effectively a central bank tax) is considered...pay off one debt by taking out another loan. In other words keep the party going at any cost....companies can save money and pass that saving onto the consumer by way of increasing competition and how??? by shipping jobs to India and China. People love Asda as it's sooo cheap. Never asking why that is.
People used to have savings accounts you know, with money in them and everything. I bet that there is not more than a few people on here, me included, that have more than one months outgoings saved. We are mostly a hand to mouth spent up husk of a economic force now...and then there's Brexit. The biggest lie sold to the British in some time, but I digress.
This is only my view which some may agree with and others will decry as nonsense, which will all go to show the model as you can see is far from simple. Basic "supply and demand" does not answer all the questions as the forces behind those supply and demand factors are far more powerful and complex.
I can understand where she's coming from. I daresay that if I was in her position then I might also have a bit of me that thinks "FFS, why here?"
However, I would also hope that I remember that sometimes crap things happen to people who don't deserve it, and if that's having oiks moving in or narrowly escaping a burning inferno that destroys everything you own, and have the humanity to be thankful that only the former affected me and not the latter (particularly when that happens just a few miles away).
I don't know the details of the proposal, but these aren't going to be social housing forever, surely?
I was just about to post a very similar opinion.
I can definitely see where she's coming from and maybe I'd be slightly annoyed but like you say I'd also hope I'd be compassionate towards another human being who's had their life destroyed regardless of how much they earn or what lifestyle they lead.
They are. To build any new development now, you need to build a % of affordable housing, so as not to price out the locals etc.
One problem is that 'affordable housing' is often unaffordable - especially for the working poor.
The definition is 80% of local market rents - and in many parts of the country that means you have to be well off or one of the very few who get through the allocations and benefits lottery through their local council.
https://www.theguardian.com/housing-...social-housing
This...depressing thread...
The housing market is overpriced and overvalued, however no one actually wants their property to go down in price do they?
once again we have a thread that raises a political issue and once again we have those on both sides who display the usual lack of empathy for considering the alternative.
without a doubt this is a devastating human tragedy and something in the short term had to be done. However, I cannot see how longer term housing social tenants in such a block is going to create anything other than enmity from the majority of those who have paid inordinate amounts of money (and continue to do so). Clearly they bought the property on the basis it was a private residence and would expect to continue ownership under those circumstances.
for those that say that 20% of all new build must be social housing. This is correct, but by and large developers build the social housing aspect away from the main development so that the private/social mix isn't always there. clearly this is an abuse of the intended purpose of the policy but it is the only way social housing can be built.
Here we are again in a thread where everyone thinks their own opinion is right and everyone else is wrong. Well let me tell you people, you're wrong. You're all wrong.
I live In a housing association property
It's called Aquila house, falcon drive, Cardiff bay
it's located about 60 seconds from the National Assembly of wales to the right off me. It's a lovey place to live we even have out very on concierge service, cleaners the lot
If anything in the flat breaks I.e lights,boilers, windows etc we call the housing association and they come out and fix it
I pay £460 a month for a 2 bed and that's with water rates included
I think my council tax is £116 a month
Me and my Mrs work full time
I drive a Mercedes
Life's great
The other option is to go back to creating ghettos of people with social problems, a sort of cleansing of more affluent areas. These ghettos do even less for those people, but let's be honest, it's about people being snobbish.
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