Originally Posted by
blue matt
I clean the windows on some show houses for a national builder, its a nice contract while it lasts, its worth £10 - 15 K a year, i spend a few hours doing them per week, ive been doing them for this builder for 9 years now, currently on my 5th site with the sales team ( who decide who gets the contract )
9 years ago, they would list the " social / part ownership houses " on the site plans
last site, they had a row of 5 bed, double garaged houses, they were up for £400 K ( same houses are £530 on the new site ), one sold, the other 6 didnt, they reduced the prices again and again, the site finished and the sales team moved onto the next site, houses still for sale, i would clean them every week ( as they were high value stock houses, the 1 house that sold was up for sale after a few months, 18 months down the line i am still cleaning these houses ( sure it was great for me £150 a week for 3 hours work, result ) , in the end they sold them to the housing association for cost as they couldnt sell them
Now of course we have realised the reason they didnt sell was the rank of affordable housing the builders had to build behind them, theses houses had its own entrance to the estate, but people spending $400 K on a house do not want affordable housing behind them with a shared rear fence , if anyone had gone around to view it , day or night, the ASB was constant, loud music, noisy kids at any time of the day
Now on this new site the builder doesnt list the affordable / social homes on the site plan now, they grey the area out and its listed as " Land for further development " we can only guess why
as a side note, the small estate i used to live on in my last house used to have no social housing, the builders struck a deal with the council to refurb a social housing estate on the other side of town as a trade off for not having to build them on this estate
Ive worked as a carpenter on VOG council houses for many years before i moved down here, my first " patch " was penarth and the billybanks, then i was moved to Gibby and the Colcot in barry, then i worked on " relets / empty properties all over the VOG " and i always got on well with the tenants ( yes sure some places were rough as hell, some were decent enough ), public buildings / school then beckoned and I never went back to the housing side of it
this question has always interested me ( due to the fact of working on them ), the old idea of " council estates " over time failed, estates became no-go area's and we have moved to trying to integrate social housing into new build estates, this of course has its own issues ( as we have seen above ) Jon mentions ending the stigmatisation of the rich and precious, ASB has recently gone hand in hand with social housing, your average BMW driving double garaged 5 bedroom home owner really doesnt want to spend over 1/2 a mill on a house to have rick astley blaring out of the windows at the rear of his house during the day and screaming / shouting / swearing kids in the evening, that will never change
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