Social housing - a question

[Don Water Melon]

On the back of the 'no housing benefit for under 25s' debate...

On radio 4 IDS reckons that the average age of entering social housing was 21. Now my understanding is that it's incredibly hard to get into social housing with very long waiting lists. So, if you live or have lived in social housing what's your experience? And what's the actual house and area like? Coz to be fair the HA houses near me are LOVELY. I'd definely live there!

Of course this seems separate to the housing benefit debate...
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H (Jun 2008) & Z (Dec 2010) & special baby G (Nov 2012)

[Katiekipper]

I got my council flat age 19 but I was pregnant. The flat was grotty but in a lovely area by dint of it being a lovely village.
HA houses are alot nicer than council in our area though council standards have improved since my day. I had no double glazing, central heating or plumbing for a washing machine and the standard of the kitchen/bathroom was poor.
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[Beka-just-Beka]

Yes, HA are usually alot nicer than council, our first home was a HA & the response to repairs etc was brilliant, our present one is council and well, I just keep reminding myself it's cheap & that if we had our own I'd be funding repairs so the fact we do that rather than wait for the council to fix things is no different to if we owned. (I see it as repairs benefit me, so I'll pay out of pocket rather than leave it to the council.)

We were 18 & 19 and it took from getting to our 12 week scan (they had to see proof of pregnancy to put me on the list as I wasn't 18 at that point) and we were housed when DD1 was 9 weeks old, DH was registered homeless as his mother moved away and left him behind shortly after he turned 18, I was still at home with my parents.

We only got housed as quickly as we did as bournville trust built a new street of 28 houses and part of their deal was 8 had to go to council's homeless & vulnerable tenants- I have friends who have still been at home with parents when their child begins nursery (one friend turned down a 2 bedroom flat in hope of a house and is still living with her mother now her kids are 7 and 4) We were just really, really lucky, the majority of pregnant teens here get put into "the alms houses" which is a grotty, horrid block of studio/bedsits.

It took us from the day we learnt Jude was going to be a boy, until he was 5.5 to get moved to a bigger home and again, we got this one because 11 people offered it before us turned it down (I hope that gives you a hint of how bad a condition it was in, 4 years later we still call it the Moneypit due to bath falling through ceiling, canabis stash holes found, a system of drill holes throughout the house means you can spy into different rooms from each other and the boys room we had to rip up the floor boards & replace them after scrubbing down the joists & walls as everytime their room got hot it wreaked of dog piss and pot... the floorboards were spongey with dog urine but we were told it's not a health and safety issue so we had to live with it or replace them ourselves so we just got on with it and replaced them- alot of issues with the house people have said call the council make them do it but we just fix it ourselves as frankly we know how lucky we are to have a 4 bedroomed council home in this day and age so I give them as little contact as possible.

The houses are awarded on a point system here- you fill out a form and different things get you different points- number of people, current situation & rooms you have access to in that situation, age of kids, "social issues" such as drug dependancy or alcholism will get you vulnerable person points, those points then get converted into a band and that band is what houses you can bid on in an online bidding system, you can only bid on properties open to your band (we were silver band when looking to upsize as priority band is homeless and gold band usually have severe medical or social need) As I say, ours was a silver band let and 11 families said no to it viewing it before we said "It's got potential, yes please"

Our neighbourhoods we've lived in? I know alot are ok but sadly the two we've lived in are high crime, high antisocial behaviour. Our last home living there were often saw police raids on the flats, we had 2 paedophiles arrested (one next door, one across the road) the local shop was done by armed robbers three times in the last 2 years of our living there, my neighbours car was stole from under our bedroom window by joy riders one summer, someone was stabbed in the head on my driveway... really, the list is endless, I could honestly go on. One of my neighbours was actually known as "mad dog" - 12 years later I still don't know his name, my direct neighbour was on benefits fiddle lying that her childrens father had no contact when he was actually a taxi driver. DD1 had very strict rules as to where she was allowed to go/walk, there was a crack den in the bottom flat across the road so she was barred from walking near them, my old neighbour tells me she now keeps a baseball bat by the door for if/when her son comes in crying, it's gotten even worse since we moved away (and mini-motos, don't even get me started on those b*st*rd things driving passed at 2am) I was a social outcast there because I had a husband and wouldn't join in the E-parties fellow moms at the school had... truly it was a "Shameless2" style estate, the one that anyone who knows our town sucks their teeth when they hear you live there.

The one we're on now is better, it has regular armed robberies at the centre (5 minute walk away) our post man was held up at gun point last year, there was an abduction 1 close over from us a couple of years back- man bundled into a car later found severely beaten in the middle of B'ham, my neighbours are a lady who's got her adult children & their children living with her because of waiting lists, the other side we have a single lady who raised 5 sons in the house she's still in, next door to her are the people who sit on the car park wall and smoke weed all day, my 14 year old can tell you what weed smells like despite never smoking it herself the minute the sun is out they're all sat out their in lonsdale 3/4s with their man boobs out, opposite we then have a single dad who finally got back into work after more than a decade out of work with the welfare reforms (and he looks so happy when you see him now, it's lovely) a BNP family (who Jude constantly aggitates and rants at ) a family who boot their kids out to play at 6.30am every holiday and then swear loudly at them for knocking the door for a wee/food.

BUT that being said we have a lovely school, we DO have shops within walking distance, we have a good bus route because v.few people have cars here (although it is often full of chavvy teens causing shit from the back seat so I often go and sit there if it's empty to stop them sitting there because I'm odd like that ) If I were to run into the street and announce one of my kids had vanished the stoners & screechy mom would drop everything to come and look for them (when a friends sons got hit by a bus the local support was amazing) People do talk to you in the street even if it is just a very brummy "Alright" and best of all, there is very, very little one-up-manship because everyone locally is broke so no one brags, no one tries to belittle and everyone else is in your boat so to speak.

So yes, some council estates might be sh*t but the sense of community on them can be absolutely lovely- my old one for all it's faults I had a few local friends that would bend over backwards for you and the same again here.

In all honesty, half of the stuff that people at about here, I don't really notice anymore after 15 years of HA and Council estate living, my sister is in a constant state of if she walks to my local shop with me but it's just home now.

I will say one thing, you really do have to fight to keep your kids on track and believing they can and WILL do better if they work hard, I see alot of DD1's friends who haven't had the support she has and you can see them falling into the crappy relationship, low aspirations trap already even at 14.
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Really is, Just Beka.

[Beka-just-Beka]

Just thought I'd add as well- my town as a whole isn't a very nice town though, the only nice areas are the very expensive areas, we have v.high unemployment and I suspect some of the issues we have aren't isolated to the council estates, although my mothers area is mostly ex-council and they don't get the same trouble we do.

However my littlest SIL lives in a HA house that was built amoungst a private estate- a handful of them had to be allocated to the council list whilst the rest were sold privately, as a result it's quite a nice area (high car crime as it's right by the town train station but anti-social behaviour is zero there, the only trouble she really sees is a few of the private owners a very mouthy towards the children out playing as they don't think HA tenants should be there, let alone their children playing out.
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Really is, Just Beka.

[Seagull]

Beka, you have so totally missed your vocation. You need to be a writer! You have a way with words, always makes me laugh!

Your positivity shines through every post, I love it!

[JaKyCaReBa]

DH lived in council house till he moved in with his ex, into a council house. His sister lives in the house they grew up in, she did a swap with their parents as she had a flat and needed a bigger place, and his parents needed a smaller place. They are lovely big places, most council houses are.

We were on the list when Caleb and Reuben were born as we had 2 bedroom private rental and couldn't afford to move up. We didn't get anywhere, despite Kyle's ASD. They had a weird system. The council sold all it's housing stock to an HA. So the HA would have a list of people wanting transfers, and the council kept a list of homeless and other people needing housing. They were supposed to get 50% each, but I never figured out how that worked out as they wouldn't know how many houses they'd be getting each year!

Also, and quite rightly, we were told there were homeless people above us on the list. We only qualified for a 3 bed with separate lounge and diner (so one could be a bedroom) or a 4 bed. These were supposed to be for families with 4 or more children. Yet they transferred someone already in a 3 bed house into one of these houses, with only 3 children. So I assume those homeless families then had to wait longer? It made no sense to me!

We finally found a shared-ownership house here. It wasn't at all where we would have chosen to live but I love it. It's actually an ex-council house, so it's nice and big and we have lovely neighbours and it's a nice area.

There's about 3000 people on the waiting list and 8000 houses (was 32000 before right to buy)
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Vicky, mum to 5 lovely boys!

[Beka-just-Beka]

Seagull it's easy to stay positive when I keep reminding myself it's cheap and big enough My sister admits she loves my house (for the size of it) but could/would never raise her kids somewhere like this, where as I've never had the option of otherwise for DD1 so just make best of what we have.

I do often feel sympathy for DD1, she was actually caught in a conversation the other week at a sleep over where they were all talking about who they like and the other girls bought up one girl and said she was nice "but she lives on a council estate and you know..." - DD1 could have stayed quiet but she said she lived on one and they'd liked her enough to invite her, I like to think my kids change peoples perceptions of council house kids. I was amazingly proud of her though, she is not in the least ashamed of where she comes from or her family despite 99% of her new friends coming from much better off households.

As for positivity, I figure I have the choice, I can look at these things and hate the world or I can look at them and see them as a starting block for things getting better, I don't ever want my kids to consider themselves stuck or think that it's impossible to change your life so they see us being positive and always edging forwards, even if only a little bit. Not saying there's not days where I do hate the world (usually ones where I've had charming stuff like people shouting sh*t when you go to the shop) but I'm slowly learning that dwelling on things will get me no where.
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Really is, Just Beka.

[Don Trogette]

not the same situation at all but 30-odd years ago, my mum, sis and I lived with one of Mum's friends for 3 months before we moved to the house my mum currently lives in. The estate is in a nice village, the houses and gardens are decent sizes, and I don't worry about locking my car when I go there as the most old-school-criminal family lives next door (well, not really any more, but the daughter still lives there and they're not straight, even if they're not as bent as they used to be) with the morality of not pissing in their own pond.

I had a tough time when I went to school as I'd inadvertantly made contact with the school pariah and automatically went to play with her at break-time, got tarred with the same brush, and from then on it was really, really hard to shake off the bullying. Some of the 'tough kids' from the 'tough street' were the worst, but then the well-off kids from pony-land (living in the famhouses on the outskirts/nearby hamlets) were just as bad, so it's swings and roundabouts really.

I got a bit narked with my mum the other week, we were talking about the right to buy scheme and the thought that the current govt might bring in rules about moving on from houses that are bigger than your current needs and she was very anti, doesn't see why she should have to move just because she rents, and she reckons people wouldn't maintain their houses if they thought they were going to get moved on, which is bloody rich because she only has a tidy garden now because the council come round and cut her grass once a month and trim the hedge twice a year.

Oh and the council are pretty decent at getting jobs done but Mum and my brother are high-priority, don't know how it is for regular proles
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Official custodian of:
Chris Wolstenholme - Green and Blacks cherry - Midnight Sun
Playmobil - the facebook 'like' button

[Belle]

Here council properties are literally left to rack and ruin and the HA ones are nice. BUT lots and lots smaller.
I wont bore you with the state of this house and the fact that as an exchange we were financially liable for the renovation. Thank goodness we had saved 2k to try and buy because a non working family just wouldn't have been able to afford to come here.

It lessened the guilt somewhat when we bought it.

Re: the plans to remove under 25s housing benefit. If that was in place in 1998 I would have spent a good 2 years or more on my nans sofa. Great environment for a child that..unfortunately unsupportive parents exist across the social class spectrum and that safety net helped us into employment and marriage...instead of fragmented and disengaged from society.
Area wise, I can only speak for the rural village where I live but we've had no problems from teens. There are HA tenants that I dont particulatly like but they don't make noise IYSWIM. I've had more probs at school from the children from the "new estate" demanding reciepts ftom DS to prove his clothes aren't 2nd hand etc...
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Cameron ~ 11/98
Poppy Charlotte ~ 04/08
Harriet Iris ~ 06/10

[Don Sundancer]

I moved in to a council flat when I was 17, but I only got it because I was homeless after my foster mum wrote a letter saying that she was kicking me out due to over crowding. That sounds awful of her, but that's pretty much the way it is here.
The system is that you have to stay in a hostel until they find you a place to live. Sometimes you will get put in temporary accommodation (which can be for years, months or weeks) and then get moved on.

The council flat was in a rough part of a decent area IYKWIM? (whereas now I'm in a crappy area and it's crappy no matter where you are in it. Nicer house though, and it's a HA place). It was a pre-war building so rock solid but absolutely riddled with damp. It was nice enough there though and I've often said if I could move our home there now I would in a flash.
It was only a one bedroom place and we were there until Rowan was 6 months old, so there were 5 of us and a bit of a squash. We'd have been on the waiting list to move for 4 years, which is actually really fast but I think my mental health at the time might have moved things along a little.
DH and I moved in to the living room and left the bedroom for kids things. This is why if you ever see any old photos or videos from me, the house will probably look a complete cluttered state, and a mix-up with things like a big TV on top of a bedroom chest of drawers! The heating barely ever worked and we relied on expensive fan heaters quite often. The damp was definitely the worst thing though, DH, Frazer and I all developed breathing problems that required ongoing medication, and we all cleared up within weeks of moving, although DH's asthma has hung around for occasional attacks, which is sad as his breathing was fine up until he moved in there.

In our council, it doesn't matter if you're pregnant. They will only put an extra name on your list if the baby is born. Not that this matters anyway, because I know people with plenty of boys and girls sharing rooms. I don't even know what the rules are on housing now as they're always moving the goalposts. It used to be that once a child was 10 they needed a room separate from opposite gender siblings. But I know some people have been told that your living room can be classed as a sleeping area, so the older child or someone can go there.

A friend of mine is in a housing association property with her husband and 10 year old daughter. Until a few months ago they lived in a 1 bedroom flat, all sharing the same room.

Another friend of mine has 4 children ranging from 11 to 3 years old. The youngest is a boy and the oldest has Downs Syndrome. They own their own flat so are completely stuck because they can't afford to move out but the council doesn't want to hear from homeowners at all.

London housing is pretty crappy really. I feel incredibly lucky to have what we have. It's in a pants area, but like Beka I try to stay positive, and even more like Beka, I find that the hardest thing is keeping my children on the track of believing they can improve their way out of it. It's the hardest thing when you know that most of the children that mine are growing up with have such low aspirations.
Our actual house (it's a maisonette) looks lovely. It's a good size and is built with disabilities in mind, so has wide doorways, good stairs, etc. It's cheaply built though, which is showing now after 7 years of use, but the HA aren't *too* bad at fixing things. The worst they've been is during our recent flood when they were utterly hopeless as they can't comprehend that the place was built without a stopcock.
Regarding the area, well, Frazer doesn't like to play out much because the other kids swear and spit and aren't that nice. The pizza takeaways wouldn't deliver here for ages because a delivery man was stabbed for no apparent reason around the corner from us. I've seen dawn raids about to happen while early dog walking and shortly after we moved in someone's door was blasted off by the police on suspicion of him being a terrorist. DH knows that there's a lot of crime going on and I think he knows what criminals live where nearby to us but I don't need or want to know TBH.
The schools locally are pants and I don't think many people actually own any houses nearby at all
A big problem is always space. We have no attic or basement, a tiny garden that we can't fit a shed in. The council have dramatically raised the rent prices on garages in the area, so that people living here can't afford them and people from out of london can use them for business vans to park in and avoid congestion charges.

Where we are is *vastly* better to where we were first offered though. It's just down the road from us and is a big gloomy block of flats. Our offer was 4th floor and the lifts didn't work - not that our pram would fit in them anyway. There was a metal security grille door thing in front of the front door and you could see where it had been broken in to. It only had two bedrooms (they knew we had a daughter and sons) and was tiny and dirty. There was no play area anywhere near and the bottom of the block opens straight on to a road.
To add to this, one of DH's friends from school that he hadn't seen for a few years had committed suicide there by jumping off the top
This was a council place and we were told that if we didn't accept it we would go to the back of the waiting list, which at that point was over 20 years long. I could not bring myself to move in there and the *only* way that didn't cause us lots of trouble was because I had a mental health nurse who was very bolshy and came with me to view the property as DH couldn't get off work. She kicked up a stink

Pretty much the only way people get out of their parents and in to a council place is when they've had a baby, and even then they need to have it in writing that their parents are kicking them out so they get put on the homeless list.
My SIL is in this kind of position at the moment. She is living in a tower block with her two babies. It's a horrible block and apparently is going to be torn down at some point, so it's where the council are 'temporarily' housing people. SIL stayed at a hostel with her son and pregnant with her DD for a few months and is now uncertain whether she will be in this flat for years or months. The inside of her place is ok though and has two bedrooms, so despite the block being dark, scary and dirty, she's quite happy there. It's really high up so she gets a good view, but has the lift breaking risk...

I was talking to someone who is on all sorts of meeting committees locally and she was telling me that the latest thing is that the council now not only wants to push people out of london, but now they are going to start taking homes that are too big away from people. So an OAP who has lived in a house all his or her life will have to move elsewhere. I can see pros and cons to this TBH
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Proud owner of: Edward Cullen, Friends, Lost, Ben and Jerrys
...as Joey would say, "Put your hands together..."

[Viv]

I got my first council house at 18 ,it was October 1987 and dd1 was 7 months old.Before that I was living with my mum and 7 yr old brother in a 2 bed house.
It had metal single glazed windows that rattled with the traffic (it was on one of the main roads into town between a pelican crossing and a bus stop!!) and froze over in winter. There was a coal fire in the back living room an electric 2 bar heater in the front room and front bedroom ,there were NO radiators at all.The only toilet was downstairs through the backdoor next to the coalhouse ,it also froze over in winter The house was very damp with mould and mushrooms and mice from next door ,my carpets went mouldy and I was just told to open the windows (yeah cos freezing to death is a better option). There were only 2 houses on the street (mine and next door ,we had the wrong postcode ) that didnt get modernised ,they missed us out twice ,once before i moved in and once after. In 1996 the council came round with their modernistation plans which included leaving the toilet downstairs even though there was room for it upstairs .That was it for me ,I had had enough and went private rented .That lasted a year ,the landlord was a Bstrd and I ended up homeless ,at the time there was no one else on the housing list for that area so within 2days I was offered one house that I declined and one that I accepted. Since then I have lived in 3 more council houses and I currently live in lovely rural village but its not the dream I thought it would be plus I gave up my 4 bedroomed house to come here (did a mutual exchange) I stupidly thought the location and slower pace of life would make up for lack of space inside .There is 1 4 bed house in the village ,its currently occupied by an elderly lady who is pretending her DD lives with her so the house can be passed onto her .Of course this is untrue and the council have been told
I am currently looking at private rented properties near the childrens school (a village 4 miles away) but I really dont want to lose the security of my council tenancy so I shall probably just wait until something suitable comes up (newbuild HA estate being built in next village but opposite direction to school so lots to coinsider) with hindsight we should never have moved here the grass isnt always greener and wrt the kids on the street ,better the devil you know ,I came from a very rough area but those kids had nothing on the obnoxious brats here

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Also mum to Sam 25 ,Oliver 18 and Elliot 13
Nannie to Rue born 30/08/08 and Mila 07/08/11 and 'Aunt Viv' to Juarna born 19/08/09

[Belle]

I can see pros and cons too Elaine, on a personal level I think forcing my nan and grandad to move would finish them off. I feel.a bit frightened for them actually, theyve been model tenants for over 50 years and are loved dearly by their neighbours, a mix of homeowners and council tenants.
That said, I also have languished at the shit end of a waiting list and it's no fun at all..I couldn't stand in judgement of a family in that position either.
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Cameron ~ 11/98
Poppy Charlotte ~ 04/08
Harriet Iris ~ 06/10

[Don Water Melon]

You know, everything I've read here confirms what I've thought - which is that HA/council housing isn't exactly cushy....

I guess part of the problem that DC/IDS are trying to address is the fact that many parents do have to 'throw out' their children to make them 'homeless' so that they can get on the waiting list. Because that's the way the system works. And on paper, it sort of looks like parents are being supportive IYSWIM. Whereas lots of people know that parents 'kicking out' their adult children isn't quite that simple....

On the grounds of older people in bigger houses: it's a tough one. I guess essentially if you don't own a home but have the security of lower rents and tenancy that go with social housing, that it's only fair that once you no longer need a family house you move on to something smaller....

My PIL are downsizing and they are struggling with it - the idea that they will end up somewhere much smaller (even though the can't manage the larger house) and that they will need to get rid of lots of stuff etc. They own their house but will face many of the same issues.
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H (Jun 2008) & Z (Dec 2010) & special baby G (Nov 2012)

[Belle]

My grandparents rent and the rent in my village ( 2 seperate councils) is only £50 a month different from private rents. It isnt the price here, more the security of tenancy and knowing if you are paying rent to the council/HA you get to keep your house. I hear lots of stories in north derbys/south yorkshire of unscrupulous landlords taking rent and not paying the mortgage attatched to the house leaving unwitting tenants homeless and with no time to save up a new bond and rent upfront.
Locally theres a petition against the new rents. About 100pw I think? Dont quote me on that as I'm pulling that from memory of things overhead in church, thats hard to pay for an adult on min wage. It's sad state of affairs when you can work full time and still be priced out of social housing..but its better than fearing you'll be turfed out when you havent done anything wrong and thats the crux of the problem here.
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Cameron ~ 11/98
Poppy Charlotte ~ 04/08
Harriet Iris ~ 06/10

[Don Trogette]

The thing is it's standard practice in other countries to move on when you don't need that size of house, I think it's a matter of expectations here, if you knew that was the case when you moved in you wouldn't worry so much about it when it came time to move out? At least I think that way. And yes, it really bothers me to see my mum and brother living in a house that could fit a family of 6 or more.
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Playmobil - the facebook 'like' button