Council House RTB discount increased to 50k

..."England" and the UK are not the same

Won't they? That goes against my own long experience. Perhaps you North Londoners are a more selfish breed than us South Londoners, though.

No, it isn't. It's caused by the legislation that banned local authorities from replacing homes that had been bought through RtB with new stock.

What a load of shit. Do you think that people fought so that they could be rewarded? They fought because they believed it was necessary, and to say they should be offered a free home because they did what was necessary would be and is insulting.

The like of your grandparents (and mine) viewed paying rent from a different perspective than we do, too. They saw it as "natural", whereas people of younger generations often see it as a waste.

Some, but hardly a number that would make any difference to the problem of homelessness if you evicted the lot of them. The last lot of data on salaries and housing status (from 2001 census IIRC) found about 2,000 tenants across England and Wales with a household income of twice the median wage or more. A drop in the ocean, and gesture politics of the most transparent kind.

You really don't have much of a clue what you're talking about. Between 35 and 40% of all households earn below the median wage. Half of them are at below the "poverty line" of 60% of median wage. That means that households in London, for example, are having to find non-social housing rents from £100 a week (for the most basic accommodation) upwards. If you're on the "poverty line", that means that even if your rent is only £100 a week, that's between 40 and 45% of your nett weekly income on rent. It used to be that if you were paying over 30% your rental expenses were considered high.
Social housing is more necessary than ever if the major cities aren't to become ghettos of privilege.

Back when local authorities built social housing (up until 1986, in other words) there were generous minimum standards in place. The same government that stopped L.A. social housing construction neglected to impose minimum size standards, and only minimal construction standards.

Germany has a private rental sector where tenant rights are paramount and far more expansive. Comparing the two is like comparing a Ford Escort to a Ford Granada.

Load of balls, as shown by any street that was bombed in WW2. It's a fairly simple operation to slice out a single home from a terrace, as long as you follow the correct order when supporting the structure on either side. It's also fairly simple to remedy even severe structural problems.

"All the shit"?
You do love speaking in sweeping and inaccurate generalisations, don't you? High rise only ever constituted about 12% of English and Welsh social housing. Much more was either low-rise, semis or terraces. I've lived most of my life in "inner city" South London, and while I can think of a few estates that match your "brutalist" description (parts of the Aylesbury, North Peckham and Heygate estates, the Winstanley at Clapham Junction, the estate above the Arndale at Wandsworth, Thamesmead as a whole), most of them don't. Even North London isn't awash with brutalist concrete jungles.

Speak to an architect. Ask them what the anticipated life of a housing unit is.

20 years isn't good, but for systems construction it's not bad either, as any of the architects who designed your "concrete horror" would have known.
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That seems to depend on where the semi is.

Then let's copy them.

The Ferrier was in South London, I still live in South London.

People don't spend thousands of £'s on double glazing, convert their lofts for £15 Grand, or add Solar panels (About £10 Grand) if they don't own their House. The most that I know of someone spending on their council house that they don't own is had their front garden done, paved over, fenced and walled and more commonly, it's just some decking in the back garden.

Hasn't that problem been solved if not then that is what we should campaign for.

My GrandParents certainly deserve their house. People didn't fight suffer and die just to come home to be treated like shit and go back to their lowly position, crap lives that they had before.
You might have a brutal view of countries or governments i have a more "Family" view, you look after and help your children not sling them out survive in the Jungle rat Race.

I understood about 25% of people who live in Social Housing earn above the National Average.

Wealth is a "Natural" Filter it is inevitable that people of a some what similar income end up living together.

Simple?

Perhaps you have lived too long in those areas you don't know what good housing is. I detest Peckham i lived there for about 6 months next to the North Peckham Estate (Rosemary House) it seemed to me the local council had found every bit of land they could and built an ugly council Estate on it. an example of a good estate that started out as a social housing is the Progress Estate (formerly the Well Hall Garden Estate) in Eltham, that's the sort of place people want to live.

Then why did they build it, they should have built an estate of brick semi's that would still be there in an hundred years or replicated the Progress Estate.

Then campaign for, first for space standards, then for good space standards. They are essential for good housing. Undersized Housing creates emotional problems which create social problems, undersized homes aren't conducive to happy living or happy people.

The old space-standards (Parker Morris) weren't generous at all, they were considered/ worked out to be the bare minimum to be adequate. We should be building better housing than that!

50 sq m for a 1 bed flat isn't generous!!!!! when I tell my foreign friends what size my flat is they are astonished and dismiss it as only being suitable for student accommodation. Space-standards are essential: the average new build in the UK is half the size of a average new build in Denmark. Greek new builds are nearly twice the size of British new builds. Japan a country roughly the same size as the British isle, but with twice the population and 80% mountainous still manages to have new- builds that 57% bigger than our new-builds.

Yes, it's really as simple as saying that, isn't it?
Another thing that Thatcher's governments deprived us off was secure tenancies. They were replaced by Assured Shorthold Tenancies which are short-term and insecure. No government whose "politics" (if we can still use that word about what governments do) is based on neo-liberal economic predicates (that is, all three major mainstream political parties in parliament) will restore security of tenure to tenants - it simply isn't as profitable for private capital to have to meet even such minimal standards of good behaviour, unless the government decides to give some sort of tax concession to private landlords.
Hence, social housing is, and will continue to be, necessary.

My apols. I thought Boy George was reared in Nth London.

So now you're confining improvements to what are in fact "major works". Pity you didn't say that in the first place.

Nope. Local authorities can use sleight-of-hand to develop small-scale social housing, but that's it. The bulk of social housing new build is supposed to be dome by Housing Associations. The only problem with that is that there hasn't been a single year since the legislation I mentioned where HAs have met even 10% of the demand for social housing.

Don't make assumptions, eh?
Have you been a soldier? Do you really think people go to war to benefit personally? Do you really think your grandparents wouldn't be horrified that a sacrifice freely made was being rewarded by them being given something that would set them above their less fortunate friends and relatives?
I'm not sure it isn't you who has an odd view of society. Desert doesn't come into it, your beliefs about desert don't come into it.

At or above[/quote] according to the ONS's "Social Trends" for 2010, with a majority of that 25% being AT rather than ABOVE.

There's no inevitability to it at all. It's only in the last 20 years or so that areas have truly started to become socially homogeneous, and that's mostly because the poor have increasingly become economically-excluded from the areas where they were born and have grown up. There's a whole literature about the effects on class demographics of economic exclusion of the sort I'm talking about, much of it filed under "gentrification" and similar debates.

In (de)construction terms, yes. Cut, prop, pin, buttress. I don't know how old you are, but I saw this happen loads of times in the '60s and '70s, when bomb-warped and damaged places were being either demolished or (if the damage wasn't fundamental) renovated.

How very condescending of you.

An odd conclusion to draw given how much open land there actually still is in SE15. I can think of more than half a dozen substantial plots that aren't parks just on the Walworth side of the OKR.

In Eltham? Mostly only if you're white, and it's been like that for the last 40 years or so.

You seem to be missing your own point about space use here. 50sqm is substantial enough for a 1-bed flat if space use is properly planned. I'm not talking about cabin beds etc either, I'm talking about laying out is such a way as to be hygienic and functional. If, however, you're laying out a place merely to cram as many "features" (i.e. "selling points") into a limited space as possible, as many private new-builds do, then of course you're going to end up with a claustrophobic horror of a flat.

Boy George grew up in Eltham and then Woolwich.

Excellent posts VP.

Nope, he was born in Woolwich moved to Joan Crescent next to the railway line, Middle Park estate, Eltham when he was a baby and then the family moved to the top of Shooter's Hill where, the last time I saw her, his Mum still lives, my family more or less did the same, we all knew each other BG younger brother, Gerald was contemporary we went to the same schools hang out with the same people hang out with and lived in the same areas I was up there the other day.

Yes he was born in Woolwich. I didn't say he wasn't.

I think the problem when discussing social housing is that many people don't look at it in a "holistic" manner, but rather through ideological lenses. I'm sure there's a good socialist argument to be made for social housing, and in fact I heard successive generations of socialist pols make good arguments for it, but people forget there's also a social argument for it - it can keep communities heterogeneous rather than (as is happening at an accelerating pace across the UK) (re)creating social ghettos. Some people may welcome a return to the Victorian attitude of the poor being (literally) kept in their place. I don't. If the wealthy want to gate themselves off from the rest of society, then let them. But they shouldn't expect me to sit still while they try to ghettoise me too.

tenants do spend money on their properties, I know, I manage Council Housing - and some tenants will put in new kitchens, bathrooms, paint the outside, even do repairs - not a majority of them tbf - and only those who can afford it

Any new space standards, I would contend would have to be across the board for both social and private housing, a new set of generous space standards Parker Morriss and a big plus. The old space-standards, for kitchens for example, are inadequate, they were made without thought to what new white goods would be invented, i was shown a place that had a no space for a fridge or a freezer in the kitchen you were expected to keep those things in the front room, and they certainly didn't have space for a tumble dryer or a dishwasher or what ever going to be invented in the future, my friend's Mum has her fridge and freezer in the hallway next to the front door and another friend had no room for a washing machine in her kitchen so this poor person had to spend lots of scarce money on launderettes. it is expensive being poor.

50 sqm isn't enough it is the bare minimum, i would say you would need about about another 4 sqm to make it comfortable, after that it becomes pleasant.

we need:
legal set minimum room sizes.
legal set minimum storage space.

Proud tenants, imagine what they would do if they owned the property! Yes, flooring and kitchens are things would be willing to spend money on, i agree.

Back in the day (i.e. prior to RtB), in my experience the majority of council tenants did this, and most local authorities at the time were fairly forthcoming with renovation grants too, if the job was something their direct labour couldn't handle.

All pretty irrelevant if there's not enough social and affordable housing

they can own another property - let them buy privately - give then financial incentives to do so - let those who can't afford to buy live in social housing..

there are plenty of working tenants in social housing - who stay because they like the community they live in (and the cheapish rent tbf) rtb destroys such communities - btl landlords move in - and a series of temporary tenants move in and out.

before my time just about - been in the sector since about 95

My grandparents and quite a few aunts and uncles all lived in council flats and houses, and always spent any money they could on decorating and doing them up. None of them were keen on buying either.

They were really happy with renting too until local authorities started to maintain them less and less, whilst government ideology started to attack the whole concept of social housing. Both led to the decline of a lot of estates.

Although quite why buying a place or spunking money to private landlords is the great answer in the eyes of neo-liberal governments fuck only knows. It's overrated in my experience.

The flat in a block my friend rents socially in Deptford is a damn sight more spacey than the modern brick built 'apartment' I bust a gut to try and buy. And ultimately I can't do anything to it other than decorating internally just as she can. Plus I also pay a fortune to a cowboy management company.

Innit, you don't need en-suites in a 1 bed flat.