Has anyone rented a council house for over 3 years?

If you want to answer the points made, go ahead.

 

How so? It means that we all pay much more tax to offset the rent bill that the council has because they don't have enough council houses to meet demand and means that young people have sod all chance of getting a council house without a 20 year waiting list

 

If you are short-sighted, perhaps...

 

Why would I want to answer someone being so dismissive and using such an air of superiority? If you want to address the subject in a mature manner then I may choose to address it, I may not, but I'm certainly not going to engage in a conversation that begins in the style you chose.

 

You appear to be saying that it's more important for a minority of social housing tenants to benefit short term than it is for their to be social housing going forward. In other words, as long as your generation is ok **** the rest.

 

I'm not against social housing. I welcome it. I'm against the idea that people ought not to be able to buy their council house. My dad paid way more in terms of it's actual value in rent, having lived there for 30 years, before he was able to buy it at a discount.

Would it have been fair to condemn him to carry on paying rent for the rest of his life?

 

Big claim! Especially when you look at everything else we’ve balls up since 1923!

 

Yep this! My parents have lived in their house for almost 50 years - they bought it a few years ago mainly as a nest egg for their grandchildren. The money council received from the sales should have been pumped back into the system to build other houses

 

Sorry, didn’t mean to start an argument folks!

At the end of the day, right to buy exists and I’m here to do a job to help people that might not be able to afford to buy a house without it, of which there are hundreds of thousands if not millions.

It helps my clients, so whatever the rights and wrongs, I will point out to eligible people what they can do.

 

Nicely put.

 

You're doing nothing wrong. People buying their council houses are doing nothing wrong. There is certainly benefit for individuals within this system.

There is, however, a great detriment to our society from this initiative. And that detriment is malignant and all encompassing. It adversely affects you, and all your descendants, and those who have bought their council houses, and all their descendants, and everyone else. To put it simply, young adults used to be able to afford a place to live, and now they can't, and it's getting much, much worse, and will continue to do so. I'm not writing this to make you feel uncomfortable, but it's a fact, and I don't mind addressing it in a thread that brought the issue to this forum. Not to challenge you, but because I think it's very important.

 

100% mate you should give people the best advice possible or you aren't doing your job. It's perfectly OK to advise anyone in a council property to buy it while also holding the belief that the system allowing them to do so is wrong.

 

He wasn't condemned to pay rent all his life. If he didn't wish to keep paying rent he could have bought a property years earlier.
After 30 years what made the penny drop
There's always been plenty of housing available to buy without buying social housing. It was a choice, as it is today, rent or buy?
Except today there is very little social housing available.

 

That all depends on your conscience. My folks could have bought their Hoyland semi in the 80s for 12k. Add another zero in value now. But they had principles.
Most are bought to rent, which inflates rents for the rest of us, as the rental market becomes thinner. My house on the Fitzwilliam/Wentworth estate has just gone up £60 a month & they think they’re doing us a favour? 9%, rather than 18 in the rental market.??
Some of my local friends families have done it, so I resist being too judgmental. Myself & siblings could still have turned a tidy profit after our Mam passed away. But Dad would have turned in his grave..
We had the house as long as we needed it, then it goes to someone else.. Simple life turnover..

 

After 30 years he was given the opportunity to buy his house. My dad was a pretty much committed Labour man who worked honestly and fairly for the local council all his life .

He brought us up to be as aware and as educated as possible. Balanced and reasonable.

He was happy to live in a council house. For you to suggest that his penny needed to drop at any particular time is somewhat insulting. He didn't have the option to buy for the first 25 years at least. Then when the chance to buy came along he eventually took it, Along with most others on our street. I'd like to know how daft he was for doing this. Or selfish.

 

I find it wrong for anyone to be considered to have no conscience or principles for deciding to buy their own council house.

Can we have those on here who actually live in a council house now, and who have decided not to buy, tell us why?

 

That’s just too bad. I can’t help you with that..

 

By the way, if anyone does rent a council house and wants to buy it, I promise you anonymity if you DM me so you aren't hung, drawn and quartered for doing so

 

The laughable thing is he thinks he's coming from a position of socialism. Wow.

 

I'd love a council house. A red brick semi with a garden where I could grow tomatoes and potatoes and runner beans. Where I could sit outside in the sunshine and maybe crack open a beer. Cut my grass and then do the lawn for the old lady next door. Walk from my kitchen to my living room then up the stairs to my bedroom. But I'm in a flat with Vitamin D deficiency. And when I lose this, which I will, I'll be in a HMO, because that's the only place I will be able to afford. And if I make it to pensionable age I'll be homeless because I won't be able to afford anything. And there are many more in a lot worse position than I. Does this go any way to answering the points you keep making?