Housing benefit/Council Tax benefit, which is council housing's evil twin (housing benefit is current spending that effectively supports high rents, where what is needed is long-term investment in social assets to reduce rents), looks set to cost us an eye-watering £30bn pa. It has almost tripled since 2000. There is no shortage of money just governmental short-sightedness.
our council which is big has spent over a billion on pay claims affecting repairs and building i guess
Then ensure that the buildings remain in an asset-locked legal body, similar to a Community Interest Company, but with the legal parameters drawn up with council houses in mind.
Maintenance costs are often quoted as being 1% of property value per year. Could easily be more than that for tenants with no interest in the property. Even so, those numbers suggest that well-maintained properties should be achievable.
And then with a well trained workforce we can go on to renovate more and more buildings to close to passive house standard (start with the easier buildings and learn how to do the more challenging over time) so that most of the UK housing stock can be lived in with very little money spent annually on heating the building.
Exactly right. We have a cost of living crisis: reducing energy bills is an obvious place to start.
1% seems very heavy where residents don't abuse the property. I've lived in my place for 7 years, with one big bill for a boiler. Even that was under £3k. Now I know that there will be a few astronomical bills waiting, such as if a roof gives up, but even that isn't going to be much spread over a (say) 50 year lifespan. Likewise a £3k boiler, it has a 10 year guarantee, so any accountant is going to depreciate that at 10% pa and then give it zero asset value. £300 pa. Kitchens, bathrooms, similar. Maybe a 15 year life on them. You might get to £1000 a year on a (UK average?)£200k house. That's 0.5%. I suppose that older housing stock might need 1%. Where it gets difficult is the number of people who abuse housing. I had a mate who worked in Leeds Council's housing dept, the stories he told made your toes curl. There are some people out there who basically can't handle life. A great many of them end up in social housing. He said they had a number of families who just surfed from one house to the next every 3 months because they would turn everything into an utter pigsty. The coping strategy was to find a house that was due a refurb. It was all but knackered, the family in question would move in and destroy it. Within 3-6 months the place would be full of rubbish, rotting food, dead pets, nappies, faeces, doors torn off for firewood, copper pipes and cabling stolen, you name it. They would then get the clearance gang in, shovel it all into a skip and refurbish the place with new wiring, plumbing, kitchen, etc. The family would be moved to the next place, round we go again. People like that are not getting housed by private landlords. At least not twice, so where do they go?
Jesus. And you choose to live in London, and pay a fortune for the privilege? Good luck.
Of course. I lived in a tough bit of Leeds for 5 years because I had little choice. Even so, "tough" didn't involve junkies for neighbours and walking past a body on the way to work. I didn't have to pay a fortune for the privilege either. In addition, when funds permitted, I moved out to a pleasant suburb. Nobody short of an oil sheik can do that in London. They're welcome to it.
