Housing Flashcards
What is “social housing”?
Social housing describes houses or flats owned and let by housing associations or a local council.
So, council housing is intended to make it possible for people who are not able to afford to buy a property to be able to rent
What do councils do to help the homeless?
Councils have a legal duty to provide a home – a house or flat – someone who has become “unintentionally homeless.”
They must also house someone who is facing homelessness, within 28 days of the council being notified that it is going to happen.
One of the potential outcomes of this duty is that councils which have a large number of homeless people could find themselves unable to meet demand, and this puts even more pressure on a council’s already limited financial resources.
What happened with the Housing Shortages?
Large numbers of tenants chose to buy their council home because of Thatcher’s legislation, and this had the result of reducing the number of affordable rented council homes. This problem was made worse as a result of the Thatcher government’s financial policy/laws – there were several major impacts:
1 New laws limited the ability of councils to spend money from RTB sales on building replacements for homes that were sold.
2 It limited how much money councils could borrow for the same purpose. Councils were required to use up to three quarters of the money generated by selling council property on repaying public spending debts – this is money borrowed to finance other public works projects.
3 The government forced councils to have their remaining housing stock managed by “arms length” organisations known as housing associations.
