rent rise

[Ghostrider]

^ I tend to agree with you, I would be all for there being means testing to qualify for a council house in the first place, followed by annual reviews throughout the tenancy. I wouldn't support in any way "forcing" folk to have to move out of a tenancy should their means improve over the years, to do so will inevitably see the "they're throwing us out of our home on to the streets...." card being liberally played. Rather, instead of flat rate across the board rents set for all council properties according to type, I'd favour a sliding scale rental charge set accoring to the ability to pay, with the top change band coming in at the average rent for a comparable property in the same area in the private sector plus 5% or so.

I bet you'd soon see most of the higher earning council tenants quickly put together a deposit, or at least rent privately then.

Whoever said social housing is a safety net, not a right, hit the nail on the head. Legislating to return it to being that again is the rocky road back, folk understand and are more compliant when "persuaded" by the pound in their pocket.
_________________
This week, I am mostly being God.

Copyright: Ghosty 2006 - 2013.

[shetlandpeat]

I heard that we sold a house for quite a bit more than the asking price and it was bought by a Shetland family, they were bidding with other Shetland folk.

There was a southern interest, who put in the lowest bid, of course, I only heard that.
_________________
We cannot change anything until we accept it. ConDemNation does not liberate, it oppresses.

Carl Jung

[robert sandison]

One new proposal from the government is to charge tenants with unused bedrooms a lot more rent.Say an elderly tenant living alone in a three bedroomed house alone the idea is to ''encourage'' them to move to something a little smaller.

[unlinkedstudent]

[Kavi Ugl]

I hear what you're saying daveh but that also gives the impression of a vicious circle where only those with big money can afford a house, and given the market and prices south favours offers from south. It doesn't exclude the chances of the house going into Shetland hands but it makes it a lot harder.

I'm all for the free market to a point but it can leave many "victims" and the Shetland housing situation is an example of that.

A real step forward would be for the SIC or HHA to aquire land, develop it and put in serviced sites then sell them off at an affordable, across the board price without any big profiteering.

There could be a time limit of, say, 5 years in which you must have your house either finished or started.

Also, the site cannot be sold on for profit by you - if you decide not to proceed with a house the site goes back to the agency at cost.

Such a scheme would enable so, so many people the chance to build and own their own house.

[BigMouth]

I would like to rent in the private sector, but their are a number of things against you from the start, higher demand than supply, market forces affecting rents (or landlord greed), the difficulty in getting a decent long term let, and in some cases owners looking to dump their tenants when the summer season comes around so that they can get even more out of tourist lets. We need some sort of rent cap in place otherwise people like me end up paying the mortgage on someone's second property, often buy to let, yet are unable to get a mortgage of our own.

I think that there is a large market for social housing as buying is beyond most except on interest only mortgages, which it has suddenly been decided is a ticking time bomb as very few people will ever be able to pay off the amount that they borrowed. Eventually we will be signing over the mortgages to our kids as they have been doing in Germany for many years.
_________________
The Shetland Times - Somewhat like a newspaper, but without the crossword.

[robert sandison]

One thing greatly affecting lets just now is Total which is snapping up houses to rent for their workers at huge rents iv heard of a three bedroom house being rented for £1000 a week.

[shetlandpeat]

[robert sandison]

If New Labour had not wasted £100 billion invading Iraq and Afghanistan and killing god knows how many thousands of people they may have been able to afford to build a few house for the people of this country.

[tooney1]

[fusion]

[robert sandison]

Yes but new Labour simply carried on with the Tory policy they had 13 years to stop council house sales for eg did they did they heck and what did they do with all the money they made from selling of even more of the housing stock

[fusion]

[BigMouth]

Cough Maggies war in the Falklands cough

Cough the Tories continuation of the war in Afghanistan cough

Cough the forthcoming war in Iran cough

Council houses that were sold, were done so at such discounts in the early days that there were diminishing returns. Houses would not have been built one for one.

I find not having a spare room very difficult. I would like to have the rellies up to visit, but it means giving up my bed for my mum and sleeping in the front room on the floor or on a sofa that is too short for me. Whereas when our leader Camoron has guests I would be surprised if they don't have a choice of spare rooms, probably en suite too. The same is probably true of the Millibean bloke too. I don't expect to live in the luxury that they do, but it would be really nice to be able to comfortably put up a visitor, who would be spending their money in this economy.
_________________
The Shetland Times - Somewhat like a newspaper, but without the crossword.

[Kavi Ugl]

The SIC Planning Dept did a project over the past 2-3 years which involved asking land owners/people to come forward and identify land which would be suitable/available for new housing so they could draw up a new housing map/plan.

Does anybody know if the project has ever been completed?.

I asked about this on a previous occassion when in speaking with the Planning Dept and all I got was vagueness and avoidence.....

[robert sandison]

The back of the staney hill would be ideal for house sites there are a lot of fairly flat parks up there and you could easily upgrade the old army road from hoofields to south main road.Its the obvious place.

[BigMouth]

It's a windy place to live up there, described to me as the wrong side of the hill
_________________
The Shetland Times - Somewhat like a newspaper, but without the crossword.

[robert sandison]

Another advantage of a new road connecting the south and north roads would be to ease road congestion in Lerwick.They are building new houses up there just now so it will only be a matter of time before they work there way all around the back of the hill.

[robert sandison]

I believe it is council policy to try and increase the pop of shetland by 3500 in the next decade so they are going to have to build an awful lot of houses somewhere and it seems everybody wants to live near da toon.

[Carlos]

[Grandma]

Not necessarily carlos the south end already has a double width road leading right up to the dam there and at the north end again a double width road leading to hoofeilds and the new house being built there a bus goes up around the way all the time.As for it being windy that could be a plus they could erect a few windmills to power the whole scheme you would have a small echo village up there.The greenies would love it maybe not though

[paulb]

Won't they have a very large site at the knab in 2015. with some of the better buildings making good flats.

[Carlos]

[robert sandison]

I think there should be enough room there to widen that road a bit if not you could make 1 or 2 house owners an offer they couldn't refuse an then you would have loads of room.I suppose they would be loads of opposition from the people up on nob hill though to getting some rough neighbors in social housing near them it will lower the value of their nice houses dont you know.

[Kavi Ugl]