If expensive social housing was sold off where would the people who provide essential services to the public live?

[sandyRoe]

http://www.google.com...N0062841345395860973A

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[factor-fiction]

The same place as anyone else?

[factor-fiction]

The proposal refers to only the most expensive housing as I understand it.

[McMouse]

These expensive houses will only be sold off when they become vacant and the money raised spent on building new social houses.

[commoner]

Sandy please define..."the people who provide essential services to the public "

[sandyRoe]

Commoner, even in the richest areas there is a need for postmen, street cleaners, nurses, police officers, and shop assistants.
Are they supposed to live in townships outside the areas where they work and commute?

[naomi24]

//even in the richest areas there is a need for postmen, street cleaners, nurses, police officers, and shop assistants. //

It's a silly argument and you've answered your own question. Where do the people who provide those services to rich areas live now?

[sandyRoe]

I live in a fairly affluent area and have a neighbour who's a postman.
He inherited the house, though.

[jake-the-peg]

I'm suspicious about this proposal

It's all to do with the rather vague terminology used.

The imagery used seems to imply Councils with large 6 and 7 bedroom housing in Mayfair but we don't really seem to know where the dividing line might fall.

The suspicion is that that dividing line might be very low and almost any housing not in the poorest areas could be deemed "expensive" and sold off. In my own village I've seem rather nasty objecion campaigns to affordable housing projects where people just objected to the idea of sharing their community with less well off people.

Unless carefully controlled this sort of policy could be used as a tool by such people to "keep out the riff raff"

Sensible policy or tool for ghettoisation? - the devil's in the detail

[naomi24]

Jake, I think that's understandable. Why did you choose to buy property in a nice village rather than purchase, for example, a former council house on an inner city estate? I objected to proposals to build more social housing in my village. If I'd wanted to live on an estate, I'd have bought a house on an estate.

[flump1]

How did these councils come to own these properties in the first place? And yes, i believe they should be sold and all proceeds go towards new housing

[woofgang]

I would suggest that they got overtaken by the gentrification of an area flump. My late mother's council flat has rocketed in value (since she died) because the whole area has become more upmarket.

[commoner]

Sandy, my answer to your question "Are they supposed to live in townships outside the areas where they work and commute? "..my answer is yes! They should live where they can afford to live is my opinion.

[flump1]

Thanks for that woofgang, it was as I thought but some properties seem to be almost stately homes !!

[jno]

but commoner, can they also afford to commute? Or will they just work locally and leave hospitals in wealthy areas to be staffed by titled dowagers with time on their hands?

[jake-the-peg]

Well Naomi, we did look at some ex-council houses our previous house had been one - in fact we put an offer in on one.

We bought this one rather for emotional reasons as a period cottage with work to do appealed to us.

The village actually has mixed housing and we get on well with some of the people from the council housing - although regrettably some of our neighbours are more stand-offish.

I don't think your comments are portraying you in a very flattering light

[commoner]

lol ..love the idea of the titled dowager delivering the mail and picking up the Macdonalds rubbish thrown from car windows and worse...we're not talking about commuting 50 miles here...just a bike ride or short bus ride.....my local postie has a car and comes 10 miles to work...the bin men come in the bin lorry from the nearest council yard...let's all get real please......

[naomi24]

Jake, I don't do political correctness, I tell the truth, and I don't post opinions here in order to be seen in a flattering light. Additionally, I don't make excuses for choosing to live in a nice place - I don't want to live with the 'riff raff' as you put it, and I live in a nice place because I want to live in a nice place. And incidentally, I also get on well with all the people here who live in social housing. My mother in law is one of them.

[lcg]

ditto, naomi. if i wanted to live on a council estate, then i would. but i don't....and i pay through the nose for it. i like my house in it's nice, clean, quiet little street......and could think of nothing worse than living in the social dross that makes up my city's council estates.

[NOX]

what I find most hilarious is the idea that people on benefits = council houses and privately owned = decent people in jobs.
That's an offensive stereotype and exactly the sort of stereotype that this ill conceived idea will play to. Can a jobless welder living in a council maisonette have nothing in common with an accountant on the other side of the street- never heard such totally elitist bull sh1t in all my life- ghetto culture here we come after generations of trying to eradicate the social class system- and THEN you'll see crime and violence on an unparallelled proportion. This is madness.