Disabled bungalows

All you can do is bid on them when they are listed 

Just because you think there are empty bungalows they may need repairs etc 

Bungalows are always in demand I waited over a year to get mine and I was in a house I couldn't get in or out of or get upstairs I had to sleep in lounge and use a commode to toilet 

My area is the same with empty properties. I have heard that although they are vacant there are no trades people to repair them because they pay such low salaries. 

With the council you are always going to have to wait, you have to remember other people on the list have waited longer so priority will go to them, your turn will come up you just have to be patient

Council tenants have the best tenancies.  They are for life, not always in fear of homelessness like private tenants. They also pay subsidised rents,however rich they are (the deputy of the rail strike union gets £100,000, but pays £150 a week for his house for life with right to buy at a fraction of the value if ever he chooses). 

 Private tenants typically pay nearly that much for a single room   in someone else's flat,.. For a one bed flat, in London, private rent would be £1,200 and over 
   
Paying such low rents for council houses means the rents are not enough to pay for repairs
(A situation not improved by the council having an obligation to house a troublesome 'problematic' minority people who, either because of mental health or drugs or alcohol, or just because they can, smash things up and/or can be filthy and/or anti-social beyond belief, but councils cannot remove them, or choose not to try because of the court costs, staff time, and uncertainty  )

Councils also have the obligation to wait wait and wait until they do have enough money to bring an empty property up to a certain legal standard. (It is startling to read how some council tenants complain about their home- for- life- at- a- quarter- or- less- of- the- viable- rent, because of some shortcomings about the standard of decoration, or a need for a new worktop or some such) 

Melanie Phillips in yesterday's Times explained that the population is rising faster and faster, nearing a million  a year, mainly with work and study visas and all the extra visas for various relatives of all the people already here, doing that  work or being a student. As well as the enormous and growing numbers of visas and relatives' visas, there are growing numbers of illegal entrants, by various means.  On the channel crossing alone, an extra one and a half thousand in a day.

There is nowhere to live. No fuel, food and water for endless population growth. All public services are exhausted, spectacularly the health and social services.  But there simply is no spare housing, council or private. 

Naturally the proposal to tweak Building Regulations to ensure all newbuild is suited to disabled living was thrown out. The sad thing is, the extra cost per unit is astonishingly small, if anticipated from pre-construction stage, and with economies of scale. Small or not, developers wanted not a penny less in profit. Somehow, the 'public consultation' papers had an Equality Impact Assessment* stating it does no harm to the 'equality protected group' of disabled people, if they have nowhere at all to live, in fact, the E.I.A declared, it is a "positive benefit" for disabled people to be homeless. (!)


*[Raising accessibility standards for new homes, government website, public consultations,8/9/2020.   It isn't an easy read, but it is a public document. To summarise, the suggestion was "Should we make virtually all newbuild disabled livable, because U.K, housing stock is about the worst in the developed world for disability?" Option Two, "Should we make at least a proportion of new housing suited for disabled people to live?" Or, option Three "Shall we make not one single unit of newbuild which disabled people could live in? The E.I.A. stated All options, including that third "Let's have no housing for disabled people" was equally good, with no drawbacks to any equalities group, and that furthermore Every Option represented "A positive benefit" to all 'equalities protected groups".]

Shelter and Generation Rent purport to lobby for all tenants, but they want to do things which put landlords off providing homes at all. They want to make it impossible to charge realistic rents, and impossible to get rid of 'difficult' tenants without court proceedings which could cost more than the flat is worth and take years, dragged out deliberately by non-rent paying bad tenants who are wrecking the property. The purported 'spokesmen' for private tenants have also demanded high standards including top insulation must be provided by landlords, but with no grant or loan.

The final unthought-through, unrepresentative demand excluded disabled people from consultation or consideration (as always) 

It was that all tenants should be allowed to keep pets. Nobody asked wheelchair users and blind people or people with allergies or people easily knocked down or people who dislike living next to a stench like a sewer, or urine dripping through the ceiling, or entrances and hallways piled with dog mess,  and/or no sleep day and night because of barking coming from the nearby flat of someone who neglects a pet.(All reported experiences of ordinary people living in flats)  Government has agreed to everything.

Recently, nobody knows why, the Government also changed tax rules, so landlords cannot fully offset their buy-to-let mortgage, and since then, inflation has meant these non-offset mortgage payments have shot up. They will be bankrupt if they do not switch to letting for holidays only, or else to students only, or else just sell up;

So, perhaps the whole housing situation in this country needs re-thinking.

Biblioklept said:

Sorry I should have included that!! Happy you have one @luchia There are still some instances where people get lifetime secure but it's not the standard now. 

Just spoken to housing officer and they said anyone with an existing secure tenancy will be automatically granted the same when moving(unless they have debt or an offence against their account) any new tenants will be placed on a limited tenancy, might work different for each council but here you guaranteed a secure tenancy if you already have one 

Times has a  paywall.  It is a rare person who has never heard of world population explosion. And who has not noticed Climate Emergency. Even more rare, presumably, are people unaware that all resources are finite.
It makes no difference if the extra population are from existing populations breeding, or suddenly discovering a hobby of cloning themselves,  or millions of Martians invading earth and needing human type of food water shelter and fuel. Extra numbers mean over-demand and under-supply. It isn't necessary to be a Martian-hater. Or a clone-hater.  Nor to be a baby-hater.  All that is necessary is to respect mathematical logic.