Conservative Manifesto

jingl, I meant low-paid as in shop workers, day nursery staff and health care workers etc. Teachers are well-paid in comparison.

Exactly Grannytwice, affordable housing is for sale, housing association and council houses shouldn't be sold. If people save and can afford to buy, their ha/council home is needed for other people.

I also agree with Gtwice about Emily Thorberry buying property as an investment and to raise cash from the rents. The HA were selling it because it would raise a lot of cash for them. I have very mixed feelings about this, as a number of young/all aged people I know are investing in buy to rent to fund their pensions. Buy to rent has paid huge dividends over recent years, much better than any other investment so I understand why it's booming despite my mis givings.

That was in response to Ana's post. Quite a few posts back now.

My DD managed to buy her own (tiny) house, and pay off the mortgage. On a teacher's salary too. It can be done. And that's in the South-East.

I think "affordable" is a vague term - but it is not the same as "social housing" is it... The country needs housing for people who are paid low wages - and there are a lot of them. It also needs shared ownership housing so that young people who aspire to get on housing ladder and have a bit more income can start to get a mortgage and stake in a property. When they move on the housing association buys back from them I believe and then finds another shared owner. www.gov.uk/affordable-home-ownership-schemes/shared-ownership-schemes.
In the states they have another model of housing - similar in a way - the condominium in which you buy the internal space but do not own the building in an apartment block. The developer or landlord owns the structure and is responsible for it and a fee per year is paid for maintenance and any shared services (gardens, basement laundry, car parking space - whatever) Perhaps this could be another way forward in this country.
Instead of supporting social housing, shared ownership or new ways of doing things, the present government have been putting money into "help to buy".

On a slightly different tack - I assume that the hundreds of thousands of newer immigrants who keep London and the south east going on low wages (hotels, shops, restaurants, hospitals, office cleaning, construction sites etc) are living in heavily overcrowded accommodation that most UK nationals would not contemplate. Otherwise the economics of the boom-city do not add up do they?

Yes, that's reasonable GrannyTwice, as Cornwall's average income is probably similar to the area I live in. It's a pity such schemes aren't more widespread across the UK.

I think it was the cack-handed way she attempted to explain why she'd posted the photo that got her the sack.

Affordable housing is about it being affordable to buy. Social housing is to rent. I'm on holiday at the moment in Cornwall and have just seen a flyer for houses for sale, new build, reserved for people with local connections and £72000 will buy a 40% share. Obviously not everyone will be able to afford that, but it's an opportunity for some

And, of course, people have every right to disapprove of whatever they want. My point is that that same alowance wasn't made for Emily Thornberry who didn't actually say she disapproved. My interpretation of her tweet was that she was bemused by the flag and white van house, and possibly amused as well in a wry sort of way. Daft reason to make someone resign.

We had a thread about Emily Thornberry on here at the time. I seem to remember it got quite heated...

I don't remember who seemed to disapprove, rq. My comments aren't personal.

My theory is that Ed M was swept up in the Twitter storm. She may have made comments later (and perhaps she never had seen anything like it before. I haven't) but the storm arose from the picture encaptioned as I said which could be interpreted in quite other ways than how the easily enraged* Twitterverse did.

*this easily enraged Twitterverseis not all of it. I rarely see any of it. In fact I heard about the EM storm from elsewhere.

I did post on the red and white house thread - I forgot.
However, I didn't say whether I approved or disapproved!

People then read all sorts of stuff into that

By 'people' do you mean Ed Miliband who was reportedly furious and told her to resign?
If she made no comments why did he do that?

I thought she said that she 'had never seen anything like it'
She had led a very sheltered life then!

I mentioned ET but have not commented on the red and white house.

I will comment now - imo it looks a bit plain and should have a few stars added to it.
Or a few more stripes to make it a nice plaid.

The government needs to make builders release all the land which they are holding on to, along with the land bought up by supermarket chains now they are not going to build many of the proposed supermarkets.

ET did not make comments about that house with the England flags and a white van outside; all she did was tweet a picture of it encaptioned "a house in...."
People then read all sorts of stuff into that.

By contrast, it seems to be perfectly allright for gransnetters to make lots of comments about red and white painted stripes on a house in Kensington

I thought 'affordable housing' was the term used for 'social housing'.

It is here, anyway where builders of private estates have to include a certain proportion of 'affordable housing' as well.

But how many of those 'affordable' houses really are affordable to local young people, possibly on low wages? I know they aren't in my area - they'd have to cost well under £100,000 to be anywhere near it!

There is something to be said for both points of view. Council estates can turn into ghettos of lawlessness, making it hard on the decent residents.

I suppose the idea is that, if you own your own home you are more likely to feel you have a stake in your country. Because you own a tiny bit of it. There is a lot to be said for that idea, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the stock of social housing.

What is needed is more and more really affordable houses being built privately. I think the government is doing all it can to promote this by making developers include a certain number of affordable houses in their schemes as a condition of getting planning permission. That is the road first time buyers should start out on.

Also when HA choose to sell off their properties, they get the best market price for them which they can turn re-invest - no discounts.

I expect I am going to regret this but honestly, with regard to ET, she bought a property at an auction that a HA was selling off ( they do this sometimes). She could just have easily bought a house that a private individual was selling. I don't think it's relevant that it was HA. You might want to criticise her for being a buy to rent landlord ( and I would) but that's a different point. The issue re HA properties that some of us are against is forcing HA to sell their properties as this will only force more and more people into the private rented sector with little security and no rent regulation. It does nothing to address the really serious issue of affordable housing in this country or add to the housing stock. As for not wanting people to better themselves, whatever that means, having a decent home which you can afford with security of tenure seems to me like a good place from which to live a good life, with your children settled in a local school and the adults able to form links within the community. This is not on offer to families living in B and B or having to move around the private rented sector against their will.

When DS lived in London he bought an ex housing association flat, I was very impressed by the size of the rooms, as it was a first floor flat he also had a large balcony. I think he would have been happy there except for the fact that the family above him had five small boys and laminate flooring, imagine the noise. DS suggested to the tenants above that they purchase a soft close toilet seat as the kiddies were banging the seat down, nothing was ever done and the noise became unbearable. He moved out of London to the north east and bought a big detached house with the proceeds of the sale of the flat.
My maternal GPs had a house in a village which was way superior to the one we lived in, had three bathrooms when some were lucky to have one and it was local authority housing.

One of my DS got into a shared house (social housing) because he was on a very low salary. Everyone in the house was a 'key worker' doing an essential job in London but couldn't afford to rent at London prices. I believe he got the room through the organisation he worked for.