Shelter reveals that social rents are 60% cheaper than in the PRS

Just a pity Polly has spent her tenure at Shelter cheering on and demanding more of the Tory anti small PRS landlord policies that have made a bad situation worse until she came to this, somewhat obvious, conclusion.

Social housing get grants and free or cheap monies from govt and other bodies
Landlords have to pay high interest rates of 5-10% on finance and frankly legislation against landlords and over protects tenants.
If a good tenant pays rent and maintains property/tenancy in good manner then no issues
Most landlords have a good standard as mandatory for usual safety certs etc so tenants must respect the premises and not abuse it …
PSL exiting for that reason and fact is that bad tenants spoil for all other good tenants
The courts are shambles and take far too long … no wonder lots of councils going bankrupt …!!!

Social Housing is often a much lower standard than private sector housing. Taxes and regulations are more expensive for private landlords.
Shelter (who don’t provide shelter to anyone) should team up with the NRLA (if they haven’t already) and use some of their vast income to build houses to let at affordable rents. Or is it too difficult?

So, effectively, PRS tenants pay twice via income tax for their housing plus social housing. Always quite wrong. Social housing should not be subsidised, it just is a political football, if it was pure market forces `social housing` would be a misnomer.

“All political parties must commit to building genuinely affordable social homes – we need 90,000 a year over 10 years to end the housing emergency for good.”
What GREAT IDEA!
But where is the money to come from?
Councils and Housing Associations do not have the cash. Central Government debt is just in excess of GDP,
WE ARE FULLY BORROWED!!
Unless the private sector can be encouraged to invest there is little hope?
So what would you do to encourage private investment?

1 private landlords pay more in fees and interest
2 they are stating the cost to tenants, not the true cost to provide. So it’s funny money figures
3 the comparison is further apples Vs oranges because it makes no mention of quality of property or locations, which can affect rent vastly.

Shelter are willfully ignorant, deceptive or incompetent.
Their stats are a nonsense without context.

“Social housing enables people to live better lives…”; define ‘better’ and for whom?

We know social housing is to all intents and purposes publicly funded and social rents are subsidised by the tax payer.
Now spending more on new social stock requires increasing taxation to raise the money, or cutting public spending from elsewhere. How is that ‘better’ for the majority who are working and paying tax?
There’s a whole tranche of private landlords already catering to social tenants; endless regulations and red tape is atrophying their ability to operate.
Sell off all social housing to private landlords, cut the bureaucratic meddling and leave it to the PRS to deliver a much higher quality and more efficient housing offer than social tenants endure currently. And use the money raised to give the working masses a little rebate. That would be a smidge towards ‘better’!
And nope, I’m no social housing landlord, just an average Joe who knows the free market gets it right far more often than the government.

The charity says the difference is £828 per month, on average, and is calling on all political parties to build more affordable social homes.

The rental cost of a 3 bed semi-detached council house with substantial garden and offroad parking is just over £800 pcm where I live. Where I live the cost of renting a 3 bed semi detached house is £2,500-3,000 pcm in the PRS. The tenants live in the properties paying a subsidised rent. Then after 3-5 years they get the right to buy the house at a huge discount. One of my neighbours has just done this in the last couple of years; it is like winning the lottery. The difference is that with the lottery you do not *know* that you are going to win.

Social housing is not just cheaper, for most tenants it is entirely free, no rent or council tax – the rest of us have to pay this which is why rents are high.

Well my 89 year old Dad lives in a one bedroom over 55,s flat in Manchester and pays nearly £900 a month but that includes the electric heating.
Cheap is not a word I would use.
Again very much based in London and the South East
If Shelter want more social housing then get Involved and push which ever Government is in power.
Even less housing will be built this year