Council with Wales’ highest debt per-head says housing stock responsible

So many of the council tax payers in Wrexham county who own their own properties outright or who are buying and paying mortgages, don’t only have to pay their fair share through their council tax, they have to subsidise the rents of those people living in Council owned properties and also pay to upgrade council owned properties whilst at the same time, not being able to afford to upgrade their own properties.

Personally, I'm proud of Wrexham for hanging on to their council housing stock. Swansea went a different way. They genuinely did have to pull down a lot of old houses that were unfit, during that period when councils were not allowed to build so the job had to be done by "Housing Associations". However, there were other places where existing council housing was taken from the hands of Swansea City Council and put into the control of Housing Associations. Of course the new build HA houses might have been shiny and new but they were slightly larger than bread-boxes, the walls were paper-thin, and the windows were so small that one sun beam had to get out of the way if it was going to let in a second sun beam but poor people were told to be grateful that they were getting something shiny and new..... regardless of the total lack of quality of life it provided - bedrooms so small that, if you could get a bed in, you couldn't also have a wardrobe....or close the door! A living room so small that you could only fit a two seater sofa and a beanbag that everyone has to climb over to get to the kitchen.... Still, this is "poor people" housing so you take what you can get and say thank you, don't you? Except for the fact that, considering that it's supposed to be social housing, the rent is three times higher than the rent they were paying on the council house that stood on a considerably larger amount of the same area! It's the same with all of the places that are now Housing Associations, new build or original council stock. The rents rocket. Also, they go up each year by considerably more than ever happened before, with these Associations claiming various "expenses" from administrative costs, to the difficult economy, to the price of oil.....and despite the financial increases they feel entitled to charge, they are far less effective at getting anything fixed that the council were, and in some cases people feel like they are shouting into the void because they have no sense that there is accountability, a higher authority they could call upon that would "get things done" the way they could with the council. As with all privately run ventures, they have to turn a profit. They simply, mathematically cannot do what the council could do without charging more money. Either they are taking this money from people earning minimum wage, who simply cannot afford to be bled dry to put money in the CEOs pocket......or they are taking this extra money from someone who is on housing benefit. In other words, they are making their profits off the backs of taxpayers. If all of these houses were council owned then the rents would have stayed reasonable, meaning some of our elderly wouldn't be choosing between heating and eating and mother's wouldn't be going hungry to make sure their kids were fed. Also, far less of our taxes would be paid out in housing benefit to subsidise private landlords and the owners of Housing ncilAssociations. Some of these are allegedly "not-for-profit" but if you honestly believe that they're doing out of the good of their hearts and not making money then I've got a beautiful new unicorn you might be interested in buying! Councils built decent sized houses of good quality (apart from a certain amount of post-war, emergency housing that nobody can blame them for shoving up as quickly as they could) and ordinary people had homes. They weren't ashamed of being renters. People weren't so obsessed with "getting on the property ladder" and if you really did want to buy then you expected to take years of your adult life to save up for a proper deposit so you wouldn't be landed with an unaffordable debt. Suddenly, in the 80s the Thatcherite attitude was that if you didn't buy your home you were failing at life and renting was shameful. It created a massive housing bubble, drove thousands upon thousands of people into debt and then their homes were repossessed by the banks, they were thrown on the streets, the houses were bought for cash for a fraction of the value by wealthy people who then rented them back to all the newly homeless people at twice the price. The Tories STILL brag about creating the greatest numbers of "home ownership". They don't tell the truth about the numbers - how quickly many people lost their house and how much of the "ownership" swiftly passed into the hands of their rich buddies (as they knew it would). They are proud of destroying the council housing system. They are proud of destroying a system that, over time, actually saved the taxpayers huge amounts of money in a variety of ways. Well done Wrexham for standing up for the system and ignore whatever people say about the article about your "debt". You understand the concept of council spending and that article was designed to be misleading - it was about creating outrage and condemnation when you should have received praise and commendations!