Entitlement by proximity (Development in London with fancy swimming pool bridge).

[FnG]magnolia said:
I don't doubt it, just humble bragging for shiggles :)

e: out of interest, what kind of costs are we talking about here, noting that you certainly were not involved in the design/construction/installation/any other related matters to the swimming pool pictured in the OP, any resemblances are coincidental etc etc etc. Give us some numbers!
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I don't know about the pool specifically - but service charges for that development have crept up to over 6 grand a year, see article below - ergo in the hypothetical scenario I asked about included a 6k service charge

https://www.irishtimes.com/business...ring-charges-at-luxury-london-homes-1.4509830

I don't think people consider the sort of issues in the article above when they hear about "poor doors" etc... you'd perhaps need to plan bigger facilities too if it were known in advance that more flats were going to be entitled to use them which might well mean even higher service charges.

And the thing with London is that the private residents aren't necessarily massively wealthy (some are, others might have just bought a studio or small one-bedroom flat in the development etc..) and indeed some of the social housing (in particular the shared ownership residents) aren't necessarily all "poor" either, for example:

https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...s-battersea-london-luxury-housing-development

For Iqbal to reach his two-bed flat – valued at £800,000, of which he owns a quarter and pays rent on the rest – he must walk past the grand, hotel-style main entrance to the complex, flanked by supercars with personalised number plates
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I don't think someone who can afford to rent an £800k flat is "poor" necessarily. He seems to want to cherry-pick, pay a fee to allow for access to the pool & gym, not sure how feasible that would be given that the management company he is under is presumably a social housing firm so it wouldn't be an optional thing with them, it would be an arrangement with a management company that perhaps has nothing to do with his block and may not want to just allow a "cake and eat it" approach given the other considerable costs.

Of course, a social housing block isn't just shared ownership, locking people into a super high maintenance fee isn't really feasible for "affordable" housing (and probably a non-starter when it comes to some people on housing benefit paying social rents etc..) and having one class of residents who *have* to cough up the management fee vs some other class of residents who have a free option on whether they want to pay an additional management fee or whether they want to sack it off is a potential nightmare.

Say the roof needs some urgent repairs, inc the pool etc.. they've exhausted the reserve fund so all owners now face an additional one-off charge - you don't just get to opt-out of that stuff when you own a place, it's not workable to have some subset of people who can choose to pay/not pay and dodge potentially big bills - "ah I don't fancy paying for the major works so I'l duck out this year but once you've all completed the renovations I want the right to pay a small fee for access again".

I suspect that a fair few objections in general to this sort of thing are simply proximity-based - just being in the same building or within the same development provides for an emotive reaction whereas if the social housing requirements were fulfilled by building a block elsewhere then this sort of stuff becomes much less controversial... I doubt there would be much fuss on Twitter if the story was some bloke in social housing on another development built at the same time around the corner doesn't have access.
 
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Proximity is irrelevant it's down to whether they are paying for it or not.

To make it less evocative think of it terms of office blocks, you have big buildings shared by multiple companies but they don't always share the same facilities and they don't always pay the same rent. Or maybe a bit closer to this situation, take hotels. You pay for an Executive room and you get access to the Executive lounge, spa and whatever. You pay for a basic room and you don't.
 
HangTime said:
Proximity is irrelevant it's down to whether they are paying for it or not.
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I agree that is what should be the case however it probably is relevant to why some people get emotive about this stuff.

Having a separate entrance is perfectly understandable given that social housing companies perhaps won't want to be liable for a posh lobby and concierge etc... but the idea of the resulting "poor door" when both private and social housing are in the same block is rather more emotive than if they're in separate blocks and it's simply noted that the separate private block has a posh lobby and concierge.
 
I still don't really see the issue, just because people live in the same building doesn't mean they have the same rights, they will all have separate leasehold/rental arrangements presumably. I just don't see why there is any difference between being in the same building or two miles away, like I said if I go to a hotel and don't pay for optional breakfast served in the same building I don't write to the Daily Mail and say what a disgrace it was how I wasn't allowed a seat at the table.

Cough up or shut up, simple as that I say.
 
weringo said:
Good job with the trolling so far (you had me), but you went too far with this one
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I don't mean the total charge, you know it will be itemised right?

communal lighting 0.10 pence.
Cleaning of stairways 0.20 pence
maintenance of lift 0.50 pence etc

When you Divide the total costs between everyone who lives there it's not a lot per apartment.

one could argue why should someone who never uses the lift pay for it?
 
arknor said:
one could argue why should someone who never uses the lift pay for it?
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Same reason people on the ground floor still have to chip in to say repair the roof. It’s a communal charge and if the building is required to have a lift then those charges are shared by the people in that block/section.

However someone in another block doesn’t need to pay, for example in my development the block I’m in isn’t particularly tall and doesn’t need lifts so that’s one less thing we need worry about. I’m not liable for the lifts in some other block as they’re under a different management company. Likewise there are some social housing blocks around the corner and they don’t have lifts AFAIK and also won’t be liable for the costs of lifts in the blocks that have them or indeed other stuff like automatic gates to underground car parks etc...

All the units on the development are however liable to pay a separate service charge for the overall development too, that covers the gardeners and security but individual blocks are run separately and have separate AGMs. If some block voted to build a pool on the roof or something and they paid for it then I don’t see why anyone else gets to access it simply because we live in a neighbouring block.
 
A very cool development, dread to think about the upkeep costs though...

I do think more elevated walk ways would be a good thing in densely populated cities though, nobody likes spending their whole life going up and down a bunch of lifts.
 
dowie said:
I agree that is what should be the case however it probably is relevant to why some people get emotive about this stuff.

Having a separate entrance is perfectly understandable given that social housing companies perhaps won't want to be liable for a posh lobby and concierge etc... but the idea of the resulting "poor door" when both private and social housing are in the same block is rather more emotive than if they're in separate blocks and it's simply noted that the separate private block has a posh lobby and concierge.
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I think that 'emotive' is the problem. Also the phrase 'poor door', since it's intended solely to be emotive. It's rarely if ever poor people using it, anyway. It's usually a matter of rich people complaining that they aren't getting the same luxuries and status symbols (which they're not paying for) as richer people (who are paying for them). Cry me a river.

If I lived in a nice development at a lower than usual cost because of social housing rules, I'd consider that a decent deal in and of itself and wouldn't complain about not using a fancy entrance/swimming pool/etc that I wasn't paying for.

Unless we go full communist and somehow make it work(*), there will be a variation in wealth. I think it's currently too large a variation, but I don't think the problem is that people living in £800K flats don't get the same luxuries as people living in £3M flats who pay a lot per year on top for those extra luxuries.




* I think that's impossible. I like the idea of communism, but I think it's not a viable system unless everyone becomes an incorruptible saint happy to work for the common good. In practice, it's almost as bad as unfettered capitalism.
 
Interesting video on its construction https://interestingengineering.com/worlds-first-floating-pool-links-two-buildings-up-in-the-air

otherwise reffed twitter article , suggests that as normal developer profits were prioritized above lower price accomodation proportion, for those key workers the people in the other 'half' will need to care for them in hospital, clean -- but executed under boris leadership, like the garden bridge. ... HS2
.... reminded me of the dystopian high rise movie with horse on roof - with the great cover version of Abbas SOS
 
This gives me flashbacks to the time i lived in one block of flats with no lifts yet still chipped in(Via the service charge) for the lifts for the flats on the other side of the road.

Luckily, 12 years later it doesn't bother me anymore.... :o
 
jsmoke said:
It's crazy how people can live so close and populated and be so divided. Social class Britain. It's an elitist world.
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Same in most other countries too from east to west! I was shooting a job in Pakistan some years ago and it was common to see local wealthy houses build of heavy foundations, large walls and expansive land whilst a poor family lived in an actual tin shack right next door to them. What I did notice though was that we in the west make a bigger deal of the divide whereas over there people just get on with their lives.
 
How do Service Charges work in blocks such as these? Am I correct in thinking for the social housing side this would mostly be absorbed/subsidised by the Housing Association (thus partially wrapped up into the overall "rental" cost), whereas the privately owned side would clearly have two costs (the mortgage (if they have one), and the separate service charge (that presumably would be more subject to price increases as per any contract in place).

I'm assuming the housing association would also have no appetite in being held responsible for a higher service charge for any non-essential parts of the building (and thus can keep the costs they pass on to their tenants at a lower rate), on the basis the aim of the housing association is to provide affordable housing that meets acceptable living standards (and clearly access to a Gym, Pool, Cinema etc. falls well outside of this scope).

I'd also assume the Council Tax rates are a fair bit lower for the Housing Association apartments as well on the basis their worth would be less and hence fall into a lower rate band?

My opinion is that whilst it's a bit in the face of the housing association tenants, the principal is that if you've not paid for access to the additional services, you can't use them, like everything in daily life. If I lived in there I can't say it would bother me if I'm paying say, for example, £1000 month rent (I might be a way off here) with the service charge also wrapped up in this, vs a private owner who might have a £2500 month mortgage and £500 month service charge, so massively different in cost.

I think the mix though is unavoidable in areas where land values are so high and there is a need for persons of different economic means to live in the area for work purposes (fact of life, especially in London that on the same street there will be a person earning millions a year and ten yards away there will be somebody on minimum wage in a service role - no disrespect to either person but in a capitalist society it's just the way it works), and I'd agree it's better for everyone on balance to have accomodation in a decent building that will be well looked after, vs having a high concentration of slum housing in one area where crime would then have a higher propensity to occur due to the hive effect.
 
I think the premise of the question is flawed.

Should someone be entitled to something they haven't paid for or that someone else is subsidising? More than likely, the answer would be no.

But then ask the same person if they agree with the 2013 film Elysium where you have a 2 tier society, one of which is not entitled to any form of healthcare, whilst the other is living in luxury. I'm pretty sure everyone (with an ounce of empathy) would say that is not right.

Rather than focus on specific scenarios, the question should be why do we have such disparity of wealth? And why is that rich poor divide getting bigger? Its become even more apparently during the last 18m where a small minority have disproportionately gained at the expense of everyone else. Govts and society as a whole should be putting policies in place to narrow the gap, not widen it.
 
dowie said:
It's not about generalising for all but rather the risk - if you have say 150 social housing tenants then yes there is a higher risk there, especially if some of the tendencies are simply housing association people with their rent covered. The majority might be lovely neighbours but the obvious risk is obvious.

Yes bankers can do coke etc.. but if you've got some proper smackheads who are in social housing because they can't hold down a job then you've potentially got people who might be up at 4am etc.. don't really care about their surroundings/communal areas etc.. as they don't own the flat.

You have a higher chance of social issues, petty theft etc.. It's not so much that given someone lives in social housing they're definitely going to be a problem it is more that given someone is a complete **** up who commits crime and/or can't hold down a job then there is a very good chance they'll require social housing and given a large pool of social housing there is a good chance you'll have at least a few complete **** ups present.

That isn't snobbery it's just the reality of life in council estates and housing association blocks across the country.
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I think that I can see where you’re coming from, and as someone whose early years were spent on various Council estates in East London, until I worked my nuts off to get a deposit on a house, I've witnessed enough stuff happening on them to tend to agree with you, but I don’t imagine that either of our opinions will go down well with the cognoscenti.


Ayahuasca said:
I look forward to Labour including this topic in their next manifesto.
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And I’m looking forward to putting my X in any box other than Labour, as I’ve done anytime that I’ve voted.
 
KiNgPiN83 said:
This gives me flashbacks to the time i lived in one block of flats with no lifts yet still chipped in(Via the service charge) for the lifts for the flats on the other side of the road.

Luckily, 12 years later it doesn't bother me anymore.... :o
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This just reminded my service charge includes something about the upkeep of 'playparks', I don't even know where this playpark is!
 
fezster said:
I think the premise of the question is flawed.

Should someone be entitled to something they haven't paid for or that someone else is subsidising? More than likely, the answer would be no.

But then ask the same person if they agree with the 2013 film Elysium where you have a 2 tier society, one of which is not entitled to any form of healthcare, whilst the other is living in luxury. I'm pretty sure everyone (with an ounce of empathy) would say that is not right.

Rather than focus on specific scenarios, the question should be why do we have such disparity of wealth? And why is that rich poor divide getting bigger? Its become even more apparently during the last 18m where a small minority have disproportionately gained at the expense of everyone else. Govts and society as a whole should be putting policies in place to narrow the gap, not widen it.
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Are you referring to the service workers who received furlough and sought extra employment, ergo receiving 180% of a salary?
 
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