A lot of good points, especially rent controls and the need to do something about BTL. But the problem we have in Wales is that building more and more houses isn’t the answer given the external demand, which in rural areas definitely exceeds the local. Until a mechanism can be found to limit the influx from England, driving down prices by building more is not an option.

The private sector cannot provide affordable rented housing – all that will happen is the HB/LHA budget will go through the roof. If you want to do away with social housing then you have to bring in rent controls and guarenteed legal rights for tenants far above what they are now. The only answer to this is a massive house building plan for a decade, at least treble the current planned rate. Creating that much housing brings down the price of houses and thus brings down the price of private rents. It’s availability of housing and mortgages that drives house prices and thus private rents. A shortage of either creates unsustainable prices/rents.

The German housing market – both rented and purchase, is a model we should adopt. If people could see the standard of houses you can rent in the German private sector for less than €400 a month they would be hanging BTL landlords from lamp posts over here alongside property speculators and estate agents.

Yes, I remember the old-style housing associations; worlds apart from their modern namesakes, which are now just publicly-funded monsters under the Third Sector umbrella. Thanks for reminding us about ‘affordable housing’, yet another subsidy.

Many people think that affordable housing is somehow reserved for locals; it’s not, it’s housing sold at just below market value. And in this area at least, the buyers always seem to come from outside Wales. But of course, because housing associations are not covered by the Freedom of Information Act it’s impossible to find out the mechanism that sees ‘affordable housing’ bought on a BTL mortgage, or used as a holiday home.

They are making a fortune from new “affordable housing”. Every time a builder lays out a site, he has to provide a proportion of affordable housing which means in effect gifting those plots to a housing association and then building the houses for them at a reduced cost. In effect this is another subsidy by the rest of us as it is in lieu of the old Development Land Tax that took a levy to the taxpayers from the builder instead.

I suppose my hostility to housing associations is that they are another reminder of Wales’ poverty, and how the Labour Party deals with it – by making Wales poorer through treating the effects of poverty rather than the causes. By which I mean, a more prosperous country would mean more people able to buy their homes, which would mean less public funding needed for social housing; but the pre-condition for that is a healthy economy, something Labour is incapable of delivering. Perhaps unwilling.

You say, “I sympathise with your argument for local lettings, but at the end if the day we mostly accept nominations from the local council, they own the waiting lists, they send us the people, we show them around and if they like the place they take it.” “We mostly . . . ” clearly suggests that you accept ‘nominations’ from other sources, so please tell us which.

My understanding on waiting lists is that they are shared between the council and social housing providers. People can apply to either to be put on a shared list, is this right?

You obviously don’t agree with my final paragraph, so be it. I just happen to think that there must be a better option than pouring vast amounts of public funding into bodies, very often run by Labour cronies, paying their executives bigger salaries than the First Minister, who are forever importing riff-raff to the detriment of Welsh communities. Organisations sitting on massive assets in the form of property portfolios, with guaranteed income from rents and sales, that should – if run properly on a commercial basis – have little need of those vast amounts of funding sucked from the limited resources of a very poor country.

I sympathise with your argument for local lettings, but at the end if the day we mostly accept nominations from the local council, they own the waiting lists, they send us the people, we show them around and if they like the place they take it.

There is a real housing shortage in Wales, we need to build new houses to meet this demand – the grants help us build more! The new houses we build are good quality homes with reasonably low running costs and affordable rents. Without the grants we wouldn’t be able to build so many, which would mean more people in b&bs.

We also refurbish our existing properties to a high standard, far higher than the private sector. Fuel poverty is a massive issue for the UK, but believe it or not, less so in social housing than in the private rented sector. Facts are if you live in social housing your house is likely to be more comfortable and warmer than if you live in the private rented sector.

We are regulated by Welsh Government, and overseen by a non executive board of directors and far from hiding the facts as you purport, i find the level of reporting to be pretty good. Bad Corporate governance is under the limelight of late – think Local Authorities like Carmarthenshire County Council, Pembs council, Anglesey, charities like Aweema, Mewn… None of which will be winning any awards for corporate governance any time soon. I think housing associations are doing ok!

Your concluding paragraph!! wtf?? Would you disband all H.A.s and put up the housing stock for auction? Who would by them? Rich English folk i suspect!!

Check out the accounts of just about every H.A. going in Wales, look at how much money is being invested to improve their housing stock. The bigger ones are pumping tens of millions every year into upgrading their existing stock to meet the Welsh Housing Quality Standard, while private sector landlords -who btw are exempt from this standard – wait for the other boot to drop which will compel them to improve the energy efficiency of their housing stock.

“… No discernible return…” Get a grip!

We know the answer, to do so in Wales would be shouted down as ‘racism’.

The reason NPT Homes doesn’t appear on my list is because they don’t get Social Housing Grant (SHG). Some of the groups that took over council stock do, some don’t. For example, in my area, Cartrefi Cymunedol Gwynedd doesn’t get SHG. The only pattern seems to be that these groups don’t initially apply / qualify for SHG but some appear on the list a few years after the takeover.