Housing assistants??

Should you have a right to know the location of affordable/social housing nearby?

• I fully appreciate in advance that this might be something of a controversial question. Here in the UK it could elicit a response aligning the question to a snobbish position, but it's worth asking anyway. At the moment, I'm ensconsed in the process of buying a house and conducting my due diligence. And - having found one - I'm checking out the local area. Where I'm buying is a relatively new-build development, 4 years old. In the UK, it's a legal requirement that any new development must contain a portion of 'social' or 'affordable' housing. Sometimes this is up to around 40%, but it can mean different things. I really want to know where the affordable/social housing is on the development that I'm moving to, but I'm hitting a brick wall when I try to find it out. The original developers no longer have the site plans showing the locations of the social/affordable housing plots. The properties have been passed over to the ownership and management of an affordable/social housing association. But they won't tell me where their properties are, due to 'confidentiality' and 'data protection'. I can sort of understand their position. But underneath this, I feel really uneasy that as a buyer spending a lot of money on one of life's biggest purchases, I'm being denied access to important information that might influence my decision. Of course, social housing on its own means very little. But, in a minority of cases, social housing does carry negative connotations and could put people off. Having reviewed extensively the crime data for the area I'm thinking of moving to, I can see a few pockets in the neighbourhood which has significantly higher-than-average rates of Anti-social Behavior and other Disorder crimes. I really want to know why this is - and whether it might in some small part be linked to the location of affordable or social housing. Yet, I can't get this information from anyone. Hence my question: should someone buying a property have a right to know the location of any social or affordable housing developments nearby? This question might be further extended to: should a buyer have a right to know who their neighbours might be?

• Answer:

  Only if you plan on buying it.