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Council to take on empty and substandard private homes in Sunderland in new rental scheme.

Ian Spoors: All for improving run down properties and long time empty but didn't the council sell off a lot of good housing in the late or early nineties to Gentoo.

Todd Kris: I would start with Gentoo first!

Rosalind Grant: Good idea to renovate these houses and stop building new private homes on every piece of rural land they can get their hands on. It affects animals and drainage in the rural areas and causes more traffic and anti social problems. Hope needy people get the chance if the renovated houses.

Estelle Fenwick: About time! When the council houses were sold off in their thousands the Council failed to build more decent houses to rent. Not everyone can get on the property ladder due to stumping up huge deposits. I sincerely hope the council carries on doing up properties to rent.

Keith Leckenby: Gentoo have taken council houses rebuilt then and sold them for probably 10 times

what they paid.

David Spoor: The reason why the council sold their housing stock was in order to update the houses to meet the then ‘decent homes standards.’ The council was not allowed to borrow money to achieve this. The only way the government of the day would allow this to happen was for the houses to be part of a separate housing association. The vast amount of any money received from sales of social housing is kept by the government!

Margo Lax: There are empty properties all over the city. Most of them bought to let and left to run down. They are so bad they can’t be sold or rented.

Jim Ward: As usual Sunderland council is about 20 years behind the times other councils around UK have been doing it for years.

Susan Ophield: Hope the homeless are being rehomed first.

Jean Atkinson: l could never understand why they sold those houses the idea was they were people who couldn't afford to buy.