Good. The whole point of council housing is that it can be used at the discretion of the council. Letting people buy their homes means they’ll end up being rented by landlords, removing them from the available stock.
Good. We’ve lost too much council/social housing to right-to-buy and they haven’t been replaced at all.
IMO it should be extended to all current properties that aren’t already in the process. Council loses a house *and* not even at the full price to enable them to replace it. What an awful deal.
Another point that is often missed here is that if the home is a flat, the tenant ends having a leasehold and a leasehold from a council is very often an absolute disaster for the tenant and also a pain for the council. Having all your tenants with the same form of tenure makes management very much easier.
Neither should they. Did no one learn from Thatcher.
I often wonder why can’t the government undercut and generate money?
There is a massive industry of landlords charging exorbitant fees and making a killing. Can the government seriously not do the same but charging reasonable rates?
The private healthcare can seemingly make a fortune, pay their staff better while also offering better services. Yet the government can’t?
Why are governments, specifically ours so bad at recouping costs and trying to close the gap with private companies? I am not against private companies and capitalism but why can’t the government play on that field?
[removed]
As if most tenants can actually afford to buy even if they wanted to.
Good. Right to buy was a horrible idea for the country.
They’ll sell them to some guy living in Spain and have it ran by a “housing association” instead.
Good, it’s there to help .. not give people a lifelong advantage that cost councils millions, the system has been abused by people that don’t care and run by people that arnt affected by it’s failings
The whole thing needs reforming
This is good news. Until we can catch up with housing targets we should be suspending RTB. It needs reforming as a system anyway, we shouldn’t be removing a property from the social stock without replacing it.
Good. This is probably one of the single biggest factors in our current housing shortage and the vast outstripping of supply for people needing them. Would have been fine if rebuilt on a 1:1 but that was never going to happen and would have been vastly more expensive to replace. So in effect heavily subsiding people to buy cheap housing. Disasterous.
I don’t think right to buy is a bad thing, it’s just a bad policy.
If it had been implemented where the money that the council gained from selling their stock to their long term tenants as they became more financially well off was all used to build new homes, the effect would have been that: * council stock would not have been reduced, maintaining social housing levels, and * home ownership would have increased, which is something that the British population values, and * overall housing stock would have kept pace with demand, which would have prevented the massive rise in relative rent costs we see now
But it’s ok for Rayner and her husband to buy TWO council houses and rent one to her brother??
And avoid the capital gains when she sold it for a profit?
And incidentally, how exactly were 2 of Unison’s most senior members even eligible in the first place?
It never fails to amaze me the gymnastics that politicians will perform to do what they want over and above their supposed principles. Especially socialist ones. If Right To Buy had been brought in by Atlee or Wilson, no-one would ever shut up about how it was a great thing, and a policy for the people.
Because it was Thatcher however, it’s the source of all evil.
A policy so supposedly bad, that Corbyn and McDonnell wanted to extend it to the private sector. That alone should tell you everything about Labour and what drives their process. A policy they hate that they want to extend! 😅
The comments here are a further insight into the average Labour idealogue. A Tory ‘scheme’ to create more homeowners who vote for them apparently.
How dare the plebs become homeowners, independent, and able to make their own fucking decisions? No, no, no. Why would we want people invested in their own communities when we can create crime ridden, concrete monstrosities inhabited by lifestyle benefits claimants dependent on the bureaucratic state.
Great strategy.
At least in 5 years time when we STILL have a housing shortage, people will at last be forced to stop blaming it on this policy, and…. shhhh….. might actually start to talk about a population growth rate that trebles over 20 odd years and adds 10 million to the population, maybe…. and I’m just spitballing….. just maybe, having a tiny bit of something to do with it?
Not to mention welfare policies that utterly destroy human potential.
All I can say is ‘thank you Maggie’, for enabling my family to pull themselves out of the Labour manufactured shit.
The problem is the Tories will change the rules back – and people will vote for that.
RTB was one if the key dynamics behind Thatchers win. The country went to hell in a handcart with officially over 3m on the dole but arguably more like 5m, and manufacturing collapsed, but RTB flipped enough voters who were willing to sell the rest of us ou from Labour to Tory.
I have worked for councils and this would be huge for them.
The damage is already done of course, I don’t think people understand just how much of a setback Thatcher allowing right to buy was for local authorities. One LA I worked for had to set up a homebuilding company of their own to replenish their stock.
Good. Build reasonable council houses and decent apartments and don’t fucking sell them. Not a fan of labour but landlords are out of control.
It was all a con. Thatcher shifted the burden of maintaining the property away from the state and to the individual. Then, the state takes the asset from the individual to pay for their care when they are old.
In principle right to buy is fine, providing that 100% of the money goes to the council and the value is enough to cover replacement. In reality money went to the treasury and not the council, stock reduced and we were not building social housing meaning that the gap got worse.
Personally I’m fine with the government using it as a way of disposing housing property but it should be for older stock not newer
This is already happening. New council homes built in the authority I work for have the homes owned by a separate company and the council manage and maintain the homes. It’s functionally the same but the homes don’t directly belong to the council and can’t be bought under right to buy.
Right to buy was a good policy, the issue was that the government chose not to replace the social housing that they were selling off.
21 comments
Good. The whole point of council housing is that it can be used at the discretion of the council. Letting people buy their homes means they’ll end up being rented by landlords, removing them from the available stock.
Good. We’ve lost too much council/social housing to right-to-buy and they haven’t been replaced at all.
IMO it should be extended to all current properties that aren’t already in the process. Council loses a house *and* not even at the full price to enable them to replace it. What an awful deal.
Another point that is often missed here is that if the home is a flat, the tenant ends having a leasehold and a leasehold from a council is very often an absolute disaster for the tenant and also a pain for the council. Having all your tenants with the same form of tenure makes management very much easier.
Neither should they. Did no one learn from Thatcher.
I often wonder why can’t the government undercut and generate money?
There is a massive industry of landlords charging exorbitant fees and making a killing. Can the government seriously not do the same but charging reasonable rates?
The private healthcare can seemingly make a fortune, pay their staff better while also offering better services. Yet the government can’t?
Why are governments, specifically ours so bad at recouping costs and trying to close the gap with private companies? I am not against private companies and capitalism but why can’t the government play on that field?
[removed]
As if most tenants can actually afford to buy even if they wanted to.
Good. Right to buy was a horrible idea for the country.
They’ll sell them to some guy living in Spain and have it ran by a “housing association” instead.
Good, it’s there to help .. not give people a lifelong advantage that cost councils millions, the system has been abused by people that don’t care and run by people that arnt affected by it’s failings
The whole thing needs reforming
This is good news. Until we can catch up with housing targets we should be suspending RTB. It needs reforming as a system anyway, we shouldn’t be removing a property from the social stock without replacing it.
Good. This is probably one of the single biggest factors in our current housing shortage and the vast outstripping of supply for people needing them. Would have been fine if rebuilt on a 1:1 but that was never going to happen and would have been vastly more expensive to replace. So in effect heavily subsiding people to buy cheap housing. Disasterous.
I don’t think right to buy is a bad thing, it’s just a bad policy.
If it had been implemented where the money that the council gained from selling their stock to their long term tenants as they became more financially well off was all used to build new homes, the effect would have been that:
* council stock would not have been reduced, maintaining social housing levels, and
* home ownership would have increased, which is something that the British population values, and
* overall housing stock would have kept pace with demand, which would have prevented the massive rise in relative rent costs we see now
But it’s ok for Rayner and her husband to buy TWO council houses and rent one to her brother??
And avoid the capital gains when she sold it for a profit?
And incidentally, how exactly were 2 of Unison’s most senior members even eligible in the first place?
It never fails to amaze me the gymnastics that politicians will perform to do what they want over and above their supposed principles. Especially socialist ones. If Right To Buy had been brought in by Atlee or Wilson, no-one would ever shut up about how it was a great thing, and a policy for the people.
Because it was Thatcher however, it’s the source of all evil.
A policy so supposedly bad, that Corbyn and McDonnell wanted to extend it to the private sector. That alone should tell you everything about Labour and what drives their process. A policy they hate that they want to extend! 😅
The comments here are a further insight into the average Labour idealogue. A Tory ‘scheme’ to create more homeowners who vote for them apparently.
How dare the plebs become homeowners, independent, and able to make their own fucking decisions? No, no, no. Why would we want people invested in their own communities when we can create crime ridden, concrete monstrosities inhabited by lifestyle benefits claimants dependent on the bureaucratic state.
Great strategy.
At least in 5 years time when we STILL have a housing shortage, people will at last be forced to stop blaming it on this policy, and…. shhhh….. might actually start to talk about a population growth rate that trebles over 20 odd years and adds 10 million to the population, maybe…. and I’m just spitballing….. just maybe, having a tiny bit of something to do with it?
Not to mention welfare policies that utterly destroy human potential.
All I can say is ‘thank you Maggie’, for enabling my family to pull themselves out of the Labour manufactured shit.
The problem is the Tories will change the rules back – and people will vote for that.
RTB was one if the key dynamics behind Thatchers win. The country went to hell in a handcart with officially over 3m on the dole but arguably more like 5m, and manufacturing collapsed, but RTB flipped enough voters who were willing to sell the rest of us ou from Labour to Tory.
I have worked for councils and this would be huge for them.
The damage is already done of course, I don’t think people understand just how much of a setback Thatcher allowing right to buy was for local authorities. One LA I worked for had to set up a homebuilding company of their own to replenish their stock.
Good. Build reasonable council houses and decent apartments and don’t fucking sell them.
Not a fan of labour but landlords are out of control.
It was all a con. Thatcher shifted the burden of maintaining the property away from the state and to the individual. Then, the state takes the asset from the individual to pay for their care when they are old.
In principle right to buy is fine, providing that 100% of the money goes to the council and the value is enough to cover replacement. In reality money went to the treasury and not the council, stock reduced and we were not building social housing meaning that the gap got worse.
Personally I’m fine with the government using it as a way of disposing housing property but it should be for older stock not newer
This is already happening. New council homes built in the authority I work for have the homes owned by a separate company and the council manage and maintain the homes. It’s functionally the same but the homes don’t directly belong to the council and can’t be bought under right to buy.
Right to buy was a good policy, the issue was that the government chose not to replace the social housing that they were selling off.
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