Reply To: Is it time Right to Buy was stopped

[kath]

I tend to vote Tory, but honest I have always thought Right to buy a really bad thing, I mean really bad.

Its quite odd is Social Housing, back in the late 40s early 50s people were often proud to live in it, but since then there has often been a stigma attached.

I’ve never voted Tory, but I think social housing as aspiration was damaged when Labour prioritised housing by need in the 70s. Instead of a waiting list of (cliché alert) hard working families, the most troubled and disadvantaged were moved in. This created a lot of the stigma. There was probably also a problem with building quality, either due to corruption or low cost.

I think a right to buy at somewhere close to market price is a good thing, but massive discounts without constraints, and preventing rebuilding programs were definitely damaging.

I think the shift from rates to council tax has actually been more damaging. Shifting some of this burden back from the occupants to the land owners (neutral in the case of an owner occupier) would redress the balance between first time buyers and landlords, would increase the costs of land banking and would remove some of the incentive for leasehold stitch-ups.