From the Housing section in the manifesto of one of the old failed parties:
Britain’s housing market has been stuck in a vicious spiral of boom and bust. Under Labour, fewer homes have been built, in the wrong places and of the wrong kind. Home ownership is now falling and first-time buyers are at a record low.
In the 1980s, the Conservative Right to Buy scheme created the opportunity for millions of families to get onto the housing ladder, and transformed housing estates by establishing mixed communities...
They then outline a long list of policies, most of which will tend to drive house prices even higher.
And the council house sell-off was an epic fail from the point of view of the taxpayer, and we're still paying for that mistake - a lot of those ex-council houses are now being let back to the local council, or being let 'privately' and the taxpayer is footing the bill for the Housing Benefit. I wouldn't go boasting about that one.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
This all sounds familiar...
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7 comments:
Don't agree. The council house sales were one of the Thatcher government's greatest achievements. They broke up the council house ghettoes and weakened Britain's class system. They were only a failure if you look purely at the financial cost of it - and there are other important considerations as well.
Which shows you have a long way to go, Mark, to convince people about it.
AC, OK, if it was such a great idea to more-or-less give away council houses, why not go the whole hog and give the rest away as well to whomever is living there at present? What overall benefit would there be from that?
There is absolutely no statistic to suggest that house prices went down as a result of it - unlike freeing up planning restrictions (on which we are broadly agreed).
AFAICS, getting best possible value for the income tax payer is priority number one; getting house prices down is number two; LVT would achieve both at a stroke.
JH, I know, this particular bit of brainwashing is deeply engrained. How would Tories like AC feel if Labour had done it? Aren't the Tories always complaining about Brown flogging off the gold for a low price?
They weren't quite given away...but certainly, I would be quite happy to sell them at a discount to present occupiers if they want to buy, and also I would be glad to see the right to buy extended to housing association tenants (a sad omission from the Tory manifesto).
AC, so you're saying (a) anybody lucky enough to make into social housing as of today's cut off date gets a massive tax-free, taxpayer subsidised bung, and four million people on council house waiting lists can f*** off?
Or do you (b) follow this through to the ultimate conclusion that councils should pay for more houses to be built and then hand them out to whomever is top of the waiting list?
Only if you are brave enough to recommend (b) (which has its merits) should you recommend (a). Thatcher would rather have stuck a fork in her own eye than carry out (b). But she won elections on the back of (a). Therefore, we can only conclude that she was a rabid Home-Owner-Ist, second only to the present government (or the next Tory one).
Thatcher was a quite nuanced Home-Ownerist:she said you could n't expand the money supply because it would only inflate house prices.Her answer: sado-monetarism where nobody got any cheap credit including entrepreneurs and people who provide goods and services.Very von Miserabilist.Right answer: splash cheap credit about with generous disregard for the moral qualities of the recipients (Thatcher thought people with mortgages were morally elevated by that fact alone),and stop money going into property with a tax (LVT is best;have n't you heard?).Any other cheap money heading for the popular hedges,treat likewise.
I can't see anything wrong with "right to buy", all private tenants have a "right to buy" - offer the landlord enough money and he'll sell to you - so why shouldn't council tenants be able to do the same? (Of course, I know it doesn't mean that, it means "right to buy at a discount".)
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