From The Daily Mail:
Millions of council tenants will be helped to take up the right to buy their homes from today as David Cameron revives one of Margaret Thatcher’s most popular policies. Discounts of up to £75,000 will be offered – four times the current deal on offer in London and treble the discount for residents in the rest of the country.
Home ownership for tenants of council and housing association properties has fallen in the past two decades as the discounts on offer fell and house prices surged. Labour failed to embrace the policy during its 13 years in power and started to reduce the value of the deals. But from this month, two million tenants will benefit from a bigger discount.
Mr Cameron will today say he wants to help families who "play by the rules.... I want many more people to achieve the dream of home ownership. In the 1980s, Right to Buy helped millions of people living in council housing achieve their aspiration of owning their own home. This vital rung on the property ladder was all but removed. This Government is now putting it back by dramatically increasing the discount rates."
Banks will be rejoicing, because instead of that nice steady stream of rental income going to the council, it'll be going into their coffers as mortgage interest, of course, that's a bonus. Once the required period for occupation is up, local letting agents will be happy to have more homes to let out (few people buy them to live in); the lucky purchasers will be rejoicing because, because once they've 'moved up the ladder' they can get tenants in who will be getting their rents paid by the council (Housing Benefit) etc.
What's not to like?
Except for the fact we have magically turned a steady stream of income for the council into a steady stream of expenditure for the council? The whole idea is crazy, whether you're a proper left-winger (who sees council housing as a vital part of the safety net) or a proper right-winger (who believes in the government getting value for money), it only makes sense if you squint at it through the warped prism of Home-Owner-Ism.
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
They want to own land! Give them money!
My latest blogpost: They want to own land! Give them money!Tweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 21:54
Labels: Banking, Council Housing, David Cameron MP, Home-Owner-Ism, Insanity
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9 comments:
It only makes sense if you see it for what it is: buying votes with other people's money.
Mr Cameron will today say he wants to help families who "play by the rules...
A shiver went up my spine when I read that. It was almost like Lord Mandelson had just walked past...
This is astounding.
RTB is very much an ineffective remedy whichever way you look at it. As a way to "redistribute land".
The ramifications are worse than merely financial and fiscal.
With even wider spread landownerism, the prospect of the radical change you propose, LVT, will have become even more remote politically.
The politics of HOI are the single biggest road block.
Oh dear. This is a disaster. But at least the great crash if it ever comes will come sooner now.
B, isn't that a bit immoral?
F, they're all the same.
RS: "RTB is very much an ineffective remedy whichever way you look at it. As a way to "redistribute land"."
Best way to redistribute land is to redistribute the rental income (to the extent not needed to finance core functions of the state, we can argue quite how wide or narrow the scope of these are separately).
e.g. if you inherit a share in a trust fund which owns land and buildings, collects the rents and dishes out your share, are you a landowner? Yes. Even if you don't even know or care where the land and buildings are and never set eyes on or foot in them, you are a landowner. And even if you spend your share of the rental income on renting somewhere to live, you are still a landowner.
Well, yes, but this is politicians we are talking about here, addicts to the most powerful drug of them all.
Is this the rantings of someone who never had the chance to take part in the 'right to buy' scheme during M.Thatchers time? Smacks of sour grapes to me... my husband and I have both worked all our lives, I left school in Fulham in 1969 (very different then to how it is now) and started work at the age of 15! Right to buy gave us, after years on the waiting list and then years in a housing ass flat, a home, and a home to our friends who the association then moved out of their cramped flat into our vacated larger one! Because of this right to buy, yes, we have made some money but we have also been able to financially help our sons after the eldests wife died of cancer when their daughter was just 9, and now our youngest and his family, who is one of the many unemployed at present, being made redundant last year for the 3rd time. We have never claimed benefits, except for the 'right to buy'. We don't have a lot, but we look after ourselves and our own with the little we have saved and thank our lucky stars for the right to buy that we don't have to be a burden on the state! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
K: "Is this the rantings of someone who never had the chance to take part in the 'right to buy' scheme during M.Thatchers time?"
Nope. I also left school at 15 and have made considerably more windfall land price gains at taxpayers' expense than you have. Neither have I ever claimed unemployment benefit except for two months in 1986. I'm old fashioned about this - social housing is a safety net/sticking plaster, not a way of funnelling money to chosen groups.
And the reason why your son is unemployed is down to the Home-Owner-Ist economic system we are running; if we taxed the rental value of land instead of incomes, then firstly he'd have a job and secondly he'd be able to afford to buy his own house no problems.
"thank our lucky stars for the right to buy that we don't have to be a burden on the state!"
Ah, right... the reason you aren't a burden on the state is because the state gave you a massive freebie in the past. Logic?
I'll be writing to my MP to ask if he can miracle up a government program to give me £75k for doing nothing.
Koffeeman, tell me, if right to buy is such a good idea, why doesn't the government extend it to privately rented properties?
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