From The Sun:
FORMER Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy changed the face of Britain – and gave millions of families the chance to pay much higher rents or claim Housing Benefit to rent ex-council homes from RTB landlords.
Now, three decades later, the coalition Government want to breathe new life into the rotting corpse of the Thatcher housing revolution.
Here, the Morbidly Obese One spells out how his plans will help "rent seekers" - David Cameron’s term for those who "want to be able to rest on their laurels and have the housing market make money for them".
He also vows to stop Labour councils taking credit for this lunacy.
MANY people’s greatest ambition is to own their own home, which is a excellent proof of how we have knocked any real ambition out of people. Young, hard-working families, people who accept they have no choice but to play by our rules. The triers and the strivers and those who put something in deserve to get something out will get nothing; the lucky few in social housing will be given a massive subsidy to get them hooked on the drug of rising land values. In reality, they'll just end up with bigger debts, but the banks will be happy at least.
Mrs Thatcher knew all about aspiration. And crushed it. Her right-to-buy revolution transformed us from a nation of owner-occupiers to a nation of Home-Owners-Ists.
By the end of the 1980s, more than a million extra people had a place on a council house waiting list to call their own. Yet in recent times, the dream of the next generation has been dashed. During 13 years of Labour rule the lowest rungs of the property ladder were simply sawn off as this once great country was sucked into a whirlpool of house-price driven debt.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
"Coalition breathes new life into rotting corpse"
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12 comments:
Mrs Thatcher knew all about aspiration. And crushed it. Her right-to-buy revolution transformed us from a nation of owner-occupiers to a nation of Home-Owners-Ists.
There was once a concept called buy your home and paying it off, living in it and bringing up your family there.
JH, yes, most recently between 1945 and 1965, the system worked fine, and by and large people in social housing were happy in social housing (but trading up to your own home was no big problem), but the Home-Owner-Ists don't want that. They want debts and misery and high rents and high taxes on income.
I don't know. I like people owning a home, especially when it lowers the size of the state. I just think the capital gains shouldn't be kept by the buyer.
SB, sure, which is why the council ought to knock a grand off your rent if you do your own repairs and three grand off your rent if you are prepared to build your own house, so you just pay rent on the plot.
Further, building and renting out housing does not mean that the state interferes in tenants' lives, social housing is not a 'large state' thing, and if it means that tenants face a smaller burden that if they were renting privately, then actually it liberates them.
All this Home-Owner-Ism does not reduce the size of the state anyway. It increases the size of the 'privatised tax collection department' and so the remnants of the state have to get bigger to try and mop up the damage, financed by damaging taxes on income etc.
My experience with the "socially housed" is that they were anti-social. Those that owned the building cared about the building, those that rented cared about their deposit etc. Those that got their rent paid made it a shit-hole.
SB, if only the bottom ten per cent of people are in social housing, then it is far more likely that they will be anti-social. My dad grew up on a 'good' council estate and the houses were very well looked after.
Be that as it may, if some people prefer to rent council land and build their own house (i.e. own the bricks and mortar and pay LVT) then that's fine too.
It's true for an awful lot of people from ALL walks of life, not just the poor, that they don't give a shit about stuff which isn't theirs, but the answer to this in the case of social housing is not tohave less social housing but to give the people who live in the houses a greater stake in them. This is why enlightened landlords in the C19th offered "three-generation" tenancies, as the tenant was far more likely to look after the property if he knew he could leave it to the next generation.
The "right to buy" did break up the "council estate ghettoes" though and did its bit to reduce Britain's class system.
To me, the issue was that councils weren't allowed to use the proceeds to build more council houses.
If it hadn't been purely politically motivated, with the aim to break up what were seen as Labour-voting blocs, and been managed so that the LAs got back the rebuild cost plus the cost of a the land without PP, then it might have been a good thing, but it was and it wasn't, so it wasn't.
B, that's one possibility.
AC, two glib lies, however often you repeat them, do not add up to the truth.
"The "right to buy" did break up the "council estate ghettoes"..."
No it didn't. The nicer houses on the nicer estates were sold to the nicer tenants who had jobs etc (or else they wouldn't have got a mortgage) and the not so nice people were just concentrated more on the not-so-nice estates, so the ghettoisation got worse if anything (which you might argue serves them right, separate debate).
"... and did its bit to reduce Britain's class system."
No it didn't, it reinforced it (see previous comment) and merely served to prop up the Home-Owner-Ist economic system, which is the real class system: Look little people! I may be a landed aristocrat, but you too can have super unearned windfall gains! It's the Mafia/pirate principle, if everybody shares the proceeds of crime, then everybody keeps shtum about it afterwards.
"councils weren't allowed to use the proceeds to build more council houses."
Of course not, that's the whole point. They don't want to offer an alternative to Home-Owner-Ism. Further, there is no need to earmark the proceeds, either council housing is a good investment for society as a whole and the taxpayer in particular or it isn't. And it clearly is, even the worst-run estate makes a profit.
B, agreed.
"The nicer houses on the nicer estates were sold to the nicer tenants who had jobs etc (or else they wouldn't have got a mortgage)"
Sorry, I don't agree. The normal average council estates in the Midlands where I live saw maybe half the houses sold off. The sold houses got sold on again, and became a favoured option for first time buyers (since they were decent sized houses at the price of a shoebox-sized house on a private estate). The result is that now, lots of young home-owning families live alongside social tenants. I've seen the good effects for myself. It has broken down the distinctions that used to exist between "middle class" people who owned private housing and "working class" people who rented from the council.
AC, your anecdotal evidence exactly illustrates my point, and you cheerfully ignore all the wealth transfers which this has imposed on people (the early buyers made massive windfall gains and the banks helped themselves by foisting large mortgages on later arrivals), the costs which this imposed on the taxpayer (commercial losses and higher HB bills) as well as the fact that gentrification in one place merely means ghettoisation elsewhere.
For crying out loud, there's no point harping on about the upsides of a policy (yes of course there were some) without looking at all the costs and the downsides.
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