Today's housing announcement will make one of Britain's biggest problems even worse
The Conservatives just haven’t got over Thatcher have they? If they had, they probably wouldn’t be so fixated on re-heating her old policies. As someone remarked to me this morning, “David Cameron’s Tories are like a Thatcher tribute band – they play the old favourites even more badly than the original”.
The latest announcement, to coincide with today’s manifesto launch, is a pledge to extend the right-to-buy scheme so that up to 1.3 million housing association tenants in England will be able to buy their homes at a discount.
As I said, re-heated Thatcherism. While there are sometimes those on the left who want to recapture the so-called ‘spirit of ’45’, the Tories are still trying to repackage what they think got Margaret Thatcher repeatedly elected in the 1980s.
But just as it isn’t 1945, it isn’t 1979, either.
So what about the substance of this policy? Well most people are agreed that there is currently a housing crisis in Britain. The country requires around 240,000 new homes each year yet in 2014 fewer than 120,000 were built.
This is having an obvious effect on house prices, which are going only in one direction – and fast. According to the House Builders Federation, in the last 40 years the average house price to salary ratio has almost doubled.
Successive governments have also failed to replenish the social housing stock, and under the coalition the sell-off has hastened. Since 2012, 22,900 council homes have been sold with just 4,800 replacements started and 10,000 planned.
So what the the effect of the latest announcement be?. Well as our housing writer Kevin Gulliver put it last month when the policy was first being touted:
Privatising precious public housing assets would further deplete the social housing stock: there are 1.5m fewer social homes today than in 1979 against a population one fifth larger than back then…
The proposed extension of the Right to Buy, clearly aimed at attracting blue collar workers in key marginals to the Tory banner, will do nothing to tackle a growing backlog of housing demand and will not enable the country to cope with future housing need.
Electioneering is one thing; but today’s housing announcement would likely make one of Britain’s biggest problems significantly worse.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
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41 Responses to “The Tory proposal that would deepen the housing crisis”
Chris Kitcher
This has fuck all to do with allowing the poor to acquire capital. It’s about a desperate useless government using public funds to buy votes for their party. It should be a criminal offence as we will never see new housing replacing the sold ones under the Tories.
Faerieson
Looking to cash in, Sunshine?
This has got to be either madness, or some sort of IDS-driven spite. Is it not more likely that an even more acute rental shortage will simply usher in even more inflated rental and housing costs?
The migration issue is now little more than a distraction- perhaps inviting more distracting xenophobic diatribe- as it matters not who acquires these properties. More houses for private landlords, at the cost of less affordable rents, equates to greater divide.
Much like the NHS, once they’re gone the will to rebuild is unlikely to ever again prevail. Too many vested interests!
Joe Bloggs
I have already heard from one of my neighbours who thinks it’s a great idea to get the govt to subsidise the buying of her housing association house.
If those rat-faced Tories get another five years of power, and she is allowed to buy, her intention is either to sell her house at market value, or rent it out at a huge rent to those desperate enough to pay it.
I hope Labour get elected.
David Lindsay
One wonders which other aspects of Thatcherism David Cameron has never quite grasped. If he thinks that the State still owns the housing association stock, then does he also think that the State still owns telecommunications, or the steel industry?
Leon Wolfeson
Owns it? No, of course not.
Doesn’t mean he can’t change the law to force it – big government Toryism!