So there we have it. Another nail in the coffin for affordable housing through a Tory “triple whammy” (Tories to offer 1.3m families right to buy housing association properties, 14 April). First, freeing up pension pots that many will use for buy to let to generate income, driving house prices skywards. Second, subsidised right to buy of housing association properties. Third, the enforced selling of the most valuable of local authority stock. All three actions reducing still further the availability of affordable housing for society’s most vulnerable and needy. Short-term electoral appeal in return for long-term housing disaster.
Maybe we should take a leaf from the constitution of the Iroquois nations, paraphrased thus: “In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation … even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine.”
Michael Sutton
Woodbridge, Suffolk
Extending the right to buy to housing association tenants would be damaging for London. There are many reasons why this policy should not be implemented, and here are just two. First, it will worsen the already acute housing crisis in the capital. Demand is outstripping supply and there are not enough homes being built. Housing associations account for around 40% of new housing supply in London and together we have a pipeline of more than 93,000 new homes.
We are financially strong and are able to borrow and attract investment to build new homes because we have valuable property assets. Selling these assets would remove our capacity to replace them. Giving housing associations the market value of the sale from selling off high-value council-owned properties as is proposed would not help us replace low-cost homes on a like-for-like basis because the land is either not there or would come at an inflated price. Much-needed housing supply would inevitably contract.
Second, low-cost homes in London are vital for our city’s social and economic success – they provide stable and affordable homes for hundreds of thousands of Londoners on lower incomes. These are people we rely on to keep our city running: shop workers, cleaners, transport workers, healthcare assistants. The right to buy would transfer social and charitable assets to a few lucky individuals, hollowing London out and making it unaffordable for the majority of hard-working people.
Peabody and our g15 colleagues are supporters of home ownership and shared ownership. We build homes for sale on the open market to help fund more low-cost homes for rent. We reinvest every penny we make from sales because we are committed to our communities and have a deep charitable and social purpose. Forcing us to sell our social assets will severely limit our ability to do this. The policy is flawed, dangerous and wrong.
Stephen Howlett
Chief executive, Peabody
I am continually amazed at the ability of the Tory party to make policy announcements that would have the opposite result to the one promised. The latest is the extended right to buy, forcing housing associations to sell their homes to tenants after three years of occupancy with discounts of up to £102,700 in London and £77,000 elsewhere. The Tories assure us that this will allow a one-for-one replacement of below-market rent homes. This is patently not true. The right-to-buy record for council homes from 2012 to 2015 (with discounts of up to £75,000) is as follows, according to Inside Housing: 1) Around 25% of the right-to-buy receipts were available from the sale of 22,900 council homes to rebuild new council properties; 2) The Treasury hived off £358.1m from the sales; 3) Only 4,800 replacement homes were built.
There are 1.36m households waiting for social housing, often the only accommodation in an area affordable to those on low incomes. That represents 3.4 million people. Since 1980, when Margaret Thatcher introduced the right to buy, 1.88m council homes have been sold. Only 345,000 have replaced them. In many areas, especially the countryside, there are no council homes left and local young people cannot find any affordable homes.
The grant housing associations receive from the government to bridge the difference between the cost of building and an affordable rent has been reducing – it is now only about 20% of the cost. The rest of the money is borrowed from banks and building societies. The security for those loans – which now total well over £20bn – is the equity in existing homes. If that security is diminished by the loss of stock, not only will housing associations break the terms of current loans but banks are less likely to lend. The ability for new development will stop for many associations.
Right to buy has meant that around a third of the properties sold in London are now in the hands of private landlords and councils have to pay higher housing benefit for homes that they used to own but were forced to sell. Rather than saving money for the taxpayer, it costs more. The country cannot afford more of these giveaway policies that don’t work.
Canon Andrea Titterington
Preston
David Cameron’s promise (or threat) to sell off housing association properties may be illegal. It is one thing for the government to sell off public housing on the Thatcher model. It is quite another to sell off property the government does not own at a price far below market value. Housing Associations are privately owned not-for-profit organisations whose sole purpose is to provide affordable and special needs housing. Selling their stock undermines this purpose and doing so at a discount reduces their assets both to let to those who need their housing, and against which to borrow to build additional housing. I hope any attempt to do this will be challenged in the courts, especially by those associations that are registered charities, but this may be long after the election. Cameron must not be allowed to get away with bribing the electorate with resources that properly belong to the poor and disabled.
Arnold Zermansky
(Former housing association chair) Leeds
Those who live in housing association homes, which were built with help of taxpayers’ money, are the lucky ones. Why should they be given a further bonus of up to £102,700 when so many others have no home at all. The other day I recently heard of an ex-council house being sold for a tax-free profit of some £250,000.In 1947, the deficit was 2.47 times GDP, more than twice what it is today. This did not stop Attlee nationalising all our major industries, creating the NHS and building 300,000 homes a year, half of which were council homes. Furthermore, the ratio of government debt to GDP fell every subsequent year. Today we are building 120,000 homes a year, of which only 20,000 are public housing. Instead of bribing those who have a home to live in, we should be building many more public-sector homes.
Ross Randall
London
Extending the right to buy sounds like an inversion of compulsory purchase. The difference is that this scheme is about enriching private citizens while asset-stripping socially useful non-profit bodies. Or is it about votes? Either way, I hope it is thrown out by the courts (assuming they haven’t been sold off for a song by then).
Rev Richard Haggis
Oxford
Unless flexible exemptions are incorporated into Labour’s proposals for the private rented sector (Opinion, 14 April), it is difficult to see how a longer minimum tenancy requirement would work with landlords as well as benefiting tenants. For existing landlords, proposals for longer minimum tenancy requirements could raise questions in terms of the validity of many buy-to-let mortgages, almost half of which include conditions that do not permit certain tenancy lengths, such as those over 12 months. Labour’s proposals are also likely to ward off property investment and restrict housing supply. Small or accidental landlords may be reluctant to let their home during a temporary job move, for example, while potential investors may avoid the sector if substantial yields are not possible.From a tenant’s perspective too, minimum tenancies of three years are not reflective of a large majority of renters’ lifestyles, who like the freedom to move location, house, job etc. The average UK tenancy is 19 months, while students, who make up a large proportion of the rental market, have an average tenancy agreement lasting just nine months. How then are such restrictive requirements likely to be of benefit?We don’t need more restrictive regulation for landlords, including licensing and rental caps, which are only likely to suffocate the private investment the capital’s rental sector desperately needs to support residents.
Flexibility is the key to the success of the private rented sector market, and rent controls, including the potential introduction of minimum three-year tenancies, are inflexible. Their introduction would restrict both landlord and tenant choice; only deterring the very investment into the sector that we need to support generations of renters.
Rob Ellice
Chief executive, easyProperty
So the Tories are going back to the right to buy in a desperate attempt to capture working-class votes. I remember the impact right to buy had on the 1979 and 1983 elections in the south-east of England. However, the outcome has been the worst possible result: fewer social houses, higher rents, bigger social security bills and more homeless people. The Tory proposal to extend the right to buy to housing associations can only make the situation worse.
Contrast this with the situation in Scotland where the SNP government has already restricted the right to buy in areas of housing need and will end it completely next year. It has also encouraged the building of new social housing both for councils and housing associations. This will help to end the housing problem in Scotland. I have spent much of my life in social housing and am very happy to live in one of the most desirable housing association areas in central Edinburgh. I can only conclude that while the Tories are going back to the past for their housing policies Scotland is building for the future. Quite a contrast.
Hugh Kerr
Edinburgh
During my 12 years as a councillor in inner London, nothing depressed me more than the changes in council housing. Right to buy, introduced by Thatcher, immediately swiped thousands of homes, and particularly the larger, more attractive ones, from the council’s stock. This left growing numbers of people on the housing waiting list with no chance of a home, and many of those tenants who were lucky enough to have homes already with severe problems of overcrowding. I know these views were shared by Conservative councillors on the opposite benches.
One safety factor was the provision of housing associations. To lose even these, as the Tories propose, is iniquitous. It is so clear where their priorities lie. Any further introduction of the right to buy is immoral.
Gerry Harrison
Ennis, County Clare