-
The money the local authority gains from the sale is then ringfenced and can only be used to build new social housing.
That's not my recollection and Wikipedia seems to agree with me.
Half the proceeds of the sales were paid to the local authorities, but the government restricted authorities' use of most of the money to reducing their debt until it was cleared rather than spending it on building more homes. The effect was to reduce the council housing stock, especially in areas where property prices were high, such as London and the south-east of England.
jellybaby-
Quite. Add to this that turning arbitrary selections of council housing into private property didn't simplify or reduce the cost-per-home of maintaining the rest; did the reverse, in fact.
-
Yup that was what I thought too.
A different spin might be "right to buy could be" a good policy if combined with a building drive and funding to cover the shortfall between receipts from sales and cost of new builds. But it has never been designed as that
-
Apology needed. My memory was defective on this. I've checked with her and you and @MTB-Idle are right, the proceeds are not ringfenced as I incorrectly said.
What I was confusing this with is that in 2012 they made a commitment to replace all homes sold via right to buy 1:1. In theory great, but she says in reality there are 2 problems. 1. They didn't meet the commitment, and 2. It isn't a like for like replacement. As such, you could replace a 5 bed house with a studio flat and you've adhered to the rules.
I'll wind my neck back in on right to buy. In theory good, but I'll agree that in practice it is deeply flawed.
itsbruce
andyfallsoff
hazzelfrazzel
My wife works in housing in the civil service. Apparently there are plenty of bedrooms for the population (e.g. old people still living in the family home and not downsized, or relatively wealthy people with more bedrooms than they strictly need), so there's a train of thought on adding incentives to encourage downsizing.
However, according to her there is still a big shortage in housing, both private and state owned.
According to her, right to buy is counter intuitively a good policy. First it helps break the cycle of poverty within a family who now have an asset. Second, it relieved the local authority of a usually ageing property needing a decent amount of maintenance. The money the local authority gains from the sale is then ringfenced and can only be used to build new social housing.
I think supply and demand is only part of the problem. Again, I'm not the expert myself, but many experts feel like successive governments have followed economic policies that jack up house prices in order to gain popularity. However, for anyone other than an investor or someone downsizing or moving to a cheaper location, house prices growth isn't actually a good thing. If you sell a 4 bed home in my part of Derbyshire for 500k and want to move to a similar property in a similar location, you still need 500k. It doesn't matter what you bought it for and how long ago.
Finally, movement of people is emotionally difficult for many. I have moved away from where I grew up because it's unaffordable to own the type of house I would like, I happen to love riding bikes up hills, and I can work remotely. As such the edge of the Peak District makes sense for me. However I see many of my family and friends fairly understandably not wanting to move away from where they grew up, or working in an industry based in a specific geographic location. Rightly or wrongly, these people don't want to move somewhere else, and so you end up with the issues we see in SE England.