The enforced sell-off of housing association homes, at the same enormous discounts as under Right to Buy (£70,000+ for a flat and up to £102,000 for a house) is driven by the two Tory goals, not only to act as bribes for voters at election time, but also to bring homes as an asset into play in the private market.
Implicit in that goal are two other Tory presumptions. One is that rents should also be determined by the private market, and the euphemism of ‘affordable rents’ is simply a con to distract from the truth that such rents are a teeny-weeny bit below market rates on their way to reaching full market levels. The other is that while tenancies are in principle inferior to ownership, Council tenancies which charge a ‘social’ rent of around half of market rates are anathema. Council tenants, like scroungers in the Tory panoply of poisonous misrepresentation, are pampered, not taking responsibility for their housing, and needing to learn the benefits of individualism. Continue reading
The desperate search for shrinking votes has pushed Iain Duncan Smith into yet another spectacular own goal. His latest pet idea is to extend the Right to Buy to Britain’s 2.5m housing association tenants. However, whilst social homes are owned by Councils, this latest Tory brainwave means selling off housing association assets which are private property because housing associations are independent charities so that their £65bn in borrowing is securely off the public accounts. But as Osborne must know only too well, compelling housing associations to sell to tenants using the same Right to Buy discounts enjoyed by Council tenants (up to £102,000 in London and £77,000 elsewhere) would cost serious amounts of taxpayer money and bankrupt some housing associations. This is yet another unfunded Tory commitment. 
Young Labour’s first conference with written policy motions has seen delegates vote for radical measures to address the cost of living crisis and kick-start the economy.
Since the 1980s, when Thatcher introduced the ‘right to buy’, some two million tenants of council houses/flats have bought their homes, aided by discounts of up to £60,000. The market, however, has its own way of working. Instead of producing the acclaimed ‘property-owning democracy’, it has resurrected the evil practices of the 1950s and 60s. Practices made notorious by the exploitative Notting Hill landlord 
Businesses need funding fast, so why doesn’t Osborne just order RBS and Lloyds to ratchet up the lending? After all, he controls 80% of the former and 40% of the latter, more than those who talked about seizing the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy ever dreamed of.