Housing crisis needs radical solutions
THE new Government’s announcement of a comprehensive Housing Review has reopened a debate on the subject of ‘right-tobuy’ rented council houses at heavily discounted prices.
My view is that the assetstripping of vital public social housing, without replacement, in the 1980s is the main reason for today’s housing crisis, worsened by councils now buying back cheaply sold-off ex-council houses at much increased prices. It has meant both a grave scarcity of secure low-rented council housing today, especially for younger people and families, and private uncontrolled rents going sky-high, with no-fault evictions abolishing security of tenure.
Yes, typical Tory legacy Britain, of affluent capitalists in private property-owning bliss, although now checked with big mortgage increases, and probably the Labour Government bringing in renewed controls on rents, good housing conditions, and security of tenure.
It is sad that 13 years of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 did nothing to halt this racket of new fast-buck profiteers replacing council housing services, and even sadder that, so far, the new Government is following suit.
As a Green Party councillor in Taunton Deane from 1991 to 2003, and a housing committee member, I was appalled to see this sell-off racket in Taunton, as in the UK’s big cities, where money-loaded
Tory capitalists were offering council tenants an instant £10,000, cheque in hand, to indulge their big discounted right-to-buy policy with simultaneous signings of legal agreements to transfer their ownerships. Often many ex-council houses got converted to four bedsits, or two flats, giving even larger profits from uplifted monthly rents, sometimes up to ten times previous council-controlled ones.
The solutions to all this obscene public asset-stripping need to include new hard-hitting wealth taxes on the super-rich.
Alan Debenham Taunton, Somerset