The right to buy the policy is celebrated, but here is the cost: the losses for all of 194 billion pounds and a broken society | David Madden

R.The UK housing problem has become very widespread so that it can sometimes look natural and eternal, and it is the permanent background of British life. But it is important to remember that the specific political projects and political options led to the housing crisis – and continue to preserve it.

new A report from the common Thinktank wealth It collects some continuous costs for a perpetrator: the right to purchase, the distinctive social policy of Margaret Thatcher. He explains that the right to purchase has reached a huge gift of public resources, and one of the greatest privatization in British history.

The report figures focus on England, and the huge size of the public assets that forced the local government to abandon it. Since the introduction to the policy in 1980, 1.9 million English language houses have been sold at a discount rate of 44 % of the market value. The common wealth calculates that the opponent led to the abandonment of councils up to 194 billion pounds in stocks. More than 40 % of the houses that are sold under the right to purchase are rented from the private sector.

The history of the right to purchase illuminate the political logic that is based on it. Taccher did not invent the idea – the councils were able to sell public housing they had to their tenants on an estimated basis since 1936. But it was the Tatcher government that made it central in its strategy and brand.

In 1980, the Housing Law designed and expanded the current procedures for selling the council’s role to tenants. I oblige the councils to allow reduced sales and asked them to provide real estate loans free from deposit to facilitate these sales. Local authorities were allowed to keep half of the returns from right -wing sales to purchase, but were prevented from spending them to replace the missing public housing.

The right to purchase is simultaneously managed to satisfy a number of right -wing political circles. Traditional conservatives preferred this as a way to expand the owner’s job. The neoliberals saw it as an opportunity to enhance the spirit of entrepreneurship and retreat against municipal socialism. Above all, the right to purchase was aimed at wrapping the example of the Conservative Party of Democracy, which dates back to the twenties of the twentieth century but appeared prominently in the conservative statement of 1979.

There is no doubt that many families have benefited from this policy, which are still very popular. But the privilege was not very uneven, as it does not benefit from the wealthy tenants who live in more valuable locations and housing types.

More serious was the effect of the right to purchase on the housing system as a whole. Its goal was to undermine public housing and reduce its role in British life. In this, unfortunately was successful. This policy led to a structural transformation in the British housing period. Before politics, social housing for all species constitutes 31 % of the total housing period in England. Today is 16 %. As a result, the waiting lists of housing and displacement increased.

In addition to its impact on current housing, the right to purchase make building new housing less vibrant. like It was placed by an employee in the council“It makes us more careful about cultivating our stock.” If the councils should sell to deduct any social housing units that they adopt, do so becomes a risky project.

Rules have been modified on spending the right to buy, but they still restrict the construction of new public housing. One council It has calculated You will need to sell six homes by the right to buy to generate enough financing to build a new house. Politics reaches, in the words of the report, to “a decision of a reality in building a new house.”

Certainly the issue is not only the right to buy, but the entire residential policy group that accompanied it. This included the abolition of the organization of housing financing, the establishment of the mortgage market for purchase and other support for the owner of the owner and ownership of private homes. Through stock transfer operations, the renewal of real estate and other mechanisms, this path of housing policy has been supported by work governments as well as conservatives. But the right to purchase the appointment of the initial trend.

In addition to its quantitative effects, politics had long -term ideological and political effects. For anyone, strengthening the ideology of the ownership of the house. The owner’s job was equal to independence, ambition and success with the stigma and distortion that did not have property. Equally, this helped cut off the relationship between housing and social citizenship. The British state did not really guarantee housing, but for a few decades in the twentieth century, building public homes was a sign of successful governance for both the two main parties.

Today, it is clear that the democracy that owns real estate was a mirage. Social housing and owner-on an equal footing. The private owner and the elite of multiple property are expanding. Rents and home prices rise. The result is the housing crisis, accuracy and inequality.

The Tatcher slogan was not “no alternative” to a experimental demand as much as a standard ambition. The right to buy was an exercise in an attempt to make this ambition a reality in the field of housing, by eliminating the current alternatives of the private housing market.

Critics called for the abolition of politics since its presentation. The policy was already canceled in 2016 in Scotland and 2019 in Wales. shelter Estimates This full right to purchase will provide more than 10,000 social houses on average a year. If the right to purchase the housing of the council must be canceled, a The plan to deposit social tenants Or other compensation policies can be created to compensate the tenants without undermining social housing as a whole.

If the housing problem is solved in Britain, it will require the end of the right to buy completely. But this alone is not enough. The way out of the deadline is the concession of occupancy on property rights, which leads to the flattery of the hierarchical sequence of possession, the expansion of social housing and the building of other housing alternatives. The solution to the housing crisis depends on the opposite and replacement of changes in the British housing system and the society that helped the right to purchase to achieve.