The Tory belief that private home ownership can solve the housing crisis is deeply flawed, writes Mike Lambert, while Bernie Evans calls for more help for private sector tenants. Plus views from both sides of the buy-to-let debate.
Polly Toynbee (The verdict is in: George Osborne’s help-to-buy scheme has been an utter disaster, 25 January) further exposes the lie behind the government’s policies, that by encouraging private home ownership we will solve the housing crisis. Her article confirms that the origins of the crisis are in the right-to-buy policies of the 80s, compounded by the refusal to allow the proceeds to fund new council stock and dismantling the Fair Rent Act. The housing crisis results from failing to meet the housing “needs” of those unable to afford a mortgage. Help to buy simply boosted the market demand for private housing.
But if that achieved little in helping those in real housing need, how much more morally reprehensible is it that we now subsidise private landlords and their buy-to-let mortgages to the tune of £22bn a year in the form of housing benefit? It is at this level because those without access to affordable social housing cannot pay private rents set to cover the cost of a mortgage and provide the owner with a return. This is revenue expenditure that could be better used to support much-needed public services. The government will only address the housing crisis by investing significant capital over a long period of time in new social housing and seeing it as an infrastructure investment that will produce both a capital asset and an income stream to the public sector, ultimately reducing the demand and therefore the cost of private rented housing. Surely this is what levelling up should be all about?
Mike Lambert
Aldham, Essex
