200,000 Council Homes Face Axe

Almost 200,000 council homes will go by 2020 if the Tory housing bill passes through parliament. It would force councils to sell one in every eight council properties through the ‘right to buy’ scheme.

Over five million people are waiting for social housing in Britain. Since 2010 when the Tory-led Coalition came to power, housebuilding has plummeted – while rents and property prices have sky-rocketed. There is a critical shortage of genuinely affordable homes, and homelessness is rising exponentially as a result.

Thatcher’s government brought in right to buy in the 1980s. A third of ex-council homes are now owned by private landlords – in London a sickening 50%.

Scandalously, Charles Gow, the multimillionaire son of the very minister who introduced right to buy, is now a buy-to-let landlord. He owns scores of former council flats.

The idea of really affordable housing is a joke in London. Desperate tenants pay extortionate rents.

Boosting right to buy will only make this worse, with homes selling to overseas investors and buy-to-let landlords rather than those in housing need. The 200,000 homes sold will do nothing to plug the five-million-home gap.

Mortgage

Today’s generation of low-paid and zero-hour contract workers cannot even begin to think about taking on a mortgage. Those who benefit are Cameron’s rich chums.

What we need is to immediately stop all sell-offs, and begin an intensive program of building decent accommodation that is publicly owned, with democratically decided, genuinely affordable rents.