Making housing affordable is a sensible and worthy goal. Making buying a house more affordable might be, but not if it comes at the expense of making housing less affordable overall.science_fox wrote: ↑Wed Aug 03, 2022 12:36 pmI don't know about a terrible idea... but certainly anything that is bought needs to be replaced with a more social low-cost housing. And the council housing authorities that owned the original stock won't have the funding to do so .
Right to buy is a subsidy given to those fortunate enough to both be able to afford to buy their homes and have the stability to tie themselves to one location for a long period, but this subsidy is paid by those not lucky enough to meet these criteria.
Interfering with rental markets might be a good idea if it is done in a way that benefits tenants. For example by better regulating landlords or giving more rights to tenants. This may also have knock-on benefits for making house buying more affordable, as it makes being a sh.t landlord less profitable taking some sh.t landlords out of the buying market.
Right to buy, and other methods that aim to give owner-occupiers a competitive advantage in the house-buying market over landlords, interfere with rental markets for the benefit of owner-occupiers not tenants. This is a Tory-esque policy that screws those at the bottom for the benefit of the wealthy.
