Just build some bloody council houses!

The reintroduction of large discounts for right-to-buy tenants confirms Cameron is Thatcher’s ideological love child.  However, unlike Thatcher’s attempt to eradicate housing stock through her right-to-buy scheme which outlawed the spending of receipts on replacement housing, this government’s approach to selling off the family silver is promising one-for-one replacement. But we shouldn’t be fooled by the headlines – this doesn’t mean building new council houses.  The consultation states that ‘all right to buy sales above current predicted levels will be replaced by new homes for affordable rent’.

There are two problems here: ‘above current predicted levels’ means only after the estimated 12,700 homes predicted to be sold are sold will receipts start being used for rebuilding; and ‘affordable rent’ means landlords other than local authorities who are free to charge up to 80% of market rates, which is much higher than council rents.  This policy is not promising to maintain council housing levels, it is promising to diminish them.

I’m a big fan of council housing and I think it’s time we stopped regarding it as the housing of last resort and started taking pride in providing state-owned accommodation for those that can’t afford to buy property. I dislike the term ‘social housing’ because it’s become linked in our minds to social security and the assumption that all those living in council houses are wholly dependent on welfare, when this just isn’t the case.

What we really should do is allow local authorities to borrow against future rent receipts so they can build thousands of new council houses.  This would benefit all of us for three reasons:

1. it would provide housing where it’s needed, not where developers decide they want to invest;

2. it would create jobs across the country, particularly in less well off areas; and

3. it has the potential to undermine the value of the private housing market, which needs driving back down to its pre-bubble level.

It’s astonishing in a recession that house prices haven’t dropped through the floor to meet today’s much-reduced buying powers.   I don’t understand why we regard the lowering of prices as marvellous in absolutely everything except for property.  Rising or stable house prices are consistently reported as good news when what it really means is that a whole generation is frozen out of the property market while buy-to-let landlords profit massively through their misfortune.

Private landlords flourish unchecked in this country with tax breaks that verge on the immoral and governments that are too lily-livered to introduce rent controls. We have a duty to house those in need, but there’s a stubborn refusal to build council houses.  It makes no sense at all to house people in receipt of benefits in private properties at huge cost to the taxpayer. State-owned housing provides a much more virtuous circle in terms of where the money comes from and where it flows back. Except that successive governments since 1980 have worked to offload public housing into the hands of private or social landlords, after which the state then pays the much higher rents through housing benefit. I don’t know why we tolerate ideological objections to honest practical solutions.

I have huge sympathy for people who have long council tenancies and have no prospect of ever buying a property who wish to buy the home they live in having spent many thousands renting it, but these council houses have to be replaced. The homeless charity Crisis reported a 23% rise in rough sleepers between 2010 and 2011 and it’s accepted that this is a very conservative estimate. A government that combines drastic benefit cuts and reducing public housing stock with a massive rise in unemployment (particularly youth unemployment) will see a return to the rough sleeper numbers we saw under Thatcher. That’s not going to be cheap to fix and the cost in human misery is immeasurable.

Just build some bloody council houses!.