[DemolitionRed]

Originally Posted by smudgie

I think it should be scrapped.
The idea of council/social housing is so that people can have access to affordable rents.
Selling them off takes this option away, yes it gives the tenants a chance to buy cheap but in reality it drives private rents and house prices up so that more people in the lower pay brackets and on benefit suffer.

Bingo. The selling off of our council housing and more recently, our social housing, has pushed rents and private house prices through the roof.

The idea of building new council houses to make up for those sold doesn't work for me either.
Why should we pay council tax to pay to build houses that will eventually be sold off, a never ending circle.
I can see why there is a reluctance to build houses only for them to be sold off.

Really good point and not something I'd thought about.

Social housing should belong to everybody. It was only about 35 years ago when the British government were the biggest landlords in Europe and what stopped that was the biggest move on privatization in history. Many people along the line have made a lot of money from purchasing something heavily subsidized. I don't in any way blame the ex tenant buyers, but I do blame the government who sold off something that used to belong to all of us.
Now we have 25-30 year waiting lists.