Quote:
Originally Posted by alferret
Really??? and your proof of this comes from where?
Facts, if you dont have them (& not hearsay from red tops) you cant really comment.
Every property on our little bit of Mansfield is privately owned, we were the last ones to buy (out of the 16 properties) & not one is let out.
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Well if all 16 properties in your street are owner-occupied this must mean not a single one of the millions sold nationwide is now rented out for sure.
Facts - sure!
Housing benefit bill in fiscal year 1978-1979 - £3.007 billion.
Housing benefit bill in fiscal year 2011/2012 - £23.384 billion.
Both inflation adjusted.
There was actually more housing benefit being paid out to people in work in 2011/12, £5.328 billion, than the entire pre-right to buy bill, even adjusting for inflation and population growth.
There is a case to be made that for every £1 of taxpayer money spent on housing benefit 95p of it is going on housing benefit, only 5p on building.
So yes, right to buy and the associated conditions are costing the taxpayer a bomb. No affordable housing to replace them is firing up the housing benefit bill and their ending up in the private sector is in its own right firing up the housing benefit bill as more and more have ended up in private rental not social rental.
Easy enough to find the statistics for this.
Between 2008-9 and 2012-13 the people in social rented housing dropped by 158,000.
In the same period the people in owner-occupied accommodation dropped by 284,000.
The equivalent of these and more into the private rented sector where, inevitably, we the taxpayer will be paying the higher rents, an increase of 889,000.
Still so long as the 16 properties in your little corner of Mansfield, having been fortunate enough to obtain social housing in the first place, now have your owner-occupied properties it's all good so clearly there's nothing wrong with the policy.
I mean who cares about our taxes propping up private landlords due to gutting of our public housing stock in the name of a 'property owning democracy', which as a dream has come crashing down as owner-occupancy rates are back to 1980s levels?
The two most disastrous decisions as far as housing in this country go in the past 35 years were both Tory decisions - right to buy and buy to let mortgages. These are of course closely followed by Brown's pensions raid. The only other thing going back further that really stands out is the Town and Country Planning Act. A law which has more place in a communist diktat than a democracy.