Woodbridge Councillor Caroline page has bloged against the right to buy after having conversations with various people including myself here.. where she gives responses to arguments.
Here are the arguments with Caroline page’s responses with my response to her responses.
Right to buy can help poorer people onto the property ladder. “ Why should anyone feel they have a ‘right’ to be on the property ladder? If they choose to buy a house rather than rent one , why should the state subsidise them?
I find this response rather odd. You could equally say “Why should anyone feel they have a ‘right’ about going to university?” Also if it’s wrong to subsidise them if they want to buy, it must be wrong to subsidise them with housing benefit if they want to rent.
“Right to buy means that tenants and owners live side by side – stopping people being prejudiced against people due to where they live.
“ Yet only last week I heard someone who had bought ex-council stock complaining bitterly about having to live next door to ’social housing tenants’!
The fact that the right to buy upsets a few snobs makes it even more right.
“Right to buy creates a classless society by a method that works (unlike wealth redistribution by taxation)” Classless? surely it’s a way of the state funding another gap between haves and have nots
A society where people of different income levels etc live side by side is cohesive and classless.
“Right to buy gives people more aspiration to work and be in a position to buy… as opposed to renting on benefits forever” This is plainly ridiculous. In these stringent economic times, aspiration will get you ahead and should not require supporting
Aspiration should be supported to help people achieve their aspirations.
“Right to buyPeople in social housing who can afford to buy are mid-earners, so can’t buy unless the purchase price is discounted.” So why should the state fund them? It doesn’t fund the car or the television that I can’t actually afford.
By that logic, it is wrong for the state to pay benefits so people can buy food they can’t afford.
“Some social tenants can afford to buy but enjoy the luxury of social housing. Instead of opposing Right to buy one should be looking at people in social housing who can afford to buy and getting them out.” If you perceive some tenants as ‘bedblockers’ its an act of madness to lose even more housing from the food chain. And how does this argument sit with the previous argument (postulated by the same person)?
I think that the argument being put across is that if someone can afford to buy their house then they should instead of having low rent and having all the maintenance done for nothing.
“If councils replace the homes that they sell off under Right to buy- it means more social housing will become available faster.” How long will it take them to replace it? And it will not necessarily be built in the same area where they were sold from. In rural areas this means the poor live further and further from centres where there is work and yet rural transport has got worse and worse and more and more expensive. This is furher ghettoising social housing
It’s the fact that social housing and owner occupied housing are often in different areas that right to buy is such a good idea. Tenants and owners live side by side – stopping people being prejudiced against due to where they live. social housing should exist where owner occupied housing exists.
Thw bottom line is Right to buy sales have in the past and will in many areas inflate the cost of local housing – and force the less well-off, the young, those dedicated to public service out of areas like the one I represent! Affordable housing is already problematic in this district.
House prices are high in Suffolk because of its close proximity to London. Second homes inflate local house prices.
