AIBU to totally disagree with 'the right to buy'?

X post Elegran (it takes ages to type and post on this tablet)

Apparently over the last three years, only 1% of council tenants have bought under right to buy, so there's not a big appetite for owning their own homes.

speye.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/labour-rtb-suspension-and-anti-inspirational-guff/

No you are not being unreasonable - the selling off of council houses begun by Thatcher has been the major reason for the state we are in today, with thousands of people paying top whack for insecure tenancies.

It's a particular issue I believe in London where people have been known to buy their property then cash in to the tune of millions. It's immoral.

I'm a private landlord in the north, I provide beautiful homes for people at a reasonable rent & would never on principle buy ex council housing.

One thing I would point out though is that the Daily Mail where you read the article isn't the best source of balanced, reasoned views. I have no idea whether the story about Arthur Scargill is true or not but the article from what you said sounded aimed at smearing a left wing figure rather than exploring the issue properly.

Well, well, I must say its a good job we have mass immigration so we have someone less fortunate than ourselves to blame instead of the ineffective governments making stupid policies that allow for affordable housing stock to be reduced and not replaced.

Lilyflower I am not quite clear over what you want to see happening You say "and were struck by how many families who were not working were being subsidised by the state to live in flats and houses which my child and her BF would have liked to buy as the properties were nearer their work."
Were these council houses or privately rented?
If they were council owned the people living in them would have gone through the assessments and be deemed people who needed housing. If they are privately owned then the person making money is the landlord who will be collecting their housing benefit.

As is generally the case, the answer to "AIBU to....." is yes. The scheme is the only chance for many people to get on the housing ladder, and as someone with NO chance ever to afford to buy, despite my husband working hard, i would love that opportunity. The problem isn't the right go buy scheme in itself, but the fact that the income earned from it hasn't been invested back into providing more social housing stock, so however many years it is down the road here we are with a woefully underfunded, inadequate and dwindling social, affordable housing stock, and a whole generation of renters who see no chance of them ever having anywhere decent to call their own.

I have thought from the start that this was a crazy idea. If you sell off all or most of the social housing then surely it stands to reason that, in the future, there is going to be a shortage of such homes. This scheme would only work if the monies raised from the sales was used to build more social housing.
I was brought up in what was then called a 'council house'. I never felt ashamed of my home, although my Mother always wanted to own her own house. She did so in the end by saving hard and buying on the open market although my Dad worked in the building trade before it was very well paid and they didn't have much money.

I disagree so much with it that years ago I wouldn't let my husband 'lend'his parents £8000 to buy their council house after about 40 years. Not popular with the family for a while after that. .....

I'm not surprised!

I live in the North West and Council Housing (now Housing Trust) properties. Are not that difficult to get! People driving very expensive cars get them? Their families are living in large detached houses. They spend more upgrading them than the owner occupiers next to them can afford. Housing Trust is happy about this as it saves them bothering. No doubt when they have lived in them long enough they will use Right to Buy.

Or maybe there is the appetite durhamjen but not the steady jobs/funds/willing lenders to back them up.

As with most things, there is not a black and white answer, but many shades of grey. Since council tenancies do not seem to be reviewed if circumstances change, then a house is taken from the system for many many years, so is unlikey to be available for rental to new occupants anyway. At least if it is sold some cash is generated.
Lilyflower is absolutely right with her sympathy for DD flogging herself to death with the travelling and stress of getting to work in London. From time to time there are news items with tenants in London being offered homes further away, and the indignation from those living in these (now expensive) areas is laughable. I don't understand why some folk think they have a right to live wherever they choose and for as long as they choose .

But you can't buy anything that you can't afford to fund, gillybob.
I might want to buy a sports car, or a holiday home, but I know I can't afford the repayments.

Marie, Housing Trusts are not council housing. They might have been once but are now housing associations.

I feel sorry for anyone living in a housing association house and having to claim housing benefit.

Just in the interests of fairness, the following is an old report about Arthur Scargill trying to buy a London flat which he used but on which the NUM paid the rent, not Scargill himself.
I presume it's the same flat but it does beg the question whether he was entitled to buy it at all, as the NUM was the 'tenant' paying the rent, he just was promised the lifelong use of it for him or his widow.
In the report he allegedly said that he would sign the flat off to the NUM later in the report it says permission was refused because it was not his main residence at the time (2014).
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/former-num-leader-arthur-scargill-tried-to-buy-london-flat-under-margaret-thatchers-right-to-buy-9061392.html

Presumably it must now be his main residence as he has managed to purchase it at 50% discount.

omajane if it was money your husband had earned I am surprised that he didn't tell you to take a running jump that he wanted to help out his parents despite your principles.

I totally agree that the 'right to buy' is verging on immoral. It was a Tory government ploy to get votes from the so called working classes and it worked. Now of course there is a serious lack of affordable rented property as a result.

Luckygirl, it is indeed true that the majority of properties in Europe are rented, and that the mentality on the whole there is different from here. There is a reason though that it works very well over there, and that is that people who rent in Europe have many more rights than over here. People in this country renting from a private Landlord have very few rights at all.

Daddima - same thing here. I haven't read all the posts yet but this is something that has annoyed me for so long. Our neighbour and his brother bought their parents house extremely cheap and are now reaping the rewards, enjoying exotic holidays and expensive home improvements. A lady I work with boasts about how cheap she got her house for whilst having pots of money. Sour grapes from me, probably, but having seen other people struggle to get housing I do get 'wound up'.

Arthur Scargill evidently tried to get the NUM to buy this Barbican flat for him many years ago, and said he intended it to go to the NUM on his death. An ex colleague said the Arthur he knew wouldn't have given anybody anything. However, he managed to get the NUM to pay the rent and ancillary charges for him for life, but according to the Times last week, his daughter and her husband have bought it in his name. (What a wonderful Socialist you have proved to be, Arthur). As for right to buy, I have mixed feelings, because if someone has a house they like enough to want to buy then they are highly unlikely to be leaving it and making it available to anyone else. If local councils put the money gained from sales back into building more social housing then this might be a way forward. They have tried to get people to move to smaller accommodation but there has been an outcry about 'bedroom tax'. No easy solution.

I have always thought that Council housing should always be to rent only, therefore I don't agree with any selling of them.

When you look at it objectively, Scargill hasn't done anything that an MP hasn't done over the years.

MPs have a house, live in another in London, get the tax payer to pay the rent or the mortgage, then, when they stop being an MP they sell the spare house and keep the profit.
Scargill represented a lot more people than any MP.

And to say what a wonderful socialist Scargill has turned out to be, Blair has a property portfolio worth £27 million.

"if someone has a house they like enough to want to buy then they are highly unlikely to be leaving it and making it available to anyone else" - If they have bought it, it has left the rental stock for ever, but if they have not, it would eventually revert back to be rented, when the tenant dies, goes into care or moves in with family.

Is it still the law that if a council tenant dies, their children can inherit the lease? I know it used to be.

No I'm not against it, because I think a lot of people have paid so much rent over the years that they've covered the cost of their house! If stupid governments didn't keep
allowing hundreds of thousands of immigrants there would be NO housing shortage. I'm sick of all the houses and flats being built reducing open land. We're a small island, stop letting people in! Anyone that buys their council house should be British born. My mum bought hers and I was very proud of her. My dad did a runner when we were 7, 9 and 11 and paid no maintenance. They were buying their house, but the council then bought it and charged mum rent.