Today the right to buy social housing ends in Scotland

Good. The council houses in our village have all been sold off to "tenants" over the last 30 years who have then sold them on and because they are actually nice houses with enormous gardens, and some have also been extended to provide another bedroom and bathroom etc they are changing hands for £400-500k these days.
Way out of reach for first time buyers.

It's the same in the village where my Mum lives DaphneBroon. Really lovely houses sold well below market value and then sold on at a much higher price, thus pricing out those on below average incomes who are now forced to rely on insecure, expensive and often sub-standard private rentals. It is, in my view, a disgrace.

Well done to Scotland.

Yes, well done Scotland ... London should do the same.

...but the opposite traps people for all time as Council tenants, and doesn't support social mobility. Forgive me if that seems naive or even polemical, just trying to understand the historical system.

We own an ex-local authority house, bought because as a previous poster said, it is very spacious. Most of my neighbours own their homes via the right-to-buy scheme and have lived in their homes since the 1970s. So not everyone is out to sell and make a profit.

Also, how will people on the waiting list get into the housing stock, if the houses are occupied by Council tenants who (in my experience) seem to stay put anyway? I don't understand the social housing system at all.

Some tenants are there for life, but others decide to buy (perhaps the ones who would have bought their rented house?) or move to another town to work, or move in with their children, or into a care home. Even the ones who stay for life are not there into eternity, as life itself is not eternal - sooner or later they will need their home no longer.

Once a house is sold out of the social housing rental system, it is unavailable permanently (and often ends up after a few years as another house for sale, while its first owners trade up), replacements takes ages to build and are costly, and land elsewhere has to be bought on which to build them.

Meanwhile people who need houses wait on an endless list.

Well done Scotland. Wales is set to follow suit. Hopefully.

By the way, Cathy Come Home is on BBC 4 tonight. Some of it filmed on the street next to my childhood home.

I remember watching Cathy Come Home as a teenager and finding it gut-wrenchingly sad.

I wonder if those who buy their social housing, thus taking it out of the pool of available housing, remember their need for the support of social housing in the first place?

I was also very affected by Cathy Come Home, when it was first shown.

Brilliant. We have to start somewhere to stop this altogether.

Brilliant. Wish this would happen all over UK.

But those houses haven't evaporated? They are still homes. The people who bought them would still have to live somewhere. Surely the problem is the relative unavailability of lower cost houses rather than that council housing has been sold off?

well done Scotland.

No the houses have not evaporated, you are quite right, they've been sold and often sold again to people who could afford to buy any house on the open market.

Even 'lower cost' housing requires deposits and mortgages.

Those who are not so fortunate have less options. LAs were not allowed to use the revenue to build replacements to house those in need. Thus lower cost rented housing is not available.

Thank you elegran for expanding.

jane10 your comment 're the problem being the relative unavailability of lower cost housing makes sense to me.

15,500 houses over 10 years will not solve nothing. Drop in the ocean, given that the demand will not be static.

Absolutely agree with Scotland. Should be the same in England. Give Theresa a few years and she should sort it!

Oops, that should be "will not solve anything".

Re my post of 14:14, I should have added that at the time we bought, we could not afford to buy "on the open market". As I understand it, ex-LA houses follow the rise and fall of house prices on the open market, but always at a lower level overall.

Making interest-free loans as deposits available (for lower cost housing), repayable upon sale of the property, now that would be a good idea.

Cathy Come Home on BBC 4 now.........portrait of homelessness.

15,500 is better than nothing in a population of 5 million.

@Grannyknot

Lower cost housing where I live costs about £250,000. How much deposit would you provide? More importantly, how would somebody on minimum wage afford the repayments?

Daphne it was a thought, a suggestion. I don't have all the answers (they'd have to get someone like Kevin McCloud to design low-cost construction dwellings), but I am not convinced that keeping people in "social housing" (horrible phrase) is the only way.

're Scotland, people who were planning (or poised) to buy their properties must be very unhappy. It seems unfair.