The question was asked "Why don't councils building more council housing than investing in commercial property?"
On the Shelter website in October 2018 was a blog relating to this issue. Extracts from it:
........"On Wednesday, Theresa May used her conference speech to make a housing policy announcement. But this time it was a big one: an end to the cap on council borrowing for housebuilding. This is currently the single biggest barrier to councils that build homes delivering more of them. By removing the cap, the government is letting councils back onto the playing field.
........." this could be big...... the country has never got close to building the 300,000 homes a year her government targets without local authorities as major players.........
"..... the other big barrier to building is access to land. If councils have to bid for land against private developers under our broken land laws, the higher prices they’ll pay will force them to build less affordable or worse quality homes to recoup their money. This would be a tragic missed opportunity, with borrowing for social homes diverted into an already bloated land market. The government must reform the Land Compensation Act 1961 to guarantee a supply of affordable land for affordable homes......
"It’s difficult or impossible for councils to make the finances of building social rent homes stack up under Right to Buy, as they might need to sell the homes at a large discount and hand over some or all of the remaining sales receipts to the Treasury in fairly short order. It’s like running a bath with the plug out."
Many of the properties that were bought under the right to buy scheme are now back with private landlords - so much for the "property owning democracy" that Thatcher talked about.
I don't think many people expect landlords to act as a charity. Of course, if you are buying/paying a mortgage for a house that you intend to rent out, you would need to get some return, as you would if you invested in any other market. However, renting out dilapidated and dangerous properties at exorbitant rates illustrates quite well the "unacceptable face of capitalism" that Heath talked about. There are always greedy and unscrupulous people who don't care if they damage the lives of other people so there must be firm policies and regulations to try and prevent this from happening.
It is not decent landlords I'm talking about but the increasing number of landlords who know they can rent out sub-standard properties at high rents, with very little chance of intervention from the authorities - they do not have enough resources to carry out regular inspections.