The obvious way to deal with this is to introduce rent controls, which are now being employed in Scotland and have been called for by Sadiq Khan in London. Evidence suggests that rent controls are effective in reducing rents, but can lead to a fall in the supply of private rental accommodation. If more such properties are then sold to first-time buyers this may not be viewed as a problem. But given current affordability problems, what the UK clearly needs is more non-market and good-quality socially rented housing.
Err, why not build more housing so that housing is cheaper? You know, that’s how markets work. And by insisting that new housing is non-market of course you prevent market housing from getting cheaper even though you’ve just built more housing.
Twat.
Builders building market rate housing are trying to make a profit, and some will succeed and become unequal. Per the Guardian, that’s an even bigger problem than a lack of housing and high rents.
Why not stop the entry of the hordes of immigrants who are demanding more and more housing?
But I’d certainly agree with building more houses too.
This was even more sinister and smacked of Murphy:
One option for homeowners facing repossession or poverty due to unaffordable mortgages, as proposed in a recent report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, would be for the government to support social landlords to buy the homes of mortgaged homeowners, pay off their mortgages and convert the properties to the socially rented sector. The government could fund any negative equity gap and homeowners could continue to live in their properties as social tenants, paying a rent to the government. This would shift the risk caused by the rate rises away from individuals and on to the state – but in return the state would receive an equity stake and flow of rental income, and could expand the supply of affordable housing
Given what they have done by debanking Farage among others, this could well be adopted to deny anyone who is ‘unsound ‘on issues like big Trans, Climate Change and the desirability of any of the ‘DIE’ components housing. Truly people like this journalist embody the words of Bruce Dickinson:
‘The evil that men do lives on and on’
VP: That’s exactly what my local council did to the father of a friend in the ’60s.
“We want to clear the property from this area, we’ll compulsarily purchase your house and give you a council house.”
#Oooo, great, I’ll sell it and retire to somewhere.
“No, we’ll let you *rent* a council house”
So, steal asset, convert retirement of not having to pay for accommodation into lifetime of paying for accommodation to the people who have forced you into paying.
@ jgh
In the 1950s my local Socialist council compulsorily purchased a lot of houses for slum clearance and paid, in some cases, £2 for a house.
This was OK because the price had been set by the District Valuer.
Someone remind me who employs the District Valuer …
@john, judging by an event in my father’s finances in my boyhood the District Valuer might just have looked at the rent being paid and multiplied it by some standard factor. If the property was rent-controlled at thruppence a month (say) then you end up with valuations like a couple of quid.
Conversely, if the right to sell your house to the council is optional, there’ll be adverse selection: only people with houses in a terrible state will sell them to the council.
My step niece bought her council flat a long time ago but because it was in a block of flats she had to give the council the right to buy it back if she put it on the market. No problem, when the time came she got 3 valuations and the council accepted middle one.
The problem came when she needed to sell to buy somewhere else, the council moved at a pace that would have embarrassed the most incompetent solicitor and she lost one house because of their delays.