The Right
to Buy
and The Right
to Buy Back
Emily Thornberry M.P. (above) should get inspiration
for another tweet from an opinion poll in yesterday`s Times newspaper. The YouGov
poll shows that most British people would like the energy companies and the
railways to be bought back into public ownership.
Mrs
Thornberry who was furiously
attacked last week as snobbish following her tweet about the White Van
Man in Rochester would probably agree with the poll. The rip-off energy
companies are a disgrace and you need a second mortgage
to afford to travel by train.
But what about another
privatisation that Mrs Thornberry showed a lot of interest , a privatisation
that has become just as unpopular as the
energy companies and the railways? That is the privatisation of social housing,
particularly privatisation by the bossy and autocratic housing associations?
Housing associations are still as
bossy as ever and just as much in need of democracy as they were when Mrs Thornberry introduced a private
member`s bill in the House of Commons to make them more democratic. Sadly, the
bill failed to become law.
Mrs Thornberry, M.P. for Islington South and Finsbury said at that time
that most MPs felt that tenants' opinions were not being listened to by housing associations. She said: I have
estates in my constituency where tenants are pulling their hair out.”
Riverside Housing Association
tenants and leaseholders in Carlisle and Longtown are still pulling their hair
out.
Their annoyance and anger is about the failures of their housing
association landlord, the uncaring and inefficient Liverpool-based Riverside
Housing Association with its 50,000 homes, many of them in the Carlisle and
Longtown areas.
Two reports this week aim to stop that hair pulling, The
reports want social housing to move on...
but to starkly different futures
The future seen by the first
report- from the think-tank Policy Exchange-
is a future of more and more
privatisation. Housing associations, it
recommends should become free housing associations, possibly eventually ending up with a stock market quotation.
(The homeless charity Shelter will have none of that. Shelter says in reply:`Housing
associations are being forced to chose between
what is good for their balance sheets and what is good for the people they were
set up to help. Who will provide the new homes
for the increasing number of needy people who can’t afford the market?)
The future seen by the second
report - from the London borough of Enfield - wants an end to privatisation and an end to Right to Buy which was brought in by Mrs Thatcher 30 years
ago with big discounts for tenants.
Right to Buy decimated social housing. But many tenants
have become wealthy after selling their
former council house homes at a massive profit.
Enfield has
decided to try to end all this .It is to borrow up to £100m to buy and renovate homes, before transferring
them to a separate company it has set
up.They would then be made free of Right to Buy.
This company will lease these properties at low rates to cut down the
7,700 people now in Enfield temporary
accommodation, each costing up to £80 a night. There will be another big saving - 25 per cent off
the council`s total temporary accommodation bill.
A council spokesman said;”Under Right to Buy we are
forced to sell off our social housing at a bigger discount than ever and at the
same time we are forced to pay bigger costs than ever for temporary accommodation to house those people that social
housing was created for. It just didn`t make sense. “
Enfield is Labour controlled, and Mrs Thornberry is
from the same party. Labour once opposed Right to Buy.
Mrs Thornberry wants to reform housing associations.
But many people consider housing associations
are already too full of flaws and are beyond reform.
Mrs Thornberry`s White Van Man tweet was :"Images from Rochester".
Her next tweet should be:" Images from Enfield."
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