‘Social housing stock should be protected at all costs’

• I AM so tired of witnessing the negative impact of the abhorrent right to buy scheme.

Since its introduction in 1980 my understanding is we have never had the two-for-one we were promised, two new social properties built to replace every property sold under it.

Don’t mention “affordable” housing. That is not the same as genuine social housing.

Indeed I have often seen property for sale described as “affordable”, you know, the small amount of less shiny flats in all those big developments.

But the point is, people in need of social housing can’t afford to buy at all regardless of whether a property carries that golden moniker “affordable”.

The council’s own website tells us they have over 7,600 households on the waiting list at present. But elsewhere on the same site we learn that they have proudly sold off over 10,000 properties through this scheme since 1980.

However the scheme is far more rotten, I have recently met two people who have sold properties back to the council for profits around £200k.

Good luck to them. But consider for a moment the cycle of loss. The council will no doubt refurbish and then house new tenants in these properties, who in turn may decide to exercise their right to buy, and then after a decade again sell back to the council for another £200k profit! This kind of incompetence takes the biscuit.

One final anecdotal example.

I live in a dilapidated ex-council flat. You know the type, rust from the taps, riddled with damp, falling to pieces, sold through the right to buy. I pay a private landlord £1,280 for the pleasure of inhabiting this “glorious” studio while my neighbour, in an identical flat, pays around 25 per cent of my rent.

So the breakdown of this business master stroke from the council by my reckoning is… sell off a property at a discounted rate, most likely only receiving a percentage of the receipts, since often a significant portion of right to buy earnings do not go back into housing as one might hope.

When I moved in I was homeless, so the council made my landlord an incentive payment. Finally, being on a low income, I receive benefits which go toward my rent.

Yet more money out of the council’s pocket and into a private landlord’s. Keeping the property would have meant a small income stream, I would certainly be able to afford my full rent in a council property, as opposed to losing an asset and paying out benefits.

Like the National Health Service, social housing should be seen as an essential and protected public service, not a commodity for profiteering and rampant greed.

Social housing stock should be protected at all costs. Leave our social housing for the next poor soul in need.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED, NW1