Letter: Why Is There So Little Common Sense On Housing?

Published on: 6 Aug, 2017
Updated on: 6 Aug, 2017

From Ben Paton

In response to: Perhaps The Establishment Housing Policy Facade Is Crumbling

Why is it that politicians have so much dogma and so little common sense?

Is it so difficult to grasp that council housing is an important national resource and a social asset that should be managed on a sustainable basis for future generations? Is it so hard to understand that people who are genuinely hardup do not have the capital resources to buy a house and need to rent one? Isn’t it obvious that selling social housing off at large discounts to replacement cost is not sustainable?

Instead the Conservatives, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats have fallen under the spell of fantasy ‘affordable’ housing. This is government by seductive labels rather than by hard reality, something Tony Blair was so expert at.

Call it what you like, but it ain’t affordable. The cosy consensus around “affordable housing” is a wasteful delusion that does not help the people who need help.

So called “affordable housing” helps property developers who make easy pickings arbitraging changes of use of land. Developers don’t need government assistance and they certainly don’t need government collusion in the most profitable arbitrage of them all – despoiling our countryside.