Cameron's Property Policy is Theft

[Tim Lund]

I'm far from tribally anti-Conservative, but this morning I am outraged by David Cameron's announcement about extending Right to Buy to Housing Association tenants.

Election 2015: David Cameron to pledge right-to-buy extension

Housing Associations may have their weaknesses, but they do house people, and have experience of what is involved in doing so on a large scale. Extending RTB to their tenants is theft - the crude expropriation of assets from a group of organisations, probably seen as unfriendly to the Conservatives, for the sake of last minute attempt to buying a few votes. It plays to a sentimental idea that individuals can always do things better for themselves - in this case property management - than big organisations, but that really is not very plausible, and becomes less so as people live in higher concentrations in cities.

It's good to have an Office for Budget Responsibility, but does its remit only cover the government's own finances? Perhaps it should be extended to require behaving responsibly with the finances of others. OK - that's an idea which has wider ramifications, and it's not as if other parties don't also come up with unfair proposals, so I'll leave that for now. But this one, which will just make the problem of getting more houses built even harder, seems at the moment the outstanding example of what politicians should not do.

[Kirkdalian]

I am in no way tribally anti-Conservative either, but this policy is absolute madness, we are still suffering the legacy of the first wave of RTB! Between this and their genius idea to inflate house prices at the taxpayers' expense by offering to top up ISAs for first-time buyers, anyone would think they want to conserve the current state of the property market/ housing crisis, depending on your position.

[alywin]

I was all in favour of RTB first time around, but that was because I blithely assumed that the money made would be ploughed back into the provision of new council housing. More fool me ...

[Tim Lund]

So - it may not actually be theft, but nationalisation



Here's the link, but behind the FT paywall

[Tim Lund]

And thanks for this link to Colin Wiles

Colin Wiles: Nationalise then privatise