In June, PM Boris Johnson (soon to be ex) announced that he would make it possible for more social housing tenants to buy their properties. Now, on paper, this sounds amazing, doesn’t it? More affordable housing, longer-term tenants, and it feeds into the fairer private rented sector white paper. But scratch behind the surface, and there are a lot of problems with this proposal.
Within social housing (think Council, housing associations), there is a massive demand for housing. When more people buy their houses, this leads to a decrease in the stock that they have that is available for tenants. So this creates a massive demand for properties. More and more people require social housing, and these organisations are unable to cope with this demand. They clearly can’t buy at the rate needed. And with the Government not providing increased financial support for this, then social housing associations have limited options.
They then turn to private landlords to help support them. They subcontract out. This is all good and well for landlords (I am sure this is what you are thinking!), but when landlords are struggling with demand from tenants, then this is a vicious cycle.
So, simply put, more houses sold to tenants, no increase in social housing stock, increased waiting times for tenants, and more pressure on landlords.
This is a wholly linked chain; one part plays into the other, and unfortunately, there are no quick fixes.