Thread by @MWHoyle19

Social housing and right to buy, a thread.

It is often said that the right to buy, under the Housing Act 1980, killed off social housing in the UK because it also prohibited the use of the receipts to build more social housing. One finds this claim on e.g. Wikipedia.
1/n

However, if one looks at the data, we see a massive fall in social housing completions starting before the HA 1980 comes into effect at the end of 1981. This cannot have been directly caused by right to buy. Maybe the restrictions on spending on council houses came earlier? 2/n

It was quite difficult to find the source of the restriction, but this Lords Library paper actually says that the restriction was not imposed until 1989. Having checked the statute, that appears to be correct. 2/n

lordslibrary.parliament.uk/right-to-buy-p…

The Lords Library paper suggests that the decline in social housebuilding began in 1980. As one can see from the graph, i'm not sure that is correct. Finishes fell below 100k for the first time in 1979. By the time the HA 1980 took effect, it was down to 75k 3/n

And by the time the 1989 Act restricted the use of receipts to paying down debt, that number had fallen to almost nothing anyway. There was an almost decade long period where councils could use receipts to fund building but didn't. Why?

4/n

In 1977, the Labour government introduced the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act. This radically changed the law on local authority obligations with regards to housing. In practice, it meant local authorities were bound to use their free housing stock to house according to need. 5/n

It essentially meant council housing was no longer to be given to families or persons who could rent in the private sector (and those who already had council houses would, from 1980, exercise their right to buy). 6/n

There is no doubt the Act was pursuing a pressing moral concern, and in a time where housing was relatively cheap and relatively plentiful, it made good sense.

The reaction of local authorities though, was not positive. 7/n

The Bill was labelled a "charter for scroungers and scrimshankers" by Tory MPs in the Commons, and one commentator, writing in Housing Studies in 1989, noted that "few authorities responded to the Act with any enthusiasm". 8/n

Despite the fury from Tory MPs in the Commons in 1977, the Thatcher government made essentially no changes to the 1977 Act, incorporating its scheme into a new Housing Act in 1985. Why? It might be cynical, but the answer is that it made social housing very unpopular. 9/n

As soon as the 1977 Act was passed, the number of social houses built began to fall. While 630k social houses were built in 1975-1980, the number of new council houses was by 1979 well below 100k a year 10/n

Once social housing ceased to be for everyone, and council resented the obligations placed upon them, the political will to get social housing built at a local level appears essentially to have collapsed, and never recovered since. 11/11

Coda: we absolutely should house those in need. But if the result of the 1977 approach combined with the TCPAs is to leave us with less housing available overall, then that ultimately helps no one. We don't even need to repeal the 1977 Act if we just build more private housing!