Right to buy for housing association tenants ‘not the right policy’

Housing bodies have warned the government against bringing back plans to introduce a ‘right to buy’ for housing association tenants. 

Weekend press reports said Boris Johnson was “very excited” about giving housing association tenants up to 70% discount on the market value of their homes. 

But the Chartered Institute of Housing director of policy and external affairs James Prestwich said while the body was “supportive” of measures to help people into homeownership “extending the right to buy to housing associations is not the right policy to achieve this”. 

He added: “We are at a point of crisis in this country, with over 1.1million households on waiting lists for social housing. We need more, not less, affordable social homes.”

Right to buy has led to an “erosion of the stock of social rented homes”,  Mr Prestwich said. 

David Cameron’s government tried to bring the same policy in in 2015 but after a pilot scheme in the Midlands it was never implemented. The pilot showed that a lack of land and insufficient funding from the sales meant it would be difficult to replace each home sold, as promised by the government. 

Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, pointed out the umbrella-body had agreed to the 2015 right to buy extension but only because of the government’s commitment to replace each home sold. 

“Our agreement with the government at that time was based on a clear set of principles, our red line being that every single social home sold would be replaced,” she said. But emphasised that it had been demonstrated this was difficult to achieve. 

She added: “Since this agreement was made the housing crisis has worsened, particularly for low-income families, as Michael Gove highlighted last week. Housing associations are also facing new financial challenges, including the urgent need to make all their buildings safe and decarbonise homes.”

Mark Perry, chief executive of VIVID, agreed: “The issue with the Right to Buy scheme is that it doesn’t address the fundamental problem we have in this country, which is a critical shortage of affordable homes. In fact, it’ll only make the problem worse by taking social rent homes out of the market for those that really need them.”

He added: “The country needs to invest where there is real housing need especially during a time of high economic stress – providing more affordable homes and supporting low-income families.”