This is possibly the
biggest joke of them all. Housing associations are independent organisations.
Offering their assets for sale at a discount (whether topped up by the
government or not) is state appropriation of private property. It conflicts
directly with (supposedly) deeply-held Conservative beliefs in the sanctity of
private property. Conservatives who think that taxes are theft should be
outraged about this one.
Nationalisation
of private organisations is deeply anti-Conservative. If they think that the
state is better at deciding what to do with property, why so keen on
privatising education and the NHS, or on the inefficient railways we have now?
The
people able to afford even discounted homes are actually relatively well-off.
They need no further help, although they will of course welcome it. They’re not
super-rich by any means. But it is the people without any savings at all for a
deposit, or who would be turned down for a mortgage because they have no steady
job at all, who need help. There are plenty of poor people not in housing
association property.
If it
really is a gross injustice that people pay rent for years on end without
getting any asset from it, the Conservatives should introduce the right to buy
for all renters, including of private accommodation. That would certainly help
spread housing ownership to housing users. I suspect that the large numbers of
property investors and landlords in the party might object.
Right-to-buy
is vote-buying, except it’s at an astonishing price (tens of thousands per
vote) and it’s taxpayers’ or charities’ money, not party money. Not that that
matters, because if they’d been only marginally less subtle about it and
offered money from any source for people’s votes it would have been a criminal
offence and a scandal.
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