11 April 2003
Moves to encourage home ownership should not make the same mistakes as the right to buy scheme by reducing properties available for rent, the chair of the Housing Corporation warned this week.
Baroness Dean, who is chairing a home ownership task force on behalf of the government, told landlords and planners that she appreciated some housing association tenants wished to own their homes in the same way as council tenants.
'We must overcome barriers that stop them doing that – without leading to the depletion of rented stock in the same way as under right to buy,' she told the Southeast regional housing conference in St Albans on April 7.
More than 1.5 million council homes have been sold since right to buy was introduced in 1980.
The scheme has been blamed by the housing charity Shelter for the dramatic increase in people living in temporary accommodation, including bed and breakfast, since Labour came to power in 1997.
In the past six years, the number of families in England without a permanent home has doubled.
Alastair Jackson, Shelter's director of policy, pointed to the lack of affordable housing for rent and said it was unlikely that low-cost home ownership schemes would help many people on the homeless register – at least until they found jobs.
'It's right to buy that is taking away the supply of re-lets,' he said.
PFapr2003
