Labour Selling Council Houses.

[webbo3]

Did labour come up with the idea of selling council houses in their manifesto back in the 50s but failed to get elected.

[Buenchico]

Quote:
"Local authorities had had the ability to sell council houses to their tenants since the Housing Act 1936, but until the early 1970s such sales were limited: between 1957 and 1964 some 16,000 council houses were sold in England. The Labour Party initially proposed the idea of the right of tenants to own the house they live in, in their manifesto for the 1959 general election which they lost".

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Buy

[webbo3]

Thanks Chris.

[Togo]

Yes. But until Mrs Thatcher rightly made it mandatory on request by the tenant they only sold them to their chums or each other. My how the lefties howled.

[Sunk]

As Chris states, tenants had the right to buy their houses from 1936, and small numbers were sold in the 60s and 70s.

The reason sales took off under Thatcher was because the houses were sold off vastly under their market value. A huge discount depending on the number of years the tenant had lived in the property, was attached to the price. In effect the housing stock was sold at many thousands of pounds under the market value.

The other downside was that councils were forbidden from using the proceeds of council house sales, to build new homes. The legacy of that is a housing shortage and very high house prices.

[Old_Geezer]

Bribing the public by offering them cut price public owned housing can never be honestly described as "rightly made". It was theft from the majority to gift the minority. It was one of many things she did that showed how immorally she was prepared to act.

[dance2trance]

Yes it was covered in Netflix's THE CROWN.

[barry1010]

My in-laws bought their council house from Birmingham City Council in the late 1960s. I can assure you they were not 'chums' of anybody on the council - nor anyone else with any influence over the sale of houses.
Father in law was a truck driver and MIL was a housewife. Several of their neighbours also bought their council homes at around the same time - they were nice houses in good repair.

[woofgang]

Sunk I think there are two things here. The "right to sell" came much earlier than the "right to buy" and IIRC, the right to buy came with discounts for existing tenants of longstanding.

[New Judge]

//The other downside was that councils were forbidden from using the proceeds of council house sales,...//

That wasn't a downside, it as one of the principle advantages. The idea was to remove from Local Authorities the burden of having to provide and maintain properties for which they received considerably less than the market rent. There is no reason why taxpayers should subsidise housing to such an enormous degree. The situation now is little different because although there are far fewer "social" properties the taxpayer is still facing enormous costs of housing via Housing Benefit. But that seems to be decreasing. In 2014-15 it cost £25bn; last year to was down to "only" £18bn.

[fcc]

Thatcher brought in the right to buy so working class people would
get a mortgage to buy their council house and stop them keep going on strike at the drop of a hat.