Extending the ‘right to buy’ to housing association tenants, outlined in yesterday’s queen’s speech, will mean a worse housing crisis with less social housing available, warns UNISON.
“Solving the housing crisis requires a significant increase in all types of housing – particularly affordable social housing – to meet housing demand,” says UNISON national officer Simon Watson, “not selling housing association homes and depleting the nation’s social housing stock.”
As it is, “the acute shortage of housing is leading to spiralling housing costs, which families across the nation are struggling to meet.
“We are currently building less than half the homes we need,” noted Mr Watson, “which is why we need a massive public house building programme to tackle the housing crisis.”
Since 2012, UNISON has called for the government to commit to building 80,000 new local authority and housing association homes each year, as part of the 250,000 homes a year needed to tackle the housing shortage.
But instead, the government plans legislation in England and Wales that would force housing associations to sell existing social housing at a discount.
Although the Conservatives talk of replacing homes sold under the scheme on a one-to-one basis, UNISON does not believe that is possible.
The discount – plus the fact that current right-to-buy rules mean a third of the sale price goes to the Treasury – would mean fewer homes being built and would threaten the financial viability of many housing associations.
The union points out that the current right-to-buy scheme for council tenants has seen just one new home built for every 10 sold.
As a consequence:
- 17% of families live in social housing today, compared to 31% when the policy was introduced in 1980;
- 445,000 social homes have been sold in Scotland;
- 1.9m have been sold in England;
- Wales has seen a 45% reduction in social housing.
Mr Watson pledged that “UNISON will be campaigning to safeguard social housing stock for current and future generations – and for the housing association workforce to be protected from any impacts of the proposed extension of the right to buy.”
