The Tories’ latest “right to buy” plan will make the housing crisis worse – because it’s about votes not homes

Britain is facing a housing crisis. Nine million people are trapped in increasingly unaffordable private rented accommodation. The price of the average family home is moving beyond the means of an entire generation. Young people live in overcrowded and cramped housing because it’s all they can afford. So few homes are being built that the problem is getting worse, not better.

So when there’s a crisis involving high rents and a shortage of homes, what do you do? Well if you’re the Tory Party, you announce a policy that will reduce the number of affordable homes for rent. This is the politics of the madhouse.

This morning Cameron will announce plans to force councils to sell off homes in more desirable areas, whilst forcing housing associations into right to buy. The net result? Fewer social homes when the need for such housing has never been greater.

I’d call Tory housing plans dangerously stupid and completely counterproductive – but the worst bit is they know exactly what they’re doing. In fact, Tory plans to extend “right to buy” to housing associations is being explicitly briefed to the papers as an electoral ploy to try and win working class voters to the Tory cause. It’s not about what’s best for the country, it’s about what’s best for the Tory Party. Right to buy? This sounds more like right to buy votes, if you will.

Labour’s response – predictably and somewhat limply – was that this is another unfunded spending commitment. That may well be the case, but the reality is far worse than a simple uncosted pledge. This is repeating the dogmatic ideology of the past that led to a generation locked out of home ownership, and where social housing was wilfully turned into accommodation of last resort.

But that’s only if the Tory plan to force housing associations to sell their properties will even work. A housing association isn’t part of the government – they’re private not-for-profit entities (many of which are charities) that exist to provide and maintain social housing. Compelling private organisations to sell properties at knock down rates seems like a strange thing for a Conservative party to do – but more than that, it’s likely to be challenged in the courts.

And what of the 9 million people renting in the private sector? Private renting has boomed in the post-Thatcher years (almost as if there were some correlation with her attacks on council housing and the first right to buy cheme). Millions are in stuck in the private rented sector while they save – perhaps in vain – to try and afford a home of their own. What does today’s announcement do for them? Will they be able to forcibly purchase their home from their buy-to-let landlord at a knockdown price? No – of course not. Will they be able to get into social and affordable housing? No – they’re be fewer of those homes now. And the estimated five million people on the social housing waiting list – like this family of four, living in a single room – what happens to them? Their wait for decent housing gets even longer.

Of course what the Tories will never tell you is that by reducing the available social housing stock, more people will be forced into the (more expensive) private rented sector. Many will rely on housing benefit. And as a result, the welfare bill will increase. Meanwhile – I’m sure you’ll all be shocked to hear – it seems that the Tory housing plan involves any new social housing will be built in cheaper areas. So housing in more expensive areas will be forcibly sold, and any replacement housing will appear elsewhere.

It’s social cleansing by any other name.

At best, this is a dangerously misguided policy that fails to understand the nature of the housing market and the current housing crisis. At worst, it’s a ploy to drive the low paid out of richer areas whilst attempting to offer an unfunded bung to thousands of people in marginal seats. And it does nothing to solve the housing crisis – it’ll only make it worse.