Years ago in the UK there was a considerable quantity of council owned properties, these were nice places to live with nice rents to pay. There was no shame in

Years ago in the UK there was a considerable quantity of council owned properties, these were nice places to live with nice rents to pay. There was no shame in living in a council house, but you wouldn't be buying it, so it was not yours. You wouldn't be evicted either or forced to pay through the nose. This worked as a baseline, if you had more money or wanted to live in a posh area (or just the countryside) then you could rent elsewhere. Or buy. Councils could extend their stock of housing and there could be benefits of scale, e.g. replace everyone's windows for double glazed at the same time on the whole street. In this market there was an anchor on house price inflation as well as market rents. Why pay double to live in somewhere not looked after just to line the pockets of a rent-seeker? Then Margaret Thatcher came along. Nowadays we don't have council housing. There is some but none is available. Councils aren't allowed to build/buy more. With 'right to buy' the council housing was sold on to rent-seekers, none of whom have any interest at all in the community and only have an interest in making money, not housing people. The rent-seekers have portfolios as bit as large as councils used to have in some instances. Social mobility is lost now that we have rent-seeker owned properties, you can't just move as easily as was possible with council owned housing. This has been great for the rent seekers as well as their banks. For people wanting to be part of the community, bring up a family and do legit work this has not been so good. Either you are a serf or a rent seeker. There was a time when it was not like that. The red carpet has been rolled out all the way for the rent seekers, the silly interest rates and notionally low inflation (which does not include rent) means that their capital accumulates, they can leverage and steal more homes from people who deserve to be 'on the ladder'. Normal working people are forced to pay ever higher sums of money to the rent seekers as they have no choice. So you have two people working to pay for a single bedroom flat, with no money to spare or kids or even cars. You would be really shocked if you saw how some people live in London, people that do service sector stuff have nothing. Pigeons fare better. People nowadays have no knowledge of how well a stock of council houses serves the community, all they know is the world of the rent seeker. Politicians 'demand' more affordable housing but that doesn't fix the problem, you need capital to deteriorate if invested in property, an anchor in rent prices and for people to be able to live not speculate. It is not hard to get right and not mankind's hardest problem. Apart from anything else having property as the only asset that accumulates is wrong, people should be investing capital in business, old and startup, not forcing the next generation out of their homes.