Right to buy - was a "good" idea, give a one time discount so you dont have to pay for someones housing for the rest of their life. The proceeds (75% of) were g

Right to buy - was a "good" idea, give a one time discount so you dont have to pay for someones housing for the rest of their life. The proceeds (75% of) were given to councils and they had a mandate to spend it replacing the housing stock sold off. I have no idea where it went wrong, but it did. > At the same time councils were prevented from reinvesting that capital in the construction of new housing stock. They were formerly obligated to reinvest that capital in the construction of new housing stock. Current legislation forces the councils to replace the stock and gives councils 100% of the proceeds, but again it doest appear to work. > Privately rented flats I have seen nightmare land lords - and nightmare tenants. Its a wild unreglulated system full of the worst of humanity, along with estate agents. I have no solutions. > Private builders are incentivised to invest where demand is currently hottest leaving other regions to deteriorate Unironically I expect that government would build in the same places ... as these places have the greatest demands for social housing as well as being the hottest regions. Relocating people from "their home" to areas where the is less demand is one of the unacceptable solutions that I would propose and would be considered to be heartlessly destroying communities. The social housing system is broken, social houses are free houses for life and its not uncommon to see multiple generations of families never live in any different environment. People who grew up in social housing in Kensington expect that they and future generations should be housed in Kensington. Geographic mobility is nearly 0 as well. For those that do want to move to somewhere else, its a new council to apply to a new housing association, if you give up your (social) house in one place you go to the back of the queue. > disposable income only recently recovered to 1960s levels, both members of the household are now working The not working poor, the working poor and incresingly the middle classes are now poor in the UK. If you want to buy a home in the UK you can, there are lots of them for sale, but even if you reduced the number on the asking price sticker by 20%, 30% even 50% people just dont have the money. At 50% off though, the litteral bricks and wood of the house is worth more than that, let alone the land / labour etc to make a house.