4 ms·

As someone old enough to remember right-to-buy, and old enough to have grandparents in World War 2. Both sets of grandparents lost their own houses in the Blit

As someone old enough to remember right-to-buy, and old enough to have grandparents in World War 2. Both sets of grandparents lost their own houses in the Blitz. They were subsequently housed in council houses, and received nothing for their destroyed houses other than a token payment from the state. There was no insurance back then. When they were then able to buy their council homes, both of my grandparents did that and finally owned their own homes again. Right-to-buy wasn't this 'awful' thing lots of people made it out to be.

dukeyukey 3y ago
Right-to-buy isn't fundamentally bad. What's bad about it is how much local councils lose on the deal.
g5g5g5g5 3y ago
It's entirely possible that certain groups benefitted from a policy that was awful for society at large. If it benefitted absolutely no one, it wouldn't have existed in the first place.
ricardo81 3y ago
I have no problem with it. I'm fortunate in that my own parents took advantage of it and I'll likely inherit it with my siblings. Part of what I was meaning is that a lot of people did take advantage of it from the boomer gen but they're staying in homes bigger than they necessarily need, maybe just a 'bump' of old activity that will even out over the next 10-20 years.
seabass-labrax 3y ago
I think wartime just has to be considered an edge case here. There was no way that Britain could have afforded to rebuild like-for-like after the war, and compensation for bomb damage couldn't have been done fairly. Who gets priority? Do Lord and Lady Middlecott have their stately home rebuilt first? Or does it start with the least valuable property and work upwards, meaning that Mr. Horace Hodge's garden shed is number one to be restored? It clearly can't be exactly proportional, otherwise his Lordship would get one wing of his mansion and Horace would get one wall of his shed, which helps nobody. I don't think it's callous of me to suggest that providing council housing for those like your grandparents was the only humane thing to do that the country could have afforded. Rather than directly restoring the pre-war social order, the post-war system was orientated towards comfortably housing the masses, and it did that with documented success.

dukeyukey 3y ago

Right-to-buy isn't fundamentally bad. What's bad about it is how much local councils lose on the deal.

g5g5g5g5 3y ago

It's entirely possible that certain groups benefitted from a policy that was awful for society at large. If it benefitted absolutely no one, it wouldn't have existed in the first place.

ricardo81 3y ago

I have no problem with it. I'm fortunate in that my own parents took advantage of it and I'll likely inherit it with my siblings. Part of what I was meaning is that a lot of people did take advantage of it from the boomer gen but they're staying in homes bigger than they necessarily need, maybe just a 'bump' of old activity that will even out over the next 10-20 years.

seabass-labrax 3y ago

I think wartime just has to be considered an edge case here. There was no way that Britain could have afforded to rebuild like-for-like after the war, and compensation for bomb damage couldn't have been done fairly. Who gets priority? Do Lord and Lady Middlecott have their stately home rebuilt first? Or does it start with the least valuable property and work upwards, meaning that Mr. Horace Hodge's garden shed is number one to be restored? It clearly can't be exactly proportional, otherwise his Lordship would get one wing of his mansion and Horace would get one wall of his shed, which helps nobody. I don't think it's callous of me to suggest that providing council housing for those like your grandparents was the only humane thing to do that the country could have afforded. Rather than directly restoring the pre-war social order, the post-war system was orientated towards comfortably housing the masses, and it did that with documented success.