Britain is obsessed with home ownership. This might date back to our history of land ownership, class and colonial exploit but the fixation lives on, thanks in no small part to Thatcher’s introduction of the right to buy in 1980.
This weekend, both parties made their bids to reckon with the housing crisis, and both leaders, predictably, zeroed in on ownership. The Tories have for years declared they would transform “generation rent” into “generation buy” and Rishi Sunak is now considering bringing back help to buy – a 2013 Tory policy that ended last year – to win votes at the next election. He also recently announced he would scrap the house-building target of 300,000 every year in England, displaying a wilful ignorance of what is actually needed to plug the housing deficit. House-building alone won’t solve the crisis, but it will hugely contribute to some of the most urgent needs in this country – namely the 1.3 million people on English council house waiting lists in need of social rented homes, many of whom are privately renting and sliding into poverty. (Meanwhile, the homes available to rent in the UK fell by a third over the past 18 months.)
