Having a roof over our heads is a right not a luxury in my view.
I accept government and council cash should be spent ensuring that people are not living on the streets and they have decent accommodation to live in.
And that’s often in the form of council houses, publicly-funded homes built for eligible people who need them.
I think council houses are one of our most important public assets - they are a vital provision for people who may not be able to afford ever-rising private rents or mortgages and have no alternative but to apply for a council house.
To me council housing is very much about need - not wants and desires of home ownership. They’re a safety net you may one day need.
So I’ve never understood why a government would introduce a policy which allows them to be sold off and forever removed from the housing supply chain for those who need it.
This week I was involved in co-writing a story about the hefty discounts offered to people who later buy the council house they were offered when they truly needed it.
I’d been inspired to explore the issue after reading a blog a few months back by Kirklees Labour that revealed that a local man bought his elderly parents’ council house for them, then charged them rent, then was surprised their bid for housing benefit was rejected so he was considering evicting them so they would qualify for a council bungalow.
It firstly made me wonder what kind of son he was.
It secondly made me think about the deal offered to people buying council houses and I wondered how many had been sold so I asked Kirklees the questions and got some surprising answers back.
We discovered some people received a 70% discount on the market value of a council house - just because at one point in their life they needed the State to help them with housing.
The discounts offered are eye-watering - one topped nearly £78,000 and there were plenty who got discounts between £60,000 and £70,000.
I’ll state now, Kirklees Council are not to blame for this, they’re following government orders.
Previous governments decided that people could buy their council house and no-one has scrapped the idea since.
Kirklees only gets to keep a third of the sale price, so it’s hardly surprising they don’t have millions to re-invest in new council houses to replace the 4,235 they’ve had no option but to sell so far.
We do have a housing crisis - so many young people are not able to get on the property ladder without a loan from their parents and not every parent is in a position to help.
That’s why we need good quality and affordable council houses.
We still have people who have little or no income who are struggling to get a council house, people stuck in unsuitable private accommodation due to medical issues or disability and we still have people sleeping without a roof over their head.
So what’s the answer?
Do we need to re-assess if everyone living in a council house meets eligibility criteria and make them available only to those who do?
I’m not a fan of endless re-assessments.
But are the people who truly need them getting them? If people can afford to buy then the answer is no.
I think if councils were allowed to sell the houses at market value and keep 100% of the sale to re-invest then I could see a way out of this, but as it stands we as a society lose every time a council house is sold.
It’s one less home for someone facing difficulty in their life, it’s one less roof to offer shelter to someone.
And for as long as we have people needing a roof over their head, our council housing should remain that - owned by the council.
