The Labour manifesto contains the pledge to build 150,000 new council houses every year for 5 years.
There were good arguments for council houses when slums were being cleared in the 50s, 60s and 70s when the country was recovering from the war, but the UK is a very different place now.
The vast majority of those who have lived on council estates are decent upstanding hard-working citizens. However, public housing schemes can have negative effects. They encourage the belief that it’s the state’s responsibility to provide homes for everyone.
People become lazy when there is no motivation to work to put a roof over their families heads. If they hadn’t been disincentivised, these people may have led happier, more successful and fulfilling lives. If they had had to strive to provide accommodation for themselves and their families, they and society would have been better off.
Allocating council houses is a nightmare.
Who should be offered a council house first, the homeless, the poor, families with children, families with large numbers of children, families with disabled children, families living in overcrowded accommodation, families with long-term unemployed parents, families with low-paid parents, families with only one parent?
A system for assessing those in most need will be devised and there will be a waiting list as there will be a limited number of homes available at any particular time.
People will become aware that to move up the list they will need to increase their amount of need. There will be many who will inevitably try to game the system.
Council housing estates are notoriously expensive to maintain. They are also difficult to manage and susceptible to anti-social problems.
Some tenants will run up arrears in the belief they will not be evicted as the council would still have to provide them with accommodation.
Some tenants will neglect their homes as they have no reason to look after them as they have no stake in the property and only rent them.
150,000 new houses will not come cheap. A very conservative figure to build 150,000 new homes over 5 years is £75billion and that’s before the costs of managing the estates are added in.
Rents will be subsidised and many tenants will be receiving housing benefit, so council housing is an ongoing drain on public resources.
Rather than building council houses, it would be better to spend the money on helping people turn their lives around or improve their employment prospects so they can stand on their own feet while contributing to society.
There needs to be a safety net for those who can’t look after themselves such as the mentally ill, but it would be far better to give people the ability to thrive rather than a reason to skive.