I write in response to your article (Something is stirring in England: right to buy looks imperilled, and not a moment too soon, 12 May). Whoever wins the election will face a housing crisis that is not easy to fathom a way out of. Right to buy, along with buy-to-let mortgages, has created wealth for some at the expense of others. Social renters and “Generation Rent” are left out of the equation.
I was born into the slummiest part of London’s Notting Hill. So slummy that it could not be saved for the middle-class colonisation of Notting Hill that overran the former poor housing stock and transformed it to a romcom film set. In the 1970s, the local authority pulled down not just our house but our street, and the streets around it, replacing it with a large social housing estate.
Ten years ago, I visited one of the flats built on my old streets. It was no longer social housing. It had been bought under the Thatcher-hatched right-to-buy scheme by a tenant, and eventually sold on to a woman who lived in the country, and rented it out.
My slum has gone and the social housing replacement has not fulfilled the promises it was intended to address. While enriching some, right to buy and buy to let have done untold harm to the aspirations of those who want to live securely.
John Bird
Founder, the Big Issue
