lucky_jim wrote:Chopsen wrote:
summat
summat else.
Cheers. I see what it's getting at now. As it's stated in the article, and as I keep seeing people mentioning it like that, I think it is a bit misleading though. What most people mean by "affordable housing" these days is property to buy, not to rent. I appreciate that the term doesn't really differentiate between that and rented, but that's the context affordability tends to get debated in these days.
Either way, the property boom in the 90s under Labour, which saw property prices go up across the board, had more of an impact on what people pay now than anything Thatcher did. I once saw a chart [citation needed] showing how property prices had risen post war an indication of which party was in power at the time, and the rise during the mid-late 90s/early 2000's dwarves anything that occurred prior.
It's also a bit more complicated than "Thatcher sold the council house", though, as there was a massive boom in property prices, and investment in that boom, way back throughout the 70s before Thatcher ever came to power or sold a single council house. From my understanding, there was a massive *demand* to buy properties because of the growth in value. I'm sure some people who were quite happy to rent were a bit miffed, but then you can't please all of the people all of the time.
The cost of rental property, and the fact that state picks up the tab for social housing in that market, is a bit daft. That's been as a result of profiteering in the property market, and certainly selling council homes was a part of that phenomena. I don't think it's cause and effect though from what you say.
Edited by Chopsen at 15:18:16 17-09-2012
Edited by Chopsen at 15:30:56 17-09-2012
