More than 40% of council homes sold under RTB are now owned by private landlords
Posted 10.05.24
New Economics Foundation: Further reading
41% of all council homes sold under the Right to Buy (RTB) scheme are now being let on the private market, according to research by the New Economics Foundation (NEF).
NEF Freedom of Information requests found that the number of homes bought under RTB and now in the private sector has risen by 3.2 percentage points since 2014/?15, meaning around 109,000 more former council homes are now being let privately.
The report argues that the RTB scheme has been a major contributing factor to the UK's housing crisis. Since the scheme's introduction in 1980, the proportion of social renters has almost halved.
Tenants who would have previously been housed in social homes are now forced to rely on expensive, insecure and often poor-quality homes being let by private landlords.
As well as depleting the availability of genuinely affordable homes, the report highlights how the RTB scheme is increasingly failing to achieve its stated goal of increasing owner occupation.
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