Shelter boss slams PM’s housing association right-to-buy plans as ‘gimmick’

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans to allow housing association tenants to buy their properties at knock down prices under right-to-buy has been slammed as a “dangerous gimmick” by the boss of one of Britain’s largest homeless charities Shelter.

Polly Neate, chief executive of the charity said that the plans announced today were “baffling” and “unworkable” and would sell off the “little truly affordable” housing left.

She carpeted the current Conservative government for wasting time on “failed policies”.

Reeling from a narrow miss on a vote of no confidence and the recent Partygate scandal, the PM has set out a plan to allow lower-paid workers to be able to use housing benefits to buy their homes taking a significant amount of already squeezed housing stock out of the market.

This is despite a questionable record on introducing required new housing stock into the market under his government in what is set to be a highly explosive policy.

Nearly a quarter of a million people in the UK are currently experiencing the worst forms of homelessness, including rough sleeping, sleeping in vans and sheds, and being placed in bed and breakfast accommodation. There are currently more than one million families on the waiting lists for UK councils needing permanent housing.

In the Conservative Party manifesto, following its election victory in 2019, Johnson’s party pledged to build 300,000 homes a year a target that it is understood to have woefully missed.

The PM is facing increased pressure to get a grip on the rampant cost of living crisis and attempt to attract voters from less affluent socio demographic groups.

He is set to argue today that that the £30 billion in housing benefit that currently is paid toward rent could help people secure and pay for mortgages.

Neate said: “Hatching reckless plans to extend right to buy will put our rapidly shrinking supply of social homes at even greater risk.

“For decades the promise to replace every social home sold off through right to buy has flopped. If these plans progress we will remain stuck in the same destructive cycle of selling off and knocking down thousands more social homes than get built each year.

“The maths doesn’t add up: why try to sell off what little truly affordable housing is left - at great expense - when homelessness is rising and over a million households are stuck on the waiting list.

“The government needs to stop wasting time on the failed policies of the past and start building more of the secure social homes this country actually needs.”