Robert Dark (Letters, 8 March) argues that what is desperately needed to deal with the UK housing problem is for “the government and councils to provide affordable homes for rent but with some new imaginative forms of tenancy”. If he looks at the work being done by Radical Routes, Triodos Bank and the Ecology Building Society to develop housing co-ops, he will see that tenancy without landlords is already being developed, but at a snail’s pace compared with other countries.
One mystery is why, for example, Nationwide, a mutual bank, instead of providing mortgages to housing co-ops (also mutuals) is providing finance to buy-to-let landlords who use assured shorthold tenancies to provide an extremely tenuous form of tenancy. Figures compiled by Shelter and YouGov indicate that 50,000 tenants are currently being evicted each year because the landlord claims to be selling up. Imaginative for the landlord, but not the tenant.
Roger Halford
Solihull, West Midlands
• Now that it is clear that Mrs Thatcher’s right-to-buy had little to do with “affordable” homes and much to do with turning council tenants into heavily indebted Tory voters, it is time to follow Scotland’s lead and repeal the legislation. As the main beneficiaries, it is hard to believe that the banks, which entered the mortgage market in the 1960s and now have an unpaid debt of £1.4trn (according to the Money Charity), did not help to dream up the property-owning democracy and repeal of the rent acts which places any control of landlords and rents firmly in the hands of the buy-to-let mortgagees.
As Robert Dark tells us, since 1980 council homes have been reduced to 2m and 40% of those 4.5m sold are owned by private landlords. Financial services, which are so vital to the British economy, have turned homes into speculative investments. Clearly the government, wedded to this new form of capitalism, will never undermine this cosy relationship and in consequence building new but never enough homes is seen as the only solution.
Henry Pryor
Hereford
• Westminster tube station is adorned by a large advertisement which proclaims that “five landlords signed up with Hostmaster every day in 2017 to unlock higher-paying tenants”. One wonders whether the prime minister’s belated interest in housing policy will extend to this aspect of life in the private rented sector.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
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