Council homes no cure for housing ills

Housing charity Shelter is again calling for more council house building, claiming "right to buy" robbed society of accessible housing (your report, 14 January). I wonder if Shelter has looked at the maths of this backward-looking idea of the state as landlord?

In my area (Midlothian) the Labour council is building council houses again. The cost (ie, taxpayer subsidy) is around 100,000 each, and tenants pay a little over 1,500 a year to live in them. Maintenance is free and, effectively, low-income households pay no rent.

Occupation is guaranteed for life and for the successor tenant. It may be over 60 years before a new tenant can be placed in the property. These properties are thus hardly ever available for sorting housing shortage/price issues, and contribute to labour immobility.

The inequity of this arrangement for a select few tenants, compared to the prospects for many couples paying off a typical mortgage on a comparable owner-occupied house, is clear. The subsidy involved for one group but not the other is the real robbery.

Right-to-buy has nothing to do with the problem. At these rent levels, tenants would have chosen to stay in council houses if buying at a discount was not possible. Shelter talks as if purchased council houses became unoccupied. In fact they were sold according to the rules of a flexible housing market, not the rigidity of council landlordism.

Shelter should instead advocate rewards for those vacating existing council properties, especially larger houses when tenants no longer need the space. This could free up this costly and inflexible component of our housing stock at a fraction of new-build expense.

PETER SMAILL

Currie Mains

Borthwick, Midlothian