"The crippling cost" of right to buy

This article on the hidden consequences of the Conservative right to buy policy from the BBC is really worth reading. The couple in question: Mr and Mrs Okwalinga are Ugandan refugees who came to this country - not, as refugees are typically caricatured, living off benefits - but to work hard and get on. He was earning £18,000 and she was setting up a catering business.

They believed that owning a home was a social responsibility: they wanted to leave a nest egg to their children and have the independence of investing in their home. Familiar stuff to many of us. Exactly the sort of person targeted by the Tories for their right-to-buy dream.

Unfortunately, Mr and Mrs Okwalinga are now struggling to keep their home because of a sub-prime mortgage lender demanding absurd amounts in interest payments after their fixed term deal ended. The Courts appear to have sided with the lender.

Now you may say that this isn't a fault of right-to-buy: it could happen to anyone with a mortgage. And that's true. But in this instance, right to buy is repsonisble for two problems:

First, it has halved the amount of affordable housing available to support families like the Okwalingas should they lose their home - because the critical failure of right to buy was that it placed no obligation on local authorities to replace the homes they sold off. I've never opposed the sale of council homes; I have always opposed the failure to replace them. Here in Wandsworth, the number of affordable homes to rent has halved from over 32,000 to barely 16,000 in the last 25 years. And that's nothing short of a housing catastrophe.

And second, we have to put an end to the stigma that the Conservatives created that renting social housing from a council or housing association somehow represents a failure or absence of success. I know that most people, given the choice, would probably prefer to own their home (I'm one of them), but it's not right or viable for everyone, especially in London where house prices are so much higher than everywhere else.

For those, we have to restore a viable, vibrant and flexible affordable housing sector that provides decent homes, not ones tacked on to the poorest-quality corners of luxury developments.

We should start by imposing a duty on every council that for every local authority home they sell off they have to build TWO new ones for rent. That's the first piece of legislation I would press for if elected as MP for Putney, Roehampton and Southfields.