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By Root 3136 0

‘flexi-ownership’ under which public sector tenants unable to exercise the ‘Right to Buy’ — even with the large discounts available — would be able to acquire equity stakes in their homes that would increase as the years went by and whose value would be updated in line with local house prices. Initially, I had doubts about the idea — on financial grounds, in that people might choose to use this route rather than the ‘Right to Buy’ and sales and receipts would fall; on political grounds, in that those who had already exercised the ‘Right to Buy’ and made the sacrifices required to do so would be resentful. Both the DoE and the Treasury were strongly against. In Scotland, another variant on the same idea — called ‘Rents to Mortgages’ — had been devised. Under this, rent payments — less a sum for repair and maintenance — would be converted into mortgage repayments.

We discussed the possibilities of both schemes in the summer and autumn of 1988. Scotland was a different case from Wales, for — as I shall explain — home ownership was much lower. Another difference was that in Scotland the Government through ‘Scottish Homes’ was itself a substantial landlord: so no new legislation was needed. I therefore agreed to a Scottish experiment on these lines, while holding fire on Wales.

The ever ingenious Peter Walker now put his ingenuity to good use. He devised a similar Welsh scheme which would operate through the Development Board for Rural Wales at Newtown Powys. The DoE and the Treasury still objected on the ground that the idea could not in the end be limited to Wales and that if it were applied in England substantial ‘Right to Buy’ sales revenues would be lost. But I could see its political attractions; it was fairly modest, and, in any case, it was Peter Walker’s brainchild and I thought he should be allowed to go ahead. I agreed to this at the end of June 1989.

The most disturbing political issue in housing at this time, however, was homelessness. It should immediately be said that the alarmingly large figures for the ‘homeless’ did not by definition reflect the number of people without roofs over their heads. Rather, the published ‘homelessness’ figures described the number of people in certain statutorily determined ‘priority groups’ who were accepted for housing. In other words, far from being homeless they had homes provided by local councils. Sad as the cases of some of these people might be, the problem which worried the general public — and me too — was the growing number of people (especially young people) sleeping rough on the streets of London and other big cities, who were better described as ‘roofless’.

While it was certainly true that there was an insufficiency of short-term ‘direct access’ hostel accommodation — as opposed to the larger, more traditional hostels — and while it was true that the shortage of private rented accommodation had worsened because of rent control, this was essentially a problem of wider social, not housing, policy. Nor are behavioural problems solved by bricks and mortar. I was not prepared to endorse changes in social security benefits relating to the under-25s which were suggested by Tony Newton and the Social Security Department: I thought it vital that we should not add to the already too evident lure of the big city for young people. We wanted them back with their families, not in London living on benefits. I urged the Department of the Environment to bring in the voluntary organizations to see what they rather than the state could do. I was also convinced that far too many disturbed people, who should have been in institutions, had fallen through the central and local government safety net and found themselves with nowhere to go.

In November 1989 Chris Patten announced a package which provided £250 million over two years to London and the South-East, the areas with the worst problems, with help also to improve the management of empty properties by councils and housing associations. But I insisted that whatever Government did to help, there must be a stick as well as a carrot.