James Gregory
This week Grant Shapps has hosted a ‘first-time buyer summit’ to think of imaginative ways of getting more households onto the first rung of the property ladder. The name of the game is the same as it was under the last Labour administration. Political success apparently relies on serving the aspiration to own.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, very few politicians would consider home ownership to be a ‘problem-tenure’ in itself; the only ‘problem’ is how to provide more of it. Except in times of recession and acute financial crisis, it is typically assumed that homeowners have taken a positive and one-way step on the path to independence and self-sufficiency. This apparent independence, of course, is typically contrasted with the alleged ‘dependence’ of social housing tenants and a range of social problems associated with the tenure.
This is a mistake, both politically and in terms of public policy. As we argue in a new TUC Touchstone paper to be published next Wednesday – ‘Can Housing Work for the Workers?’ – the sharp distinctions that we draw between owners and renters makes for bad policy.
