The notion of Britain as a property-owning democracy is in tatters

The notion of Britain as a property-owning democracy is in tatters
Homelessness up. Housing benefit claims up. Housing waiting lists up. What happened to the Tory dream of home-ownership transforming the nation?

Deborah Orr
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 August 2011


It would be funny if it were not so terrible. Britain is 30 years into the grand Conservative project that was to transform the nation into a "property-owning democracy". To mark this great anniversary, a government-sponsored organisation, UK Asset Resolution, is about to embark on the highly patronising and paternalistic task of telephoning 30,000 mortgage-holders and telling them to spend less on nights out, Sky television, gym membership and mobile phones, and more on servicing their mortgages. It's safe to say that this is not what Margaret Thatcher had in mind when she promised that her privatisation policies would remove the state from people's personal lives. It hardly chimes with David Cameron's rhetoric either.

UK Asset Resolution. What a name. It sounds like a highly dodgy private company that buys debt, then intimidates people into paying it off at extortionate rates. But it isn't. UK Asset Resolution is the Treasury-owned holding company that was established last October to "support around 800,000 customers with £77bn of loans", customers who initially took out their mortgages with Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley. Both of those companies, of course, are now "taxpayer owned", after receiving more than £48.7bn in government loans.

Essentially, all these 800,000 people live in houses that are owned by the government, and have to pay the government every month if they wish to carry on living in them. Some of them – the riskier propositions – will also have to put up with presumptive lectures from strangers about their frivolous failure to understand their financial priorities. And they are not the only vulnerable "home owners" by any means. It is Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland, for example, not Northern Rock and B&B, that have the greatest exposure to customers whose mortgages are already larger than the value of their homes.

You'd imagine that the implosion of the "property-owning democracy" project was obvious to all. You'd have imagined that it had become obvious back in 1997, when highly visible homelessness was one of the factors that delivered a landslide election victory to Tony Blair. But no. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/31/tory-housing-idea-in-tatters

It steals from the poor and middle class to give to the rich.

they are contacting people with problems paying their mortgage...and the government doesnt own the 800k houses..
the article is nothing more than a far left rant... about as meaningful as a right wing screed on faux news

:boring:

:rofl:

People need affordable housing that meets their needs. It matters not at all whether they own or rent, what matters is that they can get a good place to live for what they have to spend.

As for using housing as a retirement savings plan for the lower and middle classes, that was never a good idea. We have now seen why. Many people ended up going broke in over-sized homes in badly-designed communities located far from where they worked.

And the rich got richer, but that goes without saying.