I have discussed the Thatcher's "right to buy" scheme many times on Ripped-Off Britain ( R.O.B. ), ( click on the banner below ), and over the years all of the suspected fears attached to this policy have come to fruition.
Things are so bad in my beloved Scotland that many thousands of people who went for the right to buy scheme, who now find that they can no longer afford to pay a mortgage, are either suffering repossession of their homes or are reverting to rentable housing by selling back their homes to the councils and housing associations using what is called the Mortgage to Rent, ( MTR ), scheme.
Since the original right to buy scheme came into force many familes have been made homeless because they took on mortgages that they simply could not afford.
It is reasonable that many people wanted to own their own homes as that is the desire for people who see ownership as the ultimate safety net but it is now reckoned that the process of heavy discounts that were paid to the people who took up the RTB scheme encouraged many who could not afford to do this, to take a massive risk.
Now with the direct effects of the recession and the swingeing cuts that are being forced upon many employers it is estimated that around 60,000 public sector jobs alone will be lost on top of the many more that will be lost in the private sector.
At the moment, according to Gordon MacRae of Shelter Scotland, there are 156,000 families already stuck on the housing waiting list with the building of affordable or rentable housing stock being hit by the recession as much as anything else is.
This is already a disaster for the people at the bottom of the pile in Scotland alone and as the cuts bite it can only get much worse. I would like to see what the figures for the whole of the UK are for this specific problem.
I wonder what the new coalition are going to do about this situation as for some reason this scandal does not seem to be in their plans at all.
