Here’s a part of what’s gone wrong with to-the-nth-degree privatisation. What used to be council housing has for some time been social housing, which means it’s owned, in many cases, by investment funds. Here’s one, a ‘REIT’ (Real Estate Investment Trust) looking to sell its ‘portfolio’, which comprises houses and flats for the poor and vulnerable. All talk is of yields, bad debt ratios and retenanting, and much of the fault lies, as with sewerage in our rivers and G4S prisons, in the assumption that the private sector can be allowed to get on with it and that ‘market efficiencies’ will make it all work. They won’t and they don’t.
“Rental prices up 6.2% in 12 months to January – ONS”
The number of under-40s, in particular, renting without apparent hope of buying has risen by over 20% in the last 15 years or so, more than has been the case in other countries whom we would consider comparable with us: in the US, around 6%, Germany 8%, for example.
