Is an Englishman's home his castle?

It always strikes me as peculiar when social housing professionals or commentators often say "we want to raise homeowner occupancy to 50%" (26 September, page 37) or "owner occupation is what tenants aspire to." I appreciate Lucy de Groot's comments on what the Treasury gets out of homeownership (26 September, page 27).

The idea that a house is a good investment for your children is an anachronism. Since the days of social mobility, how many people want to return to their childhood home? The baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s means family assets have to be split three or more ways, and many ageing parents are forced to sell the family home to pay for care – there's not much left to pass on to the children.

I recently heard a housing manager in West Sussex say: "By owning your own house, it's easier to move." Yes, but only if you are heading North. I reckon I could exchange my new home on the South coast with someone in Gateshead so fast that the litter on both streets wouldn't stop spinning for a week. And since when do tenants have to pay for transfers or exchanges?

As one who voted for Margaret Thatcher the first time around, I not only bought the house but also the pension. Stitching myself up to the maximum mortgage seemed to make sense, what with "guaranteed" growth in the stock and house markets. We should remember that the ridiculously low interest rates today will beggar thousands of people tomorrow, as they did before. If the deputy prime minister meets his target for housebuilding, how positive will our equity be in the growth areas?

Homeownership, like a pension plan, has been sold to the masses when it is merely appropriate to the few. If you are in the right place at the right time, you can make a mint. But where do you put your money when you've sold the roof over your mattress?

We have to acknowledge that low pay and uncertainty in the job market are not happy bedfellows to "high levels of mortgage debt".

Homeownership may help some housing professionals meet their minimum housing standards or make stock transfer viable, but as social landlords, should we not be looking out for the needs of our customers first and our administrative targets second? For many people, renting is the only financially sound option. The social landlord has an obligation to support these people and not make them feel like second-class citizens.

On the one hand we decry "Thatcherism" as a major factor in the present housing crisis, but on the other hand we perpetuate the "idyll" of homeownership. As the National Housing Federation's rebranding, quite rightly, makes clear, social landlords are cornerstones of their communities. But can we please get off the fence and rebrand ourselves as landlords?