The right to buy versus the right community mix

My street would not win many prizes. The entry of our modest front gardens into the Britain in Bloom contest, for example, would be ruled out in the first round amid helpless laughter – unless, that is, the judges have introduced a new category in appreciation of the aesthetics of cans of extra-strong lager. Yet a short stroll and a few enquiries would reveal it to be that most elusive of creatures: a genuinely mixed community. In other words, it is almost impossible to tell from the external features of these long rows of terraces whether the occupant within owns the whole house (and therefore must enjoy an income not far short of the lord chancellor's), rents a floor from the council or one of several housing associations, rents a single room privately or owns one of what could be several flats within a single house. There are even a couple of maisonettes, and I would own up to being the proud occupant of one were the very word not so deeply redolent of the 1950s, net curtains and paste sandwiches.

The right to buy has had little or no impact upon the creation of this genuinely mixed community. Indeed, the reverse is true. The securing of street properties for rent by the local authority and housing associations over a great many years, often in response to the neglect of private landlords, has balanced out a street which would otherwise by now have become entirely owner-occupied.

Many of the people who have purchased their homes through the right to buy felt that, in so doing, they were properly possessing what had previously been theirs by someone else's permission only. Some have kept and treasured their family home and made of it what they wanted. Some took the opportunity to make some money or quite simply to move to wherever they wanted to live, and good luck to them. Only the most hypocritical homeowner could deny to others the benefits that they themselves have enjoyed. There can be, and I am sure will be, no going back on the principle of the right to buy.

Yet those who advocate the social benefits of this policy for poorer neighbourhoods need to take a very hard look at what has been achieved, because sometimes it is quite the reverse of what was intended. For, alongside those former tenants whose homeownership has deepened their commitment to their community and helped create a broader social mix in what were whole neighbourhoods of social housing, there are ex-council properties now re-let on short licences, creating a whole new level of instability. Again and again, the complaints roll in from neighbours about noise, nuisance, indifference – and, all too often, before any action can be taken, the perpetrators have moved on.

Those who advocate the social benefits of this policy need to take a hard look at what has been achieved, because sometimes it is quite the reverse of what was intended

This scenario is familiar enough, and the fact that ownership came about through the right to buy is in some ways irrelevant: sloppy or indifferent management is a problem whatever the tenure. All true: but advocates of homeownership at all costs have a tendency to ignore the inconvenient fact that such ownership is not in itself a contributor to either a mixed or stable community.

The letters that make me almost weep with frustration are those from a father or mother in a family, placed as homeless, in a former council flat which would have once been rented for £80 or £90 a week (as their adjoining properties still are), but which now costs the public purse £250 a week or more. The family do not have a permanent home. Roots cannot be put down, to the detriment of the whole community. The adults are virtually trapped in unemployment, since what work is open to them that would cover their housing costs? This is, in my view, economic madness and social madness, and if reduced discounts on right to buy minimise the incentive to "buy to let" in this way, then it will be no bad thing.

The government is right to pursue a range of affordable homeownership options. Whichever route is followed to that end, homeownership is an option desired by most people, and for good reasons.