Government's Right to Buy costs local councils nearly £50m a year
Hundreds of council homes in Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire will have to be sold off each year to fund the scheme.
Councils in Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire will need to pay nearly £50m a year to fund the government's flagship Right to Buy scheme.
Hundreds of council homes will have to be sold off each year to make way for an extension of the programme, including over 500 in Hull and almost 200 in the East Riding.
The money raised through the sales will allow the government to offer discounts of up to £100,000 so that tenants can buy their own home - instead of renting.
Campbell Robb from the housing charity Shelter, told Viking:
“With millions of families struggling to find a home they can afford, forcing councils to sell-off huge swathes of the few genuinely affordable homes they have left is reckless.
“Whilst the small number of lucky winners from this policy will understandably be grateful for the chance to buy their Housing Association property. Ultimately, far more people will lose out and be left with no choice but expensive, unstable private renting. “The government is out of touch on this issue, and running out of time to help the millions of ordinary people in Yorkshire and The Humber crying out for a home that they can actually afford.” Becky, a teaching assistant, and her husband, a civil servant, are renting and have been on their local housing register since 2004. She said:
“We’ve been on a housing waiting list for twelve years, and are no closer to a stable home. If our tenancy ends, we’ll really struggle to afford somewhere else to rent. We could be homeless.
“The government says it’s for hard-working people. My husband and I both work hard, but we could never begin to afford our own place. If they’re selling off the last council homes, and making the chance of getting a stable home even more remote, how are they possibly helping us?”