Right to Buy Tenants Trapped on Estates

Helping tenants to buy their own homes has trapped them in neighbourhoods from which they are unable to escape, research into the effects of the right to buy policy has revealed. A paper by an academic at the University of St Andrews has suggested that the flagship homeownership policy introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in the eighties has failed in its ambition to help social tenants become more mobile. The researchers found no difference in the moving habits of right-to-buyers and traditional owners. ‘Once social renters become RTB owners they behave more like owners.’Right to buyers were, however, much more likely to want to move than homeowners who bought on the private market. ‘Problems in the neighbourhood are both an important reason to move and a reason to have a desire to move for RTB-owners,’ the report states. Read more on Inside Housing.