I thought, from having attended a local ( to here) public meeting about planning applicatons for here, that "affordable homes" were not intended to be sold to the peeps wot live in them cos then those properties join all the other inflated prices and are lost from the affordable stock. I thought they were to be rented in perpetuity ( now there's a word to get you're tongue around).  Are things different  (or more different than usual) down in the SW. I think the last bedsit I had cost the  almost unaffordable rent of £4 10s 0d a week. Ah, in the words of Mary Hopkins - those were the days...........

You'd have thunk that that would be the sensible approach to the situation. However, since the advent of all this 'right to buy' cobblers the concept of a community providing housing to keep the locals out of cardboard boxes rather than to 'get them on the property ladder' [as per Housing Officer] has gone out of the window.

 

Now, 'social housing' seems to assume you have to buy it (I've seen nowt obvious about new council houses being built). Clause 106 pegs the price but then it means that the loan sharks don't want to offer mortgages on 106 properties because they aren't going to appreciate much in value and so the loan sharks won't make a killing if they have to re-possess (a distinct possibility down here given the employment status of the sort of people who are supposed to be buying the properties).

 

The whole thing currently seems to be a somewhat self-defeating vicious circle. Somebody ought to right a book about it. Probably Joseph Heller!