housing over hertford union cut

housing over hertford union cut, a photo by david sankey on Flickr.

Public (council) Housing is in the news again as Her Majesty's Parliamentary Opposition Leader pronounced at Labour Party annual conference that, on the one hand, Margaret Thatcher was right to sell off Council Housing to tenants, and on the other, Councils should give preference to the working poor, over unemployed, in allocating scarce council housing.
I can't help but wonder whether council housing would be in such short supply if it hadn't been sold off in the first place.
I can't help but think that selling housing to tenants has biased housing stock to the unemployed as those in work would be the only ones with the money to buy theirs.
I can't help but think that in a society with scarce housing and rising unemployment that we should take over any land bank hoarded by housebuilders - pay them nothing for speculating on our land and helping drive the economic crisis, and start building houses for people to live in..... In fact, not to do so is to completely fail to address the causes of the present economic crisis.