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Private tenants should get Right To Buy says Labour leadership hopeful
One of four MP candidates standing for the Labour Party leadership says Right To Buy should be extended – to private tenants.
Jeremy Corbyn says extending RTB and its system of discounts to the private rental sector from its current use in the council and housing association sectors would offer more security for aspirational tenants.
“We know that Generation Rent faces an uphill struggle simply to get into long-term housing. We have seen some good ideas from Labour to establish more secure tenancies for renters. Now we need to go further and think of new ways to get more people into secure housing” he says.
“So why not go with Right To Buy, with the same discounts as offered by way of subsidised mortgage rates, but for private tenants and funded by withdrawing the £14 billion tax allowances currently given to Buy To Let landlords?” he asks.
Corbyn has not set out precisely how this would be achieved, how landlord owners would be compensated – if at all – and he has not explained how discounts may be applied. But he says he is to undertake a consultation process on the idea over the summer.
One of the main planks of the Conservative manifesto in the May election was to extend the RTB principle to larger numbers of housing association tenants too.
