The Right to Buy, the Leaseholder, and the Impoverishment of Ownership
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2011.00557.x |
| Author | Helen Carr |
| Published date | 01 December 2011 |
| Date | 01 December 2011 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 38, NUMBER 4, DECEMBER 2011
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 519±41
The Right to Buy, the Leaseholder, and the Impoverishment
of Ownership
Helen Carr*
Right to Buy is one of the most successful schemes devised to extend
home ownership to those otherwise excluded. Its introduction by
Margaret Thatcher and endorsement by New Labour provide a critical
indicator of those governments' neo-liberal credentials. This article
suggests that one of the key achievements of the Right to Buy was to
obscure inequalities inherent in a project of democratization via
property ownership. It examines New Labour's political reform of
local authority landlordism and leaseholder rights and exposes the
vulnerability of Right to Buy lessees and their successors in title. It
argues that the promise of inclusion via home ownership is a more
conditional promise than generally recognized, in some cases
impoverishing rather than enriching. It concludes by reflecting on
the importance of scrutinizing schemes which purport to democratize
ownership, observing that the position of Right to Buy leaseholders is
unlikely to improve following the abandonment of social reform
projects by the coalition government.
INTRODUCTION
Private property ± despite the financial crisis ± remains the principal mechanism
for delivering the wealth, self-reliance, and individual freedom that govern-
ments who have embraced neo-liberal rationalities promise their citizens.
1
The
519
ß2011 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2011 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
* Kent Law School, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NX, England
h.p.carr@kent.ac.uk
The author would like to thank Dave Cowan and Paddy Ireland for their comments on
earlier drafts and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful observations. The author
sits as a part-time Chair of a Residential Property Tribunal. For the avoidance of doubt,
the opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and should not be read as
representing the views of the Residential Property Tribunal Service.
1 D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005); J. Donzelot, `Michel Foucault
and liberal intelligence' (2008) 37 Economy and Society 115±34. For an interesting
asset that in general marks inclusion in these ownership societies is the private
home, but the peculiar housing situation in the United Kingdom, in particular in
the south-east of England, means that increasing numbers of people are finding
themselves excluded from even aspiring to home ownership because of the
disconnect between average wages and house prices.
2
One consequence is that
governme nts have foc used on sch emes to pro mote `affo rdable' ho me
ownership, for instance, by offering shared ownership so that individuals can
purchase a part-share in freehold of a property whilst continuing to rent the
remainder from their landlord.
3
The Right to Buy, the flagship policy of
Margaret Thatcher's first government, provides an early example of a scheme
designed to extend home ownership. Its introduction in the Housing Act 1980,
the subsequent `residualization' of social housing,
4
and the introduction of
punitive sanctions for anti-social tenants and those tenants who harbour the anti-
social have all been critically assessed.
5
The important point made is that those
who fail to become effective consumers are the new socially excluded and the
injustice of their position makes the stark realities of the neo-liberal /neo-
conservative order patent.
This article takes a different approach in its account of projects to extend
private ownership. Its focus is the most marginal of owner-occupiers, those
who purchased local authority flats, and the difficulties they face when their
freeholders present them with large service charge demands generated as a
result of repair and improvement work, in particular, work carried out under
New Labour's Decent Homes Initiative. Whilst Flint has argued persua-
sively that newly excluded groups provide a potential site for resistance to
housing market processes,
6
I suggest that there is as much to be learnt from
the claims of the newly included who are acutely aware of their precarious
520
examination of regulatory responses to the crisis of home ownership in the United
States, see R. Dyal-Chand, `Home as Ownership, Dispossession as Foreclosure: The
Impact of the Current Crisis on the American Model of ``Home''' in The Idea of
Home in Law: Displacement and Dispossession, eds. L. Fox O'Mahony and J.A.
Sweeney (2011) 41±54.
2 W. Wilson, `Extending Home Ownership ± Government Initiatives' House of
Commons Library note SN/SP/3668 (2009).
3 S. Bright and N. Hopkins, `Home, Meaning and Identity: Learning from the English
Model of Shared Ownership' (2011) 28 Housing, Theory and Society (forthcoming,
available on line: DOI:10.1080/14036096.2010.527119.
4 I. Cole and R. Furbey, The Eclipse of Council Housing (1994). `Residualization' has
become useful theoretical shorthand for the increasing impoverishment and social
exclusion of those who live in social housing.
5 Examples of such work include J. Flint, `Housing and ethopolitics' (2003) 32 Economy
and Society 611±29; D. Cowan and M. McDermont, Regulating Social Housing:
Governing Decline (2006); J. Nixon and C. Hunter, `Disciplining women: anti-social
behaviour and the governance of conduct' in Se curing Respect: Behavioural
expectations and anti-social behaviour in the UK, ed. A. Millie (2009) 119±38.
6 Flint, id., p. 625.
ß2011 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2011 Cardiff University Law School
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