From right to buy to housing crisis: how home ownership killed Britain’s property dream

Abstract

Margaret Thatcher’s ‘property-owning democracy’ project drove a mass sell-off of social housing and the growth of private ownership. Now, after more than 40 years of soaring prices and growing inequality, is it time to change course?

Property: natural and imprescriptible human right, foundation of freedom, engine of wealth, maker of peace and law. The concept that runs through western democracy like steel through reinforced concrete, which wrote the code for the formation of the United States and underwrote the expansion of great cities, which has been embraced by developing economies as the means to prosperity and private fulfilment, and without which neither industrial nor post-industrial society, nor uncountable cultural, social and economic benefits that follow, would exist.

A good craved by individuals that converts personal effort into permanent achievement. A foundation for a good home, for the shelter and setting of your life and the repository of your dreams. Property, which also has a way of making the world go mad.

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