of a widespread belief that the government should be responsible for ensuring that the poor would be decently housed. However, many tenants of publicly owned and subsidized properties no longer were truly poor. The Thatcher solution to the dual problem of government expenditures for maintaining such housing and neighborhood regeneration was the ôright-to-buyö law of 1980:
ôThe incoming Tories had an idea of brilliant simplicity: let them buy their council houses. The result was the "right-to-buy" law of 1980, empowering almost every council tenant to buy his home, at a discount that could be large if he had lived there for many years, whether the council liked it or not. The law was an instant and roaring (and vote-winning) success-within two years 350,000 dwellings had been sold-and, with ups and downs, it has been so ever since. By now, sales total 1 1/4m, around a fifth of the entire council stock.
Yet that has still left four-fifths-at least [British pounds] 50 billion-worth-in public hands. Inevitably, these are the less desirable residences; in particular, flats in big, ill-designed blocks on big, ill-planned city estates. Even the raising of the maximum discount on these to 70% has not persuaded many of their tenants to buy. Many do not want to; some do but cannot afford to, discount or no (The Economist, 18).ö
The success of the Thatcher effort was relatively limited
and by 1986, the Thatcher government developed a plan to drive housing councils out of the housing business in England. This plan was represented by the Housing Act of 1988 which was described by The Economist (18) as having several key elements:
. force councils to sell housing and deny them the
. reduce the appeal of council housing by forcing up
. end rent control on new private-sector lettings, thus
reinventing the commercial landlord
. boost the housing associations that are halfway
between council landlord ...