‘Right to Buy was an affordable way for people like us to own a home’

IT IS a debate that has winners and losers on both sides.

As Cardiff, one of the least affordable cities to buy a home in across the UK, scraps Right to Buy, we’ve spoken to people on both sides.

For many would-be homeowners, the Right to Buy their council homes was a lifeline – offering them a chance to buy a property below the spiralling market values.

In Cardiff, house prices are more than seven times the average wage, the council has said. But since Right to Buy was introduced in 1980 social housing stock across has declined significantly, making it harder for people to get the homes they badly need.

The equivalent of 45% of the number of council homes in 1981 have been lost due to Right to Buy, according to Welsh Government. Many councils did not build enough homes to keep up with the properties they were selling off.

Councils such as Cardiff, Swansea and the Vale of Glamorgan are now building their first new council homes in a generation. There are plans for 2,000 new social homes in the capital – and the council aims to have half of them ready by 2022.

But the number of people on social housing waiting lists remains high. Cardiff council has 7,981 households on its lists of people waiting for a council home.

For Katie Burns and her family in Llanedeyrn, Right to Buy was their best chance of getting on the housing ladder.

Katie and her husband Steven have spent £10,000 on refurbishments and repairs to their house in Coed-y-Gores in the hope that one day it will be theirs.

For existing social housing stock, Welsh Government’s abolition of the Right to Buy will come into effect on January 26, 2019. Katie and Steven saved up in the hope of buying their home, where they live with their four daughters, before the deadline.

But in July last year, Cardiff council announced it was suspending Right to Buy for five years to “safeguard homes for the future”. Katie and Steven said the council informed them of this last November.

Katie, 30, said: “Right to Buy was an affordable way for people like us to buy our house. We have been here for so many years and poured our own money and effort into improving the house.

“Over the last couple of years we have been saving to buy this house. We love this house, love the area. The community here is amazing. We all look out for each other.”

Katie, who works one day a week, and Steven, a self-employed industrial roofer, say they have redecorated almost every room using their own money.

Katie, who has lived with her family in the house for five years, said she is having to ask the council repeatedly to sort issues.

She said: “When we moved into the house it was a right mess. There was mould up the walls. We have asked for things to be done, but they’re never done.

“If we ever move from here any improvements we make have to be put back to council standards. They will charge us for putting things right.

“I’m trying to fight to get changes done to the house. They said there’s no point and we may as well move.”

Katie says she doesn’t want to move as one of her daughters has developmental delay and would find it too stressful. She said houses in the area for sale on the open market are out of the family’s price range.

“I don’t see it as being fair,” she said. “They stopped it this year when we had an opportunity to buy it. It’s really, really frustrating. We have had to save up for years just to get a decent deposit. Four-bed houses at the moment are too expensive for us to buy. We just feel a bit cheated.

“Cardiff council, I think, are really underhand with the way they have done it. They knew it was going to be abolished. I feel they have cheated a lot of people from this year.”

Jason Turner has been on the social housing waiting list in Cardiff since 2004 – and says he is further away than he has ever been from getting a council home.

When the criteria for social housing changed last year, he was allegedly put on band D of Cardiff council’s waiting list for people with a housing need but no local connection to Cardiff and told he was not a priority.

Jason, who lives with his mother, said he’s got “no chance” of getting on the list as a single man.

The 45-year-old, who works at Celsa Steel, said: “Before it was a point-scoring system: the longer you stayed on the list the further you went up, but they’ve changed it now to different categories. They said I would be on band D for ever. I would never get up the list unless I was homeless. They said I’m not a priority.”

Cardiff council says there are 4,493 applicants in bands C to A, the highest band where applicants are considered to have an urgent housing need.

But Jason said: “For a single man who is working you are just not going to get a