Better to build new homes than subsidise BTL landlords claims Housing Secretary

The flaw in the logic is that actually buying new houses is expensive AND you still have to house the people you resent paying the rent for whilst building them – and with government/ local authority processes and timescales we will already have imported enough new people to fill this capacity before they have finished building.

Houses the taxpayer paid to build? But then they sold them and the taxpayer got money back. Hardly a valid argument.

The other flaw in the argument is that housing benefit would still have to pay the rent even if they were still council owned and the council received a lump sum payment from the new owner to offset any difference in the rent.

I agree with Steve Reed – build more homes.

Ahhh, hang on a minute: you have f***ed property developers as much as landlords and now no-one is building. That’s a bit of a problem, isn’t it? And now you are trying to place the blame on someone – private landlords seems like the obvious one. . And the solution, as with everything in the Labour world, will be to come up with an idiotic strangling policy to try and rectify the original idiotic policy, except it will strangle the issue even more.

Two more years, guys. Two more long years.

Oh dear, I think Steve Reed is looking at life through the wrong end of his telescope and continues the demonising of PRS landlords. So let’s look at his claims:-
1) “taxpayers subsidising private landlords by paying housing benefit on homes….etc” NO! the housing benefit is not our ‘subsidy’ it is paid to the tenant to help them pay their rent. So it is a tenant benefit.
2) He is guilty of obfuscation in clouding the issue of lack of council housing, by implying that PRS landlords have deliberately scooped up council property “subsidise private landlords to rent out homes that taxpayers also paid to build”. NO, those council properties were sold off on the cheap to the council tenants who subsequently either sold on for a tidy profit, or have become landlords themselves. So the government (of whicheven tenure) has been the architect of this sorry state.
3) “better to spend taxpayer’s cash building new homes than subsidising buy-to-let landlords.” That’s great; so presumably that means he won’t be “subsidising” those tenants in the private sector who currently receive housing benefit? So if they can’t pay their rent they become homeless and on the council waiting list….? Not to worry, he’s going to be building lots of houses….
I have to say, I am in agreement with the review on Right to Buy, those homes should not be sold off on the cheap, if ever.

He says
we’ve seen a near-doubling of the housing benefits bill since 2010
So in 16 years they’ve doubled. Isn’t that what we’d expect with inflation? Someone do the compounding maths cause a good investment doubles every 10 years so we’ve actually fell behind have we…..

I also agree with the review of right to buy. What I do not agree with is the statement that the government is subsidising buy-to-let landlords.
The government is NOT subsidising buy-to-let landlords. Buy-to-let landlords are bailing the government out. The truth is that the government is penalising those landlords who do not hold their properties in a limited company at a time when the market needs more accommodation. Government actually favours owners of social housing over buy-to-let landlords by not obliging social housing providers to meet the same standards that buy-to-let landlords have to meet.
Where I live council tenants pay about 1/3 of market rent for the properties they rent from the council that are in effect subsidised by the tax payer. If the council needs to find alternative accommodation from the private rental sector the council then ends up paying market rent: Market rent is high, but it is the GOVERNMENT that is driving up market rents. One of the difficulties of renting to social housing tenants is that they are relatively high risk: The Labour Renters Rights Act will drive up rents and just made social housing tenants even higher risk than they were previously.
If the government were to review right to buy and allow council houses to be sold for not much less than market value, releasing equity to go back into building more new social housing that could make sense. Where I live the asset-value tied up in one council house housing one family could probably house 2-3 families if the money could be put straight back into constructing new housing, or converting other buildings to provide housing without paying capital gains tax. But labour governments are not good at building housing and typically if you provide them with more money they want to divert that money towards paying benefits rather than investing in infrastructure. Rather than turning assets over to house more people labour MPs are obsessed with taxing assets and paying benefits, as Pat McFadden recently pointed out.
Perhaps instead the government should look at those organisations who do manage to turn assets over efficiently and effectively in order to directly house people, and specifically how many families do actually get housed for a given size of balance sheet. That of course would exclude Shelter who have been given millions in government subsidies and not housed anybody.
The problem with giving a labour government even more money in taxes is that they just waste more money: Instead, they need to look at performance in the social housing sector and compare that to performance in the private housing sector.

Reply to the comment left by Susan Robinson at 08/07/2026 – 11:06
Spot on Sue.

It is also appalling that the housing secretary is so ignorant and does not know how the housing market works, and is yet another in the long line of people vilifying LLs who DO actually provide homes for people – just as well given the state sector’s failures.

Reply to the comment left by Freda Blogs at 08/07/2026 – 11:46
Absolutely correct. GOVERNMENT is pushing market rent up. George Osborne’s changes to tax pushed rents up. The SNP rent controls in Scotland pushed rents up. The Labour Renters Rights Act will push market rents up.

When the government pushes rents up this increases the benefits bill because the Council has to pay market rent; but the government is NOT subsidising buy-to-let landlords.

If the government wants to fix their problem with social housing they need to look at WHICH social housing providers or housing charities actually house the most people for any given value of assets invested in housing and COMPARE that to the private sector.

Shelter doesn’t house anybody.

One issue with social housing that is addressed in part by Right To Buy is the growing affluence of social housing tenants who may have needed housing support at one point but have gone on to build careers and businesses and could afford to rent or even buy but choose not to. These properties are then not available for needy families and it would not be fair (and now not legally permissable) to ask these tenants to vacate. RTB offers a way for the state to recoup funds to build again.