I don't think I was being at all evasive - I think, and still do, that I was responding to the question asked. To me a developer is the organisation which does the building / rebuilding, not necessarily the organisation which owns long term - or even short term. So to answer your first question as now understood, as carefully as I can, hoping you do not consider this evasion:Robin Orton wrote:Tim. Let me put it another way. Do you believe (like me) that a substantial proportion of the new houses we need should be built specifically for rent (with a local authority, housing association or similar body as landlord), with the rents kept below market rates, and therefore made affordable for poorer tenants, by some type of subsidy (either applied directly to the rent or through housing benefit) from public funds? Do you also believe (like me) that the 'right to buy' for social housing tenants is a perverse and malign policy which should be abolished? Yes or no please.
Currently, I believe a substantial proportion of the new houses needed will be occupied by people who cannot afford to pay market rents. Housing Associations are likely to be the most suitable landlords, and should have access to government support for enable them to pay the actual developers a commercial price for the new build as completed, and in the long run, continuing support to reflect the gap between what the poorest tenants can pay in rent and the ongoing costs of providing such housing. That is basically a 'yes' - the qualification floating around is that in the long run, with an adequate expansion in the overall supply of housing, market rents will no longer be unaffordable for so many, and the numbers of tenants needing on going support will be relatively insignificant.
I don't think it makes sense to say anything should be built for rent for ever and a day - I think planning should be flexible both physically - so not requiring excessive expenditure to switch use of space between office and residential, or family residential to flats for singles - and also as regards tenure, which gets on to the so called 'right to buy'.
I think a right to buy which obliges a social landlord to sell when they don't want to, or at a price lower than they wish to sell at is all those things - perverse, malign policy and should be abolished. The same goes for many other instances of government interference in the freedom of contract. I wouldn't take away the right of the two parties - landlord and tenant - to come to some mutually acceptable deal, although I would not expect this to happen very often, especially since large landlords, such as Housing Associations, should be better at managing properties efficiently, and this will become much harder for them when there are occupants of a block who have bought out their individual interest - freehold or leasehold.
I hope that's a clear enough 'yes' for you, or anyone else.