How do we fix the housing crisis? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series, in which our writers share their experiences of the UK’s dysfunctional housing system and examine how we can fix it.

Pensioners like me have a moral responsibility to downsize for young people
The biggest lie I was told about owning my own home
The UK’s new rental scandal that no one is talking about
The bizarre tricks estate agents are now using to sell a house

Good news when it comes to housing is a rarity these days, so let’s raise a glass to the announcement that the Government plans to fund over 40,000 new social homes, with more to follow. After years of cuts to funding for social housing, finally the tide is turning. Our leaders are once again acknowledging the countless benefits of building good-quality, low-cost homes for people who need them. Hallelujah.

Still, simply building more social homes won’t be enough unless ministers also put a stop to the sell-off of the ones we already have. And if Andy Burnham wants to arrest that disastrous decline, there is one big, brave announcement he needs to make: ending the catastrophic Right to Buy scheme.

Since it was introduced in 1980, Right to Buy has allowed more than two million social housing tenants to buy their property. The idea was a simple one: social housing tenants would be able to save up to buy their home at a heavily discounted price – giving low-income tenants the ability to get on the housing ladder. Who could possibly object to that?

Unfortunately, the reality has been radically different. Nowhere near enough homes have been built to replace the two million sold off. The heavily discounted rate at which the properties are sold, combined with soaring costs of land and building, means councils have struggled to use the money generated from Right to Buy sales to build anything like the number of new homes needed to replace them.

Last year, for example, there were 14,400 sales under the Right to Buy scheme, but only 12,200 new social homes built. That is a far better ratio than in previous years – when, at times, just one new home was being built for every 10 sold off – but it still means the disastrous sell-off of social housing continues.

In total, there are now 1.2 million fewer social homes than when Right to Buy was introduced in 1980 – a fall of almost a quarter. Worse still, over 40 per cent of the homes sold under the scheme are now in the hands of private landlords. Imagine how many families and vulnerable people could have benefited from those low-cost homes had they not been privatised on the cheap, only to end up being nabbed by property speculators smelling an easy profit. The disastrous consequences of Margaret Thatcher’s decision to sell off key industries like water have been talked about endlessly; the mass privatisation of the nation’s social housing has been no less devastating.

Burnham biting the bullet and finally freezing Right to Buy would not be universally popular. Bizarrely, the scheme has become a symbol of aspiration. This myth needs busting. There is nothing aspirational about a small minority of comparatively well-off tenants getting a hefty discount on their house purchase, while countless others are denied access to an affordable home however hard they work.

There would also be uproar from current social housing tenants with hopes of buying their property. There will always be losers when any change like this is made, but in this case we need not feel too sorry for them. If social housing tenants can afford to buy their home, they have done well for themselves – helped, of course, by paying rent, on average, at around half the going market rent for years. Subsidised rents will already have saved them many thousands of pounds compared with what they would otherwise be paying. Why should that support continue for ever? Someone who was given a social home in their moment of need but has gone on to earn a good living does not need to have their housing costs subsidised forever after. And they certainly don’t need another discount in the form of a cut-price property.

Social housing tenants who want to become homeowners and are well-off enough to do so should buy on the open market. It is not their fault that there is such a shortage of low-cost housing, but just as they were given a low-cost home when they needed one, that home is now needed for someone else in desperate need. If they are financially secure enough to afford to buy a property, they almost certainly no longer need a social home. In a time of scarcity, any resource – social housing included – should go to those who need it most.

Some people go further and argue that a social house should only be offered as a temporary arrangement: that when somebody is no longer in need, or is earning enough to be able to afford to rent privately, they should be booted out of their home to make way for someone who needs it more. There is logic to this, but ending lifetime tenancies would still be a bad idea. Not only would an earnings limit be a major disincentive for people to work hard and increase their pay, but time-limited tenancies also discourage residents from putting down roots and integrating into the local community. Secure, long-term tenancies are still the best way to allocate social homes, but they shouldn’t come with an automatic right to buy the property you have been given – especially not at a hefty discount.

And nobody can question just how great the need for these properties is. In England alone there are 1.3 million people on local councils’ housing waiting lists, meaning waits of over a decade in many parts of the country. At current building rates it would take well over a century to clear that backlog. Because of this shortage, 380,000 people in England are currently classed as homeless and there are 136,000 households currently stuck in temporary accommodation, including 178,000 children. Rather than selling off evermore social homes to relatively well-off tenants, they should be prioritised for desperate families with nowhere else to live.

What’s more, halting Right to Buy need only be temporary. It could be restarted once enough social homes are being built to replace the ones being sold off. Better still, there could be a regional review to encourage local councils to build more social homes: only once a council was replacing every single home expected to be sold under Right to Buy would the scheme be resumed in their area.

Labour deserves credit for investing in new social homes, but while the great Right to Buy sell-off continues, it won’t be enough. Right to Buy should have been paused years ago – now it is about damage limitation. As the housing charity Shelter puts it, in the context of their long-running campaign to get Right to Buy suspended: “To fill a bath, you can’t just run the taps… We need to put the plug back in the bath.” Quite. Over to you, Prime Minister.