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Home ownership grew from 55% of the population in 1980 to 64% in 1987. By the time Margaret Thatcher left office in 1990 it was 67%. However, the number of public houses built went down to 35,000 in 1990 from 170,000 in the mid-1970s, with most of these built by housing associations rather than councils. 1.5 million council houses were sold by 1990, by 1995 it was 2.1 million and as a result of the Right to Buy the Treasury received £28 billion. Proponents of the Right to Buy argue that it gave working-class council tenants opportunities to get on the property ladder which they would not otherwise had had without the Act.
Critics of the Act argue that it was designed to pass the responsibility of old defective housing from the government to the new homeowner, the act also added to the current shortage of council housing and the rise in homelessness and claim that this is a result of the Act. Others claim that when inflation rose towards the end of the 1980s and the recession of the early 1990s came, many people could not afford their payments on their mortgage and therefore had their houses repossessed. Also, when prices came down after they had first purchased their home, some found that their houses were worth less than their mortgages, which came to be known as 'negative equity'.
Read more about this topic: Housing Act 1980
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