UK housing damage

Measuring the damage that Thatcher's "right to buy" policy for public housing has done to Britain. It took away most of the existing public housing apartments, and discouraged building new ones to replace them.

In the past, I've said that privatizing a public service can be good if the privatized service will sell in a competitive market. (that criterion is meant to prevent the new private owners from gouging their customers.) This is a counterexample: the housing market is competitive, but right-to-buy did tremendous harm nonetheless.

I think the explanation is that housing units are generally used one per family. Selling one public housing unit means that public housing can provide a home for one family less. Privatization of services such as water supply, letter delivery and mass transit does not have that characteristic.