Whether you care about compassion or cold economics, getting rid of council houses for life is a bad idea

My Mum and Dad got our council house just after I was born. It's a pebble-dash terrace, it has neat flower beds, it's surrounded by a wobbly hedge. It is a home.

The news that lifelong council tenancies are likely to be sneakily done away with makes me feel sick. Ministers have imposed new legislation which means no tenancy can be offered for more than five years, and must then be reviewed to, in the words of a government spokesperson, "support households to make the transition into home ownership where they can."

So it means people like my family won't have the right to homes. You can't have a home if you don't get to choose if you stay in it. Leaving ours would have meant a huge move. Not knowing if we could stay would have almost been worse. It would have meant not knowing if it was worth planting those flowerbeds or redoing the kitchen or getting pets we didn't know we'd be able to keep. It would have meant a big black hole appearing every few years.

There will be people reading this thinking, "So what? Why do you scroungers have the right to stay in one place your whole life? Why should the council be giving you a right other people without council houses don't have?"

Well, why shouldn't they? Why shouldn't society make sure people have places to grow up in and grow old in? Why shouldn't that be a priority in a country where streets away from my terrace there are second homes only lived in during August, and some the dozenth home of their owner, rented at a disgusting premium to those with nowhere else to go? Why shouldn't we look after people when we can?

If that doesn't get you then I guess you're bothered about cold hard economics. Encouraging people to escape disadvantage through good hard work. Well, I've done all right in life so far and I suppose I'm one of those 'strivers' the government says policies like this are written to help.

But a huge reason I've done all right is that because our rent was reasonable, my parents could afford school trips and books and pens and a computer. That they could give me a stable home because we didn't have to pack up and move every few years. That the house for the most part was a comfy and safe place to live.

Because of this policy there will be less people who get to do all right. Little girls and boys who struggle that bit more to concentrate at school, or don't get to have the pleasure and contentment which comes from knowing a place your entire life, from that spot in the back garden where you can sunbathe and revise at the same time or a bedroom to yourself where you can study, or write terrible self-indulgent novels you'll never show to anyone. Where you can waste time thinking and messing about and finding out what you're good at and what you want to do with yourself.

You see, David Cameron, whether you're bothered about people being fulfilled and happy or people contributing to their communities and their society, it's just so bloody obvious. You can only grow when you have roots.