Once it was simple. On one side of the argument - mine - the right to buy was the right to leave someone else homeless. On the other side, they talked of the property-owning democracy, of aspiration, an antidote to dependency and, yes, of rights. So here was the public housing argument; where were the people?

Part of it seemed, and still seems, self-evident. The obvious consequence of this phase of the Thatcher revolution was a trashing of the council housing stock. Force sales - always of the best properties, always at knock-down prices - while diverting the receipts elsewhere and you put local authorities out of the house-building business at a stroke.

There was to be no risk of them competing with the private sector as not-for-profit house-builders: even Thatcher was never so Thatcherite. There was to be scant risk, equally, that they could ever again provide adequately for those in dire need of a decent home.

The market, came the reply, will take care of that. Some went so far as to say - and would still say - that if a housing problem exists it is because the market is being impeded. In this case, the "state landlord" was a giant impediment, stifling the private rented sector and hopes of ownership alike.

The market was being distorted (almost a sin) and council housing was, in any case, rubbish. Were we really defending the giant, festering schemes, those barracks for lost humanity?

To anyone opposing the right to buy, two things were (or should have been) obvious from the start. One was that the people, most of them, couldn't wait. They may have voted Labour with the loyalty of regiments brought to battle. Thatcher's very name may have sickened them. They may have suffered twinges of guilt, and worse, because they understood the consequences of their actions. But this was the offer of ownership on terms so generous only a fool would have refused.

That was the second thing. A great many of the people who called right-to-buy iniquitous - Labour MPs, councillors, campaigners, journalists - failed to address a contradiction. They were home-owners. How come? You didn't catch them living on the schemes that were, indeed, as bloody awful, after decades of municipal neglect, as the Tories alleged.

The Thatcherites and their heirs vindicated, then? Not exactly. In fact, not in the slightest. Scotland's housing problems are as acute as ever. By that measure, right-to-buy solved nothing. Two-thirds of Scots are these days owners rather than the one-third of old. Two-thirds went through boom and bust, Norman Lamont's double-digit interest rates, negative equity and repossessions to enter the world of the credit crunch. Instead of problems with the council, arrears mean problems with - let's pick a name - Northern Rock.

That is, of course, if they have traversed the sucking bog named affordability. A great many still cannot. And they cannot turn to a council or a housing association in the meantime because, in the aftermath of the great revolution, those bodies are still obliged, with occasional exemptions, to sell off the best of their stock. The market stutters still. Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, is held up as the latest culprit, but for the evangels of the market there's always something, or someone.

The housing problem - a meagre word if the plight is yours - continues. This week the SNP government took its stab at the challenge with the consultation paper Firm Foundations - The Future of Housing in Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister, called for the number of new houses being built to increase from 25,000 to 35,000 annually by 2015. Various measures to aid first-time buyers are, meanwhile, under consideration, though the election promise of £2000 grants for all has yet to be confirmed.

More eye-catching, perhaps, was Ms Sturgeon's expressed intention to end the right to buy as it affects new social housing developed by councils and housing associations. She knows that the bulk of her new-build target will have to come from the private sector. But for the rest - and as a matter of principle - she aims to restore local authorities as landlords and safeguard the housing stock as a public asset.

She wants to turn the clock back - and the time-frame is hers - by 30 years. Will that help? It would certainly answer one need. The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations is happy to be immunised against right-to-buy. Shelter Scotland wants to see 10,000 "affordable homes for rent" built each year for the next three years. And if government help is forthcoming, local authorities will certainly resume their traditional role. For council house read "affordable social housing".

If it happens, a great many people will have decent homes for a fair rent and a glaring failure of the market will have been addressed. Good. But then remind yourself of what has happened in the past three decades. Remind yourself of the stampede that has seen almost half a million council houses sold since 1980. Ask yourself how people today define a real housing problem, and ask yourself what people want.

Do they want to be tenants? A simple question, but it isn't often asked. Do they want to be owners? We know the answer. You could say the two are unrelated, that social housing exists for those whom the market would crush, for whom ownership is, in that ugly word, an aspiration at best. But is Sturgeon's strategy intended as an emergency measure to meet dire social need, or is it that "first step on the ladder"? Does she wish to circumvent the market or supplement the market?

I was raised on a council scheme and I hold a mortgage: many, perhaps a majority, would say the same. If we hold ideological positions in this argument those positions were long ago compromised by actions and events. We bought, so why should anyone who wishes to buy be denied? In fact, why shouldn't they be helped? And what if it turns out that those former right-to-buy council houses, generally the cheapest on the market, form the best kind of help available?

Put it another way: is social housing to be a reclaimed public space protected from the market, a supplement to the market or a form of welfare provision? The last of these would count, for me, as an unquestionable public good. If the other two are at issue, however, the argument changes. Why not just expend the effort helping people to buy? If massive aid is unavailable (chances are) why not accept that right-to-buy properties, when sold on, are, for many, that first step on the ladder?

Heresy? Not any more. In the Borders, where I live, house prices are eight unaffordable times average wages, according to the council. Little Eyemouth recently topped a survey of seaside towns by recording property price increases of 83% over the past three years. Locals say there are no more council or housing association homes left for rent. Your single realistic chance is to hope that one of these comes on the market.

Or await the results of Ms Sturgeon's consultation and become a tenant for life. There would be nothing wrong with that, of course, for anyone, if it was what anyone wanted.