Building up troubles?
I missed a recent blog from Professor Paul Cheshire of the LSE which came out earlier this month, but I have just read it and my god is it worrying, stark and it does not mince its words.
“Housing is unaffordable in Britain not because we do not build enough “affordable houses” but because we do not build enough houses. Period.”
“ At every price and income level, for all forms of tenure, British housing is appalling value for money.”
“The median house in London costs over 12.5 times median earnings.”
“ Relative to incomes, the North East is the least unaffordable region”
If the UK had built at a similar rate as other European countries since the Second World War we would have “4.3 million more homes. “
It basically makes it clearer than anything else I have read how bad things are.
Now it is not just house prices which are beyond many people’s reach but also rents are soaring as landlords have higher borrowing costs but also find they can squeeze there tenants again and again.
There are plenty of solutions to this appalling crisis but none are being used because of political cowardice, Nimbyism and cynical political vote seeking.
For instance Prof Cheshire found inn 2019 “there is enough land of no amenity or environmental value close to London’s commuter stations to build a million homes. But it is designated Green Belt so cannot be built on.”
That just abut sums it up, older home owners have pulled up the drawbridge and will fight every and any housebuilding tooth and nail, green belts are sacrosanct and many councils now don’t even have a housing plan, so they can’t be blamed if the government forces them to build.
The young cannot find places to live, they cannot move to get a better job, they cannot start families, they cannot save enough or earn enough to buy. All that is piled on top of high taxes, crumbling infrastructure and a terrible transport network.
The housing crisis is one reason productivity in the UK is so bad. We are currently averaging 160,000 new houses a year, we probably need 500,000 a year for a decade to put things right.
Every day we delay, every election that is fought and won on Nimbyism, every cynical change to the planning system, puts off the time when we can address this crisis.
The politicians know this but can shift the blame and win the votes of the old.
This will not end well.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media