What to do about housing.

 

One on the most serious problems facing our society is the difficulty young people have in buying or renting at a reasonable price somewhere to live independently.  Instead thousands are being ripped off by “buy to let” landlords in often substandard  premises.

The simplistic view is that the problem is essentially one of supply and demand: build more houses and it will go away.  It won’t.

Hettie O’Brien, in her fascinating account of “The Asset Class” published earlier this year (W&N),  vividly compares the problem with the Bengal famine; “[L]ack of food was a minor factor compared with people’s inability pay for it. . . .[P]eople [can] be surrounded by empty buildings and still have nowhere to live.” (Page 113)

An article in the Yorkshire Post (Need must be the driver of housing policy, not greed, 03/11/ 25) by Andy brown, a councillor for the Green party in North Yorkshire, deals imaginative and constructively with the  problem.

First he examines  the policies of the Conservative and Labour parties. The Conservative policy is to abolish stamp duty. For those with access to money (bank of Mum and Dad?) this will simply increase the amount available to buy a house, so will force the prices up, making the problem worse for those without.

Labour ‘s policy is to relax planning  regulations (put a stop to middle-class nimbyism?)  Cllr Brown points out that this isn’t really the major problem.  “Since 2015 over 1.2 million planning permissions have been granted for homes that have not been built.”

The positive suggestions in his article are:

1.    1. Remove planning permissions on land where homes have not been built after a reasonable time.  (The present rule is that all that needs to have happened is “a bit of clearance taking place” and the permission last for ever.)

2.    2. There are over 70 000 homes used only occasionally as second homes.  Raise taxes on these along with . . .

3.    3 . . . Air B&Bs. . .

4.    4. . .and all empty properties.

5.   5  Insist that all new housing developments include at least 40% of “affordable” homes (and - my addition - enforce it.  Developers often wriggle out of it once building has started.)

6.    6. Allocate a significant proportion of “affordable homes” to housing associations and councils for renting.

7.    7. Scrap the sale of council houses. (Labour has done this for new council houses.  Where existing council houses are sold - at modest discounts - the revenues should be used by the council to build more houses for renting.)

8.   8. Enable local authorities  to become major houses builders once again (my addition – as part of mixed estates rather than the post war “one class” estates which often became sink areas.)

I would add to the above that in the long run and before we’re all dead we should steer the housing market away from the possession a house being a cash cow for unearned income to be  milked by the next generation (or next but one) to simply being the use of a machine in which to live comfortably and securely.  Not to do this means that we perpetuate a class division, not the workers and bosses so beloved of  Labour Party folk law, but of those whose parents/grandparents owned property and those who didn’t.

This  wlll, of course, involve the taxation of the increment of property prices and will need brave and persuasive politicians to challenge the vested interests of the “property owning” section of our society so beloved of Mrs Thatcher and her remaining disciples