The number of housing starts in Britain last year hit the lowest since 1924. The currently total only half the figure for France, a country with a similar population.
Yet the UK’s housing stock is the oldest in Europe, with a quarter of dwellings built before world war one. At the current rate of replacement, it will need to last 5,600 years - longer than the pyramids, in fact.
The measures announced today by Gordon Brown – which will raise the annual target for new homes from 200,000 to 240,000 – are not nearly enough to tackle a situation that surely does merit the over-used tag of ‘crisis’.
Let’s not think of the housing issue in terms of dinner party talk of house prices. What we are seeing is a clear-cut case of market failure. The free market visibly does not provide a roof over the heads of all that need it. How could it?
The big building firms repeatedly blame planning restrictions for any shortage of new homes. But many planning professionals point out that the top ten players in the sector are sitting on 14,000 acres of land with planning permission.
Last month, the Office of Fair Trading launched an inquiry into the suggestion that they are simply sitting on their landbank, in the expectation that housing prices will continue to rise.
Meanwhile, there are now over 94,000 households in temporary accommodation, and 1.6m people on council housing waiting lists. But the shortage of social housing will condemn many of them to wait years for accommodation, if they ever reach the top of the queue at all.
This situation is unsurprising, given that for decades now, both Conservative and Labour governments have systematically pursued policies expressly designed to do away with council housing.
In 1981, local authorities in England and Wales owned nearly 4.8m homes. By 2005, that had shrunk to 2.8m, with some councils having sold their entire housing stock.
There are sound economic arguments for a serious programme of social housing construction. In the long run, it is cheaper to build good new homes than to keep families in often squalid bed & breakfast hotels.
But councils now have no incentive to build public housing, as they don’t get the long-term revenue stream and are forced to sell stock at a discounted rate.
Building a house creates two jobs in building, one job in manufacturing and one job in furnishing. Construction could be central to a progressive government's job creation strategy.
Brown is absolutely right to make housing a top priority for his government. But New Labour is to achieve anything, it is going to have to get over its existing hang-up against public sector provision.
Comments (8)
If it's anything like their plans for the Health Service, it will mean speculative builders building little boxes made of ticky-tacky and offerring 50 year mortgages. Funny how people can laud Blair and yet within a week of his leaving all this dirty linen is coming out. When's Last of the Blairites going to visit this site next? Perhaps he would explain it all.
You mightn't have thought it possible but Brown looks set to be more to the right than Blair. Dave is right to point out that the market cannot provide enough houses for working people yet every New Labour initiative on housing brings the market into housing.
To compound matters the only criticism I've heard from inside Labour was a Manchester MP complaining that his city isn't getting a super casino and the union leaderships who backed Brown aren't saying a word about him cutting their
It's not just the Last of the Blairites who has some explaining to do. It's anyone who can see anything progressive in 21st century Labourism. And don't get me started on Digby Jones and Buffini!
the other thing is that the UK has more than half of all the EU's personal debt, largely secured against property.
The debt based consumer boom is both central to Brown's economic policy, but also central to the perception that the Labour government has delivered individual prosperity.
Any systematic policy to solve the housing crisis, or defalte the economy in the South East in the interests of the economies of the other English regions and Scotland and Wales, would undermine the security behind the debts, and make the whole house of cards shakey.
Since you haven't started a blog on the topic I'll have to leave this message here. I know you#re obsessed with anything to do with the Labour Party - who gives a ... about Campbell's diaries - but no mention of Saturday's Shop Stewards Network meeting is unbelievable. I know the meeting didn't involve intense debates about who to support in an election between a sort-of-Left Labour Party member and a pretending-to-be-Left one to get suckers to vote for you, but for goodness sake.
Noted Doug, but seems odd to post that on this particular thread, which isn't about intra-left bitchslapping but about one of the most important issues we face, politically. The left's got to be right up to speed on the housing issue - few things are more important.
the only criticism I've heard from inside Labour was a Manchester MP complaining that his city isn't getting a super casino
Not just any Manchester MP - that's Graham Stringer, who was leader of the council in the 'left' years and leader of the left Labour semi-opposition group before that. New municipal socialism is officially dead.
The chucking out of said casino is perhaps the only thing in past two weeks which has really enthused me about Brown.He's absolutely right. Former lefts like Stringer take him to task for not, er, thinking that fat cat casino owners, investors and all the detritus which goes with that ( drug dealers, street crime) moving in to an area already rife with serious social problems is not a good idea. I speak as a Mancunian.
That, and Jacqui Smith. Two terror attacks - two linked terror attacks - and I still don't even know what the Home Secretary looks like. That's a nice change.