One of the great success stories of the modern world has been the sustained increases in life expectancy we have seen in recent decades, and which are projected to continue for the foreseeable future. The fact we are living longer, healthier lives is something to be celebrated. It does, however, raise a number of tricky […]
Labour’s latest housing wheeze is a plan to scrap a scheme that allows office and industrial buildings to be converted into homes without planning permission. This will apparently put an end to “slum housing and rabbit hutch flats” and lead to housing becoming more affordable. Now, improving the quality of housing and making it more […]
Half of England is owned by just 1 per cent of the population. That’s the eye-catching headline in today’s Guardian, based on a new report about who owns land in the UK. The figures have been compiled by Guy Shrubsole, a Friends of the Earth campaigner and author of Who Owns England? The answer, at least […]
The Centre for Social Justice recently released an in-depth survey of people across Britain that found family breakdown was one of the most significant determinants of poor life outcomes. When someone experiences trauma in childhood, linked to an unhappy home life of familial conflict, doubled the probability of someone experiencing homelessness, doubled the probability of […]
The Government has decided, for reasons unknown, to effectively abolish the assured shorthold tenancy, leaving the assured tenancy as the only viable form of renting. That sounds pretty trivial, but it is not far off a return to the situation that prevailed in a previous era when we barely had a private rental market. And […]
In Berlin, support is growing for a referendum on mass property expropriation. In a move reminiscent of East Germany’s communist past, the referendum’s supporters aim to seize property from all private landlords who own more than 3,000 rental units. If the housing activists are successful and expropriation is enacted, roughly a dozen housing companies owning […]
Onward is a Conservative think tank that says it wants to give “new ideas for the next generation”. This week it has released polling that tries to figure out what would get more people under 35 (“young people”) to vote Conservative. The results are counterintuitive, suggesting that, among other things, young people want less immigration […]
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” – Friedrich Hayek Alain Bertaud is a rarity – an urban planner aware of his professions’ limitations. In Order Without Design, he uses insights from urban economics alongside his own professional experience (working […]
Yesterday’s report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England about the brownfield land with space for a million homes perfectly illustrates the organisation’s many strengths, and its weaknesses. With exquisite attention to detail, it demonstrates that there are unused sites in London with the potential for 170,000 homes. Someone has done a lot of work. […]
The creation of a market in air could help solve London’s housing crisis. Yes, I’m saying we should privatise the air. Don’t tell the Corbynistas. In 1961, New York City established “transferable development rights” as part of limiting density for each block. Transferable development rights allow property owners to sell the space between an existing […]
If someone utters the word ‘neoliberal’ in a political debate, chances are they’re using it as a term of abuse. However, in recent years, a small but growing group have tried to reclaim the word, transforming an insult left-wingers hurl at free marketeers to something more meaningful. My guest on the podcast this week is […]
A new report from the Social Market Foundation, suggesting building co-living spaces for sale to mitigate the housing crisis, has attracted the usual backlash. Much of the opposition to tiny homes, co-living facilities and the like comes from those living comfortably in large houses with no idea of the hard choices facing young people. Why […]
New anti-market movements are emerging. In Britain and America, a revivalist Left is ascendant, winning not only seats in Parliament and Congress, but hearts and minds in classrooms, on campuses and online. The appeal of the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, especially to younger generations, presents a real threat to free-market capitalism. But […]
Unlike most issues in politics today, there is widespread agreement that the UK is facing a housing crisis. While new-build volumes have risen since the financial crisis of 2008/09, they are still way short of the 300,000 per year target that used to be achieved comfortably in the 1950s. In recent decades, the combination of […]
There is a housing crisis in the UK. As Dr Kristian Niemietz has set out, the root causes are easy enough to identify. A toxic mix of restrictive planning rules and poorly thought out taxes means many face sky high rents and may never realise the dream of home ownership. Much has been written both here and […]
The UK construction industry has long been overdue a market disruption to challenge the complacency of the major housebuilders. Over the past 20 years productivity growth in UK construction has averaged just 0.4 per cent per year compared to manufacturing’s 3.2 per cent. This is part of the reasons for our housing crisis, as noted […]
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