Time to build some houses for the sake of London’s future
Some years ago, a small group of twitter warriors coalesced around a single campaign slogan – build some bloody houses. As ever with social media trends, the energy and enthusiasm has now lagged, but the point is as relevant as ever.
Last year the average house increased in price by around the same as the average wage of a twenty-something. That’s good news if you own a home; if you don’t, it’s rather more of a concern. House prices going up is no bad thing, but housing affordability falling is more of a worry; those who can get on the ladder are liable to take mortgages far larger than is best practice, and those who can’t are in a different kind of trouble.
There are myriad reasons for house price growth, but in the UK it is in large part due to a scarcity of homes in places that people want to live. So if demand is high, supply must increase. In a properly functioning market, it would. But housing in the UK is a mess of private and public sector relationships laid on top of byzantine planning regulations and labyrinthine approvals processes. It is also, of course, a political hot potato.
There had been hopes of more dramatic reform than we have seen. An eighty-seat majority should have allowed the Tories the space to overhaul the planning regime and stare down the not-in-my-back-yard and the more militant build-absolutely-nothing-anywhere-near-anything crowd. They did not. The Lib Dems’ surprise victory in Chesham and Amersham in a by-election last year signalled the death knell for that ambition.
In London, then, there must be a redoubling of efforts to make building houses easier and cheaper for developers who are keen to capitalise on demand. And making the capital more affordable for young talent has a wider economic benefit, too; witness Berlin’s start-up scene, driven in large part by cheap housing appealing to footloose, mobile young talent. Time to build some bloody houses.