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The perversity of the politics of housing

admin / May 31, 2013 / Housing / Permalink

The abject failure of housing policy is among the biggest challenges facing this country yet it barely gets a mention on the hustings or in any political debate.

(Anthony Hilton, Evening Standard, 28/05/13)

There was a time when the stance taken by the major political parties on housing issues was a key General Election battleground. But that was half a century ago. With high costs and insecurity pervasive, the UK housing market is evidently very sick at the moment. This has significant short- and long-term consequences for the broader macroeconomy and significant impacts on households’ well-being. Yet, housing policy has so far failed to gain real political traction.

When the Government does propose to intervene on a substantial scale – in the form of Help to Buy – the policy is all about political calculation and very little about doing what needs doing to get the housing system into better shape. Indeed, beyond the Treasury and the industry interest groups that stand to benefit directly from the policy, commentators across the spectrum – including the IMF and the OECD – display near unity in condemning the policy as extremely unwise. I have had words about Help to Buy on a couple of previous occasions (here and here). Continue Reading →

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Nick Boles and the philosophy of the garden

admin / November 29, 2012 / Housing, Politics / Permalink

To what sorts of things do people have moral rights? That’s a profound question worthy of more than a mere blog post.

We could turn to the thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for inspiration. We’ll see an aspirational list of rights which still, more than 60 years after its adoption, many countries fail to deliver in full. In that list at number three we have:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Now we know that “liberty” and its realisation is a complex concept. It can, though, incorporate access to adequate housing as a foundation for personal development and security.

But we needn’t try to use Article 3 to cover the issue. We’ve got further resources to draw on when thinking about housing. Continue Reading →

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Housing at half-time

admin / November 21, 2012 / Housing / Permalink

There isn’t a great deal of disagreement about the key problems facing the British housing market.

The main issues are high housing costs in both the owner occupied and private rented sectors, with correspondingly high bills for housing allowances. Many households have difficulties in accessing appropriate accommodation, particularly given the limited flow of lettings in the social rented sector. And the market is subject to high volatility by international standards, which has negative ramifications for the macroeconomy. The root cause of this is the failure of housing supply – over a period measured in decades rather than years – to keep pace with the increase in the number of households.

The disagreements start to emerge when we move on to discuss what we should do about it. And, more specifically, to consider whether the Government is currently doing enough to address the problems identified. The Government has provided a perfectly sensible diagnosis of the problem. There has been quite a bit of policy pronouncement and promise. Much of the early bustle was brought together in last year’s strategy, Laying the foundations.

But does all this add up to a policy response that is appropriately targeted and on sufficient scale to make a dent in the problem? Continue Reading →

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Housing and the economy

admin / September 12, 2012 / Housing / Permalink

[This text was prepared to accompany my presentation to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing, 10/09/12]

Many people appear to be coming round to the idea that investment in housing could be the way forward in attempting to revive the economy. There are good reasons for thinking that housing investment is a promising avenue to pursue. Even though the estimates differ somewhat in magnitude, the direct impacts of investment in terms of increasing employment and taxation and reduced unemployment benefits are now relatively clear. And import leakage is low. The multipliers and indirect impacts of housing investment compare very favourably with those for other types of investment.

Intersections

It is very welcome that greater policy attention has focused upon housing, but we should recognise that we face intersecting issues here. There is the urgent need to identify an effective macroeconomic lever. House building may well do the job.

But there are longstanding concerns about the housing supply system in the UK. Continue Reading →

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Desperate times call for …

admin / September 7, 2012 / Housing / Permalink

It’s hard to know what to make of yesterday’s slew of policy initiatives in the housing field. It is clear that they are directed primarily at boosting the economy, rather than being any sort of considered response to the problems of the housing market. You get the sense that the Government has pretty much run out of ideas and it just so happens that doing something with housing investment might help. It’s incidental that it is housing. It’s the only lever left to pull.

There has already been a healthy debate in the mainstream and social media as to whether any of the Government’s initiatives will have much impact upon either growth or the housing market.

Much of the media attention has been directed at the relaxation of planning permission on extensions and conservatories. I think it is a safe bet that this is going to make negligible difference to economic activity in the aggregate. Continue Reading →

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Housing transformations and trajectories: My contribution to #SLFconf

admin / July 15, 2012 / Housing, Politics / Permalink

[This is the text accompanying my presentation to the 2nd Social Liberal Forum Conference: “Social justice across generations”, King's College London, 14/07/12. Not all of it was delivered on the day, because of the way the session panned out and because there's too much of it. My thanks to my co-contributors Paula Keaveney, Emily Davey and Martin Tod - and to everyone who attended - for a really interesting session.]

We are experiencing a momentous period in UK housing – both in terms of the housing system itself and housing policy. This is not simply a product of the current economic crisis but of the crisis layered on top of longer-term and deeply-rooted problems.

We are witnessing a housing transformation on the ground. The last five or six years have seen an increase of more than a million households living in the private rented sector. This is in part because of the scarcity of mortgages for first time buyers; one of the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis.

And we are witnessing a transformation in the thinking underpinning housing policy. As those who play #shappsbingo know, Grant Shapps regularly refers to his aim of shattering the “lazy” consensus in housing policy. I don’t agree with him on much, but I think it is fair to say that there was a consensus on the broad parameters of housing policy, and that he has shattered it. Ideas that a few years ago were only whispered among the more outré right wing think tanks are now the premises upon which policy is based.

And if we don’t like the direction in which housing policy is heading then we will need to come up with some strong social liberal arguments as to why not. In my view housing policy needs refounding. Continue Reading →

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Do we need to reinvent the wheel on housing finance?

admin / December 21, 2011 / Guardian Housing Network / Permalink

[Originally posted at the Guardian Housing Network, 18/12/11]

If the government finally accepts that fiscal consolidation, even when coupled with quantitative easing, is not a policy that can deliver adequate economic growth, what might a credible plan B look like? A recent report for Shelter made the case for investment in housing as a key component of an alternative. The report focuses primarily upon using construction as part of a short-term stimulus package, but it also recognises that housing investment has a longer term impact on economic growth. Continue Reading →