Housing: What to do?

Why is providing new family sized housing such a difficult thing? Why is there so little built in our country? And why are most of the houses that are built so poorly designed and cheaply constructed?  

Recently I went to an event focusing on exactly these questions. One group of people - let's call them the 'enablers' - clearly identified the problem, which is this: There is a massive shortfall in housing provision. New housing starts are at their lowest for 65 years. Rents are rising, mortgages are unobtainable for anyone who doesn't have a very large deposit and house prices, at least in London, are still unbearably high due to limited supply. 

On top of this, benefit caps, higher rents for 'social housing' (up to 80%) and stalled regeneration projects have created growing homelessness numbers and rising housing waiting lists. One of the speakers at the event put up a graph illustrating new house build starts since 1947. The graph showed that up until the end of the 1970's, the number of house starts had remained pretty much even between private and public developments. Since 1979 however, the number of publicly funded projects has dropped off to almost zero. This is little surprise given the Thatcher administration's curtailing of the ability of local councils to build houses and encouragement of them to sell off their existing stock. What the graph also showed was that private sector house starts have stayed pretty much constant throughout that period, that is until the last three years when they have also tailed off dramatically. In other words, the private sector has emphatically not grown to plug the gap left by the emaciated public sector.  It is also currently largely moribund.

There are some other important issues too. Aside from sheer numbers, the quality of housing provision has diminished. The UK has the worst space standards for new housing in Europe. The conservative nature of the market, the limited land available, the difficulty and uncertainty of achieving planning, the high risks involved and the abandonment of  local authority built housing has stifled not just supply but also innovation, quality and creativity in this field. There have been decent, forward looking developments - I've been lucky enough to have been involved in some - but nowhere near enough. 

Having had the problems outlined clearly, a second group of people - let's call these the 'deliverers' - presented a number of residential developments they were working on. Almost exclusively these schemes focused on one and two bed flats, many sold to overseas bulk buyers and investors. Very few family or larger units were included. None of the 'enablers' had identified a shortage of coffee bars, luxury spas or interesting fenestration patterns and yet that was all  the 'delivers' were offering to provide.

So, here was the problem laid bare. An under supply of houses is answered by an oversupply of one and two bed flats. Town centres in need of life and revitalisation are given new developments full of one bed flats bought up and left empty by overseas investors or by landlords as buy-to-let properties. 

The market simply cannot supply decent, affordable housing. In reaction to this the current governments instincts are of course simplistic, erroneous and driven by the same deregulating, under-investing, state-averse neo-liberal ideology that has created the problems in the first place. Faced with evidence that the private sector emphatically doesn't deliver what is required, the government calls for more deregulation, more marketisation and less planning, control and investment.

One thing the government have done which might not be totally wrong headed is introduce the community right to build element of the NPPF and offer support (ish) for self-build, or more likely self-commissioned, housing. If these policies resulted in a growth in housing cooperatives and community land trusts along with an itinerant strain of ad-hoc self-build then it might do some good. But this needs to be developed alongside a reinvigorated and dynamic planning system not a demoralised and underfunded one.

So here's some other suggestions about what should be done:

• Strengthen the power of local planning authorities to actually plan and allocate land for development and draw up proper spatial plans. Some local authorities do this but they are facing massive cuts and are being undermined by the NPPF.

• Fund and empower local authorities to directly commission the kind of housing that is desperately needed but that the market won't provide.

• Invest in new construction technology research, innovative energy conservation measures and progressive housing design.

• Reintroduce statutory minimum space standards for new dwellings. 

• Tighten 'buy to let' regulations, introduce a land value tax and remove tax loopholes that encourage bulk buying, empty homes and overseas property investment.

• Extend the fair rent act to control spiraling rental costs. This would reduce the vast sums paid out to landlords in the form of housing benefit to provide over priced flats. It would also allow people to stay in their current homes rather than face eviction.

• Move away from a focus on 100% home ownership and the ridiculous and destructive notion that houses are primarily a source of investment rather than a place to live.

• Reform the lending markets to offer much more diversity and recognise different forms of home ownership and house building.

• Instigate a massive house building programme. Now.