All the party manifestos are published now. All agree there is a housing crisis. The most recent data for housing starts in England show a fall of 19 per cent in the last quarter of 2014 compared to the post-2008 high or the 2nd quarter of 2014; and completions and planning applications have been flat-lining since 2009. The latest English Housing Survey Headlines showed a continuing rise in age for first time buyers and that the proportion of 25 to 34 year olds who were owner occupiers had fallen from 59 to 36 per cent over 10 years; and for the first time ever, more owner occupiers did not have mortgages than did. In other words all the evidence shows that house building is not significantly rising from what was a 100-year peacetime low in 2010, that the supply and affordability crisis continues – even gets worse – and the redistribution of housing wealth to the elderly continues.
A CentrePiece article last year explained that there had been a shortfall of building during the past 20 years of between 1.6 to 2.3 million and far too many of the houses that had been built were in the wrong places or the wrong type to satisfy demand. But – even worse – that the crisis was self-inflicted by longstanding policies.
via A real housing crisis but only fake solutions on offer | British Politics and Policy at LSE.
