Don't Build More Homes

I'm not saying we don't need more homes; quite clearly we do in some parts of the country. But addressing it by finding new ways to subsidise housebuilders has not only failed (housebuilding has fallen to 100,000 units a year), it is counterproductive.  I've visited three countries in the past couple of years that have had big housebuilding programmes: Spain, Ireland and Portugal. What I saw there saddened me. Not only do their building booms appear to have worsened their economic situation, the new homes they produced appear to be having little social benefit.  It strikes me that the major housing problem in the UK is not supply (technically there is a million house surplus in England), but people's ability to afford housing. Median house prices are more than six times median earnings in England – double what most experts think is sustainable. Subsidies to housebuilders, artificially low interest rates, mortgage rescue, bailing out failing banks and subsidies to social housing have all either helped house prices rise faster than they would have done otherwise, or prevented house prices dropping.  The fallacy with building your way out of the problem is that people still can't afford the houses you build.  Read more of this opinion piece on the Guardian website.