Last week the government released its "fixing our broken housing market" white paper, with which it promised reforms that would fight market failures with radical measures.
Radical measures are certainly needed. Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis, were the poor and young are excluded, from both ownership and rental, by housing shortages and by what effectively amounts to a self-enriching cartel.
In terms of the shortage, Shelter have said that the gap between housing need and supply is around 150,000 a year, with some estimates putting the shortfall over the past twenty years at 2.5m (Griffiths & Jefferys, 2013; Halligan, 2017).
In his statement, acknowledging that the house price to average income ratios have gone up from 3.5 to 7.5 in the past twenty years, including under the Coalition, Communities Minister Sajid Javid told the House that the government recognised that the drain on people's income that housing - even rental - had become was a huge barrier to social progress (Javid, 2017).
But the excuses crept in quickly: claims that Labour didn't build enough and councils have ducked decisions and don't plan properly. There were also promises, of transparency, of faster construction, of coordinated public investments, to encourage greater innovation by opening the building market beyond the ten companies that build 60% of homes.
Renters were also paid some attention. Javid promised to promote longer-term tenancies, to tackle unfair terms and to improve safeguards - on top of the previous promises to ban agent's fees.
Now, there are two levels of critique for holding a government white paper to account. The first is the thing it promises. Does it contain a good policy? The second is delivery. Does the government have a record of following through and will it do so this time?
As with the government's prized right-to-buy scheme, the government's white paper does not seem to be offering solutions sufficient to deal with the full scale of the problem, although the government at least seems to recognise that there is a serious problem (Easton, 2017). There are some positive steps - if there is follow through. But it all seems like wallpapering over the cracks.
Meanwhile, the government seems content to continue feeding the beast. As when it chose to drain social housing to make up its for sale housing numbers, now it seems intent to just keep things afloat a little longer - build a few more houses, a bit more quickly, with a bit more market competition - and leave the new ideas to someone else.
All of this just shovels more of the UK's precious resources into an extremely greedy fire - as demonstrated by the government pitching houses costing £250,000, even after discounts, for households with combined incomes under £90,000, as 'affordable homes' (BBC, 2017).
As for delivery? In the past six years in office, the house price to average income ratio has continued to grow and the overall increase in housing costs have been extreme (Full Fact, 2015). Waiting lists for social housing remain long and even rental costs, both private and social, are becoming unsustainable.
During the Labour dominated late 1990s and 2000s, house building was usually between 150,000-200,000, falling to between 100,000-150,000 in the later art of the decade before the Conservatives came to office.
The Conservatives made no promises on housebuilding in 2010 and didn't break that pattern. In 2014 there were 125,000 new homes. By 2016, a corner had perhaps been turned. Javid claimed 190,000 were built last year. However, homelessness has also risen sharply, under the impact of private rents and cut to welfare support (BBC, 2017{2}).
In 2015 the Conservatives promised around 475,000 new homes by 2020 - of which about 55,000 a year were to be affordable homes and 40,000 a year were to be starter homes (CPA, 2015). Yet the number of households, by the government's own statistics, is set to rise by more than double their promised housebuilding targets (Full Fact, 2015). And the promised ban on agent's fees has yet to materialise (Collinson & Elgot, 2017).
Neither David Cameron's ministry nor Theresa May's have acted decisively on housing. Both governments plans patched things over and kept just enough houses in circulation on property markets to keep key property owning voters happy.
The reality is that a Conservative government cannot deal with the essential problem: that a cartel of property owners, developers and investors can only justify obscene investments with ever increasing property values and rents - that are utterly unsustainable.
How can a Conservative say no to these people? Well-to-do home owners, profit-making businesses and financial investors? That is basically a list of the key Conservative supporters. So for now, all there will be is a white paper to patch things up.
References
'Fixing our broken housing market'; from the Department for Communities and Local Government; 7 February 2017.
Matt Griffiths & Pete Jefferys' 'Briefing: Solutions for the Housing Shortage'; from Shelter; July 2013.
Liam Halligan's 'Housing white paper 'not up to the job''; on the BBC; 10 February 2017.
Sajid Javid's 'Housing white paper: statement'; from the Department for Communities and Local Government; 7 February 2017.
Mark Easton's 'Housing White Paper: Radical or feeble?'; on the BBC; 7 February 2016.
'More affordable housing promised in White Paper'; on the BBC; 7 February 2017.
'A brief introduction to housing issues'; from Full Fact; 7 April 2015.
'Rough sleeping rises at appalling rate, charity says, as figures show 16% rise'; on the BBC; 25 January 2017.
'At-a-glance: Conservative manifesto'; on the BBC; 13 April 2010.
'Conservative Housing Pledges'; from the CPA: Construction Products Association; 2015.
Patrick Collinson & Jessica Elgot's 'England's housing market is 'broken', government admits in white paper: Sajid Javid admits ownership is ‘distant dream’ for young families as he aims to encourage home building and help renters'; in The Guardian; 7 February 2016.
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