How bad do we have to deem a crisis before we take action radical enough to fix it?
London’s housing crisis has been decades in the making, but has arguably only reached true disaster proportions since the 2008 financial crash.
The Second World War was at the root of the UK’s previous shortage, with a fifth of homes destroyed and a six-year hiatus in housebuilding.
And so, in the spirit of restoring and reforming Britain, a building boom followed, which at its peak delivered twice as many homes as we are building now.
Must it take mass destruction on a global scale for Britain to take building housing seriously?
‘Micro towns’ with thousands of new homes are underway across London but they are concentrated in just five of the capital’s 33 local authorities.
Overall, new home starts in London continue to fall well short of the minimum target we need to hit. And anyway, housebuilding alone does not address the main crux of the current crisis — affordability.
As long as profit is the motivating factor behind housebuilding (and why shouldn’t it be if we’re relying on private companies to provide our new homes?) how can we expect properties to be sold for less than the maximum possible?
Building alone won’t get us out of the housing crisis (there are underlying financial issues, too), but as a big part of the solution it is as much about what homes we build, where and for whom as it is about how many.
