Housing is always centre stage in British politics, usually in the form of support for first-time buyers, like right to buy. But Keir Starmer is making housebuilding a key pre-election dividing line, attacking Rishi Sunak for scrapping the government’s 300,000 homes a year target for England and, more boldly, recognising that some development on green belt land will be required.
The Labour leader is up for a row that brings to life his promises to raise growth and home ownership, while highlighting Conservative divisions. Those divisions reflect housebuilding’s most discussed political faultline: Lib Dems scenting blood in Tory shire marginals whenever a single brick is laid.
Other issues are closer to home for Labour MPs, such as anti-gentrification protesters arguing that new city flats push up rents for local people.
But new evidence supports the left’s turn towards Yimbyism (“yes, in my back yard”). US data shows that boosting housing supply by adding a block of flats reduces local rents by 6%.
Building flats is the response to gentrification, not its cause. The yuppies are coming anyway, and the researchers find that adding new flats to meet that demand and keep other rents lower actually increases the share of poorer new arrivals.
The arrival of higher-paid workers does cause housing cost challenges for existing residents – rents rise with average incomes. But once those workers do arrive, housebuilding is part of the answer, not the problem. The rest of the answer? More social housing and ensuring that housing benefit, rather than being frozen as currently, rises with rents.
In the 1950s, a Conservative PM, Winston Churchill, not only promised 300,000 homes a year, he built them. Britain – it’s time to build.
• Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at resolutionfoundation.org
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