We do not build enough houses in Britain. This leads to all kinds of problems like overcrowding, homelessness and young people living with their parents until, well until they are not really young people any more.
The Conservatives have been completely ineffective at increasing the supply of new housing.
In fact, the Conservatives are fundamentally incapable of solving this problem. At their core they hold two completely contradictory beliefs: first, that we need to reduce red tape to make life easier for house builders, and second, that we need to preserve this green and pleasant land.
Perhaps a better-run operation could have resolved this contradiction, but not Cameron’s team. Instead, they failed to increase the supply of new houses, and ended up calling the National Trust ‘semi-hysterical’.
The scene seems to be set for Labour to sweep in, promise to build a load of houses and win the day. But politics is not that simple. Labour also operate within constraints. Ed Balls has made it clear that a Labour government will not borrow money to build new houses.
The result is the Lyons housing review: an artfully presented series of technical proposals for how to build more houses without borrowing more money. A senior figure in housing described the review to me as ‘realistic, pragmatic, doable, ready to go as soon as there is a government’.
There are a few missteps. Perhaps the team behind the review really do believe that we will see a massive increase in the number of people who build their own home and a similarly enormous increase in the number of big corporates that build flats for rent, but I am sceptical. Not least because policymakers have been trying to encourage ‘self build’ and ‘institutional PRS’ for my entire life, to little or no effect.
Overall the proposals are not as radical as some would have liked. If enacted they will markedly increase the number of houses that we build but, as the review makes clear, ‘to solve our housing crisis, we must of course go beyond this’. This probably means that the proposals in the report will not be a massive vote winner by themselves.
Labour will not be going into the next election promising that all young people will be able to move into a home of their own by 2020. They will be saying something more credible and more humble. They will be saying that they have an incredibly, unprecedented detailed plan for how they will significantly and steadily increase the supply of new housing.
This might be a vote-winner if Labour can successfully contrast their modest, achievable plans with the Conservatives record of wild promises and abject failure to deliver.
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Thomas Neumark is a former Labour councillor and blogs at Dream Housing. He tweets @TomNeumark
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