Why Britain doesn’t build
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Why Britain doesn’t build
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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build
#2There's loads of houses being built in the UK (often of questionable quality, built for maximum profit, packed into minimal amounts of space).
It may still not be enough to match the demand, but the real problem is we don't seem to be building any infrastructure to support these homes.
More people and more homes requires more roads, railways, hospitals, police stations, power stations, sewer capacity, even reservoirs, and lots more. And this rarely seems mentioned in discussions of the housing crisis or rising immigration. And as a nation we're incapable of building infrastructure without cost and/or timescale spiralling completely out of control. See HS2.
Re: Why Britain doesn’t build
#3I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations.
What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that?
Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual householders deliriously happy, enshrined them as Tory voters for decades and from shelter statistics left 1.5 million families functionally homeless. Millions live in penury, in squalid hotels because councils are disincentivised from fixing things, penalised even.
Australia's housing crisis is just as bad. Truly sordid tropes about rent caps and freezes are trotted out again and again, as if simply reciting them makes them axioms: they're not. All statements about effects on housing stocks are contextual and depend on other social policy, including (surprise surprise) building more rental homes by the state.
I'm a home-owner at the end of my working life. If I was a young person, this above all other things would radicalise me. Our elected leadership are captive to stupid market force arguments. I'd rather they tried and failed than sat on their hands.
Re: Why Britain doesn’t build
#4Britain's energy-per-capita has collapsed since 1965 [0]. How are they meant to build houses and live in them without energy? Construction is one of the most energy-intensive activities we have, and maintaining a warm home is up there.
Britain is one of the usual suspects who listened to environmentalists, fought nuclear, let fossil fuels slide and bet big on renewables. They're going to need to have a bit of a focus on finding some energy somewhere if they want to reclaim the "glory" of even the 1950s. Standards have to drop.
Re: Why Britain doesn’t build
#5There's loads of houses being built in the UK (often of questionable quality, built for maximum profit, packed into minimal amounts of space). It may still not be enough to match the demand, but the real problem is we don't seem to be building any infrastructure to support these homes. More people and more homes requires more roads, railways, hospitals, police stations, power stations, sewer capacity, even reservoirs…
The infrastructure is often insufficient for existing homes nevermind for any expansion.
I've recently moved house but I'm having to stay registered to my Dentist & Doctors 30 miles away because the wait list to get registered in my new town is months.
Re: Why Britain doesn’t build
#6I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…
> Our elected leadership are captive to stupid market force arguments
Perhaps recently, but the state driven housebuilding programs have met similar failures. Local authorities and their residents seem equally hostile to housebuilding whether it's made by the private sector or public sector (see the backlash faced by Labour governments under Harold Wilson or Tony Blair).
Perhaps one of the better arguments against democracy in general is that it makes housebuilding so difficult.
Re: Why Britain doesn’t build
#7Britain's energy-per-capita has collapsed since 1965 [0]. How are they meant to build houses and live in them without energy? Construction is one of the most energy-intensive activities we have, and maintaining a warm home is up there. Britain is one of the usual suspects who listened to environmentalists, fought nuclear, let fossil fuels slide and bet big on renewables. They're going to need to have a bit of a focus…
energy-use-per-capita. Not sure what switching to energy efficient lightbulbs and vacuum cleaners has to do with the collapse in housing supply.
Re: Why Britain doesn’t build
#8There's loads of houses being built in the UK (often of questionable quality, built for maximum profit, packed into minimal amounts of space). It may still not be enough to match the demand, but the real problem is we don't seem to be building any infrastructure to support these homes. More people and more homes requires more roads, railways, hospitals, police stations, power stations, sewer capacity, even reservoirs…
The graphs in the article indicate there aren't loads of houses being built.
Re: Why Britain doesn’t build
#9TLDR: once people own a house, it is no longer in their interest to let anyone else build one, and in Britain this tail wags the dog.
Re: Why Britain doesn’t build
#10I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…
Note: I originally said Britain built 30k houses last year, which commenters have corrected. Thank you!
I don't really understand all this. Surely the main reason for a lack of housing is the difference between house demand (e.g. Britain took in 606k people in net immigration last year) compared to house supply (Britain built I think around 200k houses last year).
The state shouldn't need to build houses (in fact it doesn't; it just uses your tax money to pay private companies to build houses). It should just make the building and zoning rules simple enough that it's possible to make money from building houses and selling them, and let people get on with it.