Ever keen to annoy as many people as possible, the main thrust of his article in yesterday's Evening Standard was that homes in the private rented sector are probably used more efficiently than owner-occupied or social housing. Which is probably true.
He redeems himself with this though:
Rich cities such as London should stop moaning that “my children can find nothing affordable in Camden” and think of less fortunate parts of the country — or indeed London. The capital keeps demanding and winning ever higher subsidies for trains, runways, academies, museums and garden bridges. More ridiculous, it demands and wins subsidies for “first-time buyers”. These subsidise demand rather than supply, driving prices even higher.
Some ancient Whitehall statistician, constantly quoted, says London “needs to build” 50,000 new houses a year “to meet demand”. This is illiterate. Londoners probably demand a million houses, or two million. Demand for space in a city is infinite and impossible to satisfy. Everyone always wants somewhere better to live — and if asked will “demand” it…
What role is there for government in all this? One is to keep the property market as open and flexible as possible. Taxation should do everything to induce empty space into use. But government should also care for those in acute housing distress. Neither role is being performed in London…
London’s curse, geographer Danny Dorling has written, is “space hoarding”. Whether the so-called bedroom tax is the answer — or perhaps a more steeply graduated council tax — all surplus living space should be taxed. London’s hidden and least expensive housing surplus is in houses already built, not unbuilt…
The Government’s current attempt to extend right-to-buy to housing associations should increase, not decrease, rental supply. There is nothing wrong in right-to-buy but there is everything wrong in the proposal to discount prices and subsidise them from social housing budgets. It is a cross-subsidy from poor to rich and indefensible.
Which I have been saying for years.
Debate Magazine
