We can build enough homes for everyone in England. So why don’t we?
If you read this article in full you will get some fascinating insights as to why we don’t have enough houses in rural England. It tells us:
Whichever new prime minister emerges, current Conservative politics makes it unlikely we’ll see a significant new expansion of social rented housing any time soon. But not so long ago another Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, talked of the need for “a new generation of council homes to help fix our broken housing market”. Opposition parties and the UK’s devolved governments remain committed to a large increase in public housing. Meanwhile, there are still an estimated 1.6m households in England with unmet housing needs best provided by social renting. As we plan for the future, now is a good time to ask what we can learn from past social housing schemes.
The most important lesson is simply that we can build social housing at scale when the political will exists. Between 1945 and 1979, the country built an average of 126,000 council homes annually. The largest number built in a single year, 219,000, was achieved by a Conservative government in 1953. At times, that pace and scale could be problematic. Financial constraints frequently limited the best of what might have been achieved. There were perhaps too many poorly constructed high-rise dwellings, too many large and anonymous suburbs, but the overriding goal – when, even in 1948, 54% of British households lacked their own bathroom – was to house all our people decently and clear the slums.