Why Britain doesn’t build
I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It&#x27;s not like other public utility functions,  but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations.<p>What kind of state throws up it&#x27;s hands and claims &quot;it can&#x27;t&quot; fix housing when states can do precisely that?<p>Thatcher&#x27;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.<p>Australia&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>I&#x27;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&#x27;d rather they tried and failed than sat on their hands.