4 March

Housing affordability is trapped inside a filter of understanding that will prevent us ever fixing it. The supply and demand filter, which is total nonsense. All sides of politics and most people will tell you the answer is ‘more supply’. But who (which builder or developer) is going to build a lot of houses that are much cheaper, losing them money? None. It’s a fairy tale. What’s happening with land and housing is that it’s becoming something only the most wealthy and privileged can afford. And that’s returning us to most of human history, to feudal times, when ‘lords’ of every description got power by holding land. (We still call owners of land ‘landlords’ today.) Like I post about a lot, we’re returning to a time when Kings ruled the world, with their ‘court’ or aristocracy of elite barons and lords. We just call these positions different things now. The only time in thousands of years, all of history, when ordinary people owned land and housing in great numbers was between the end of World War 2 and about the 1980s, when governments built people housing after the war. Once people felt the re-build after that war was done, humans returned to doing what they always do, creating status hierarchies. Reversing that shift.