The housing shortage comes to the top of the agenda today. Affordable housing is in short supply, and ministers are anxious to be seen to be doing something. Anything.
The massive experiment of privatisation and deregulation has finally produced negative results that even its ardent supporters recognise. Private developers will build high value homes because it is more profitable to sell to rich people. Rich people then buy lots of these houses and sell them or rent them to other rich people. Everybody wins. Well, everyone who matters.
This leads to an inflation of house prices and rents. This means that most people are priced out of the market, so investors suffer. To address this problem, developers are going to be obliged to build lower priced homes, so that poorer billionaires will be able to afford them.
“It’s only reasonable,” said Raisa Drawbridge, mouthpiece of Sajid Javed. “For too long we have neglected the needs of the second tier of wealth producers. Housing should then trickle down to everyone who deserves it.”
‘Deserving’ meaning poor people in expensive yet inadequate houses?
“No, they are not deserving,” retorted Drawbridge. “They obviously don’t work hard enough, and need to suffer in order to be taught a lesson.”
It is clear that an Englishman’s Castle is his Home, as more and more budget moated mansions come on to the market.
Before long, even people who drive BMWs will be able to get a foot on the property ladder.
The problem is most acute in London. House prices here are sky-high, instead of merely exorbitant as in the rest of the country. An average three bed semi here will fetch seven figures, and a disused urinal next to a congested dual carriageway recently sold for £750,000.
“That’s fine,” says Drawbridge. “Londoners are paid more than the provincials out in the sticks. It helps slow the current rate of inward migration.”
And truly poor people? Government advice is, there is plenty of mud and straw around, build your own and stop whingeing.