Social Housing: Listen to Shelter

Shelter’s claim that Britain needs 3 million new affordable homes at the rate of 300,000 new builds a year is both timely and on the ball. The present system, in which a handful of new social housing is completed each year, while millions of families live in rented accommodation they cannot afford which has to be subsidised by the government, is economic vandalism of the very worst kind. Because it enriches the well off at the expense of the less well off , who do the essential jobs which make civilised life bearable, but are not highly paid. Additionally it sucks endless cash into fixed assets and starves investment in new wealth creation. This knocks on to produce low productivity per capita and  cash strapped public services.

So a bold plan to reconstruct this lopsided and nationally damaging economic model, by building affordable homes on a scale not seen since the 1950s, eloquently promoted by Lord O’Neill on the BBC World at One, is very welcome. It is a big pity that our fractured and dysfunctional government will do nothing more than talk about it.