We need homes

Britain's love of owner-occupation, fostered by successive governments and entrenched by a financial system more consecrated to mortgage lending than any in the world, is becoming a major economic and social problem. House price inflation is underwriting massive, and unsustainable, increases in personal spending while becoming an increasing source of inequality.

The rise in house prices is putting home ownership not only out of reach of first-time buyers but also, as we report today, entirely beyond the reach of low-paid key workers in the public sector. First-time buyers are on average five years older than 20 years ago, and in too many parts of Britain are unable to purchase a home within reasonable distance of their work. Meanwhile last year, 50,000 homes in the south-east were bought to let, driving up prices and increasing the wealth gap between haves and have-nots. As key workers fail to find houses, police officers, teachers and nurses become increasingly difficult to recruit.

The anti-public housing policies of the past 20 years have to be reformed. Planning laws need to be eased to allow more housebuilding and we need a massive publicly-led social housing building programme to increase the supply.

Realities have to be faced. A path-breaking vote in Glasgow last Friday, in which tenants voted in favour of a complete transfer of the city's housing stock to a housing association in exchange for a promise of massive investment, offers a possible solution which should be used more aggressively elsewhere. The Treasury wrote off Glasgow's housing debt to get the deal agreed; the offer should be made unconditional to every British local authority. We desperately need more homes - social and private. And we need them now.