One solution to the housing crisis is being totally overlooked

Who will build the homes we need? The focus recently has been reforms to the planning system, with more housebuilding increasingly treated as a silver bullet to solving the housing crisis.The argument goes that loosening planning rules would remove bottlenecks preventing private investors from building more homes. This would in turn provide enough supply to put downward pressure on house prices (and ultimately rents).

But focusing on planning reform alone risks overlooking critical questions about how and where housing is delivered and who it’s for.if(window.adverts) { window.



adverts.addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }Planning reform may increase housebuilding rates, but it will not guarantee that the labour force for building more homes can be found. Nor does it necessarily secure the investment needed, especially in a period of elevated interest rates.

And indeed, granting planning permission does not guarantee those homes will be built. Since 2007, developers have secured permission to build more than 1.4 million homes that so far haven’t been built.

Feasibility is not the only problem. The intense focus on the volume of housebuilding has little regard for tenure, quality, location, or public benefit. This leaves the actual characteristics of new housing unaddressed.

This is a crucial question when it comes to the current housing market. The private rental sector has been growing for decades, while homeownership has fallen and council housing has been decimated.if(window.

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adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }The Build to Rent sector – where institutional landlords (such as pension funds and asset managers) build new homes solely to rent them out – has been on the rise, with the sector trebling in five years and now representing one in five new homes.

The Government is eyeing a sizeable role for Build to Rent in its housebuilding plans and has offered the sector £2bn of cheap lending. At the same time, very little funding has been brought forward for new social housing.With the UK now the number one market for overseas investment in property, and Build to Rent dominated by the same players, this startling trend requires more scrutiny.

There are reasons to think it could exacerbate unaffordability and insecurity. Over 90 per cent of Build to Rent homes are for single individuals, couples or flatshares. Across England, tenants on household incomes of £68,000 or over are overrepresented in the sector, while rents are on average higher too.

Despite fiscal support for the industry, the sector skews toward more expensive homes targeted at the comparatively better off.#color-context-related-article-3544366 {--inews-color-primary: #3759B7;--inews-color-secondary: #EFF2FA;--inews-color-tertiary: #3759B7;} Read Next square VICKY SPRATT House prices are falling in one Welsh county - Cornwall is nextRead MoreAt the same time, four of the biggest five Build to Rent landlords are owned or majority-owned by funds based overseas. Private equity firms also represent a huge part of the industry.

This raises questions about the types of practises these landlords are prone to engage in.In Madrid, which saw a major influx of private equity firms into housing, this change was marked by more evictions and increased deterioration of homes. These companies typically focus on minimising operating costs and maximising rents, a recipe for an ever-worsening deal for renters.

Accelerating the rise of these new giant landlords therefore risks taking us backwards.We don’t have to look far for better alternatives. Britain already has one straightforward, tried-and-tested solution: public housing.

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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }In the post-war era, mass council housebuilding brought about good, low-cost housing, largely insulated from volatile market conditions. While it cannot solve the crisis on its own, a council housing revolution could bring about clear and wide-ranging benefits.First, this could provide a reliable and certain pipeline of investment in new homes up and down the country.

At the same time, and perhaps even more importantly, this would represent an answer to the overlapping crises of high costs, poor quality, and inaccessibility which beset our housing, providing the most direct route to safe, secure and genuinely affordable for all.Adam Peggs is senior press officer at Common Wealth and writes and researches on the UK housing emergency..