Yep, and people who don't do critical jobs or earn much at all tend to want somewhere to live too (and subsidising their private sector housing costs in areas w

Yep, and people who don't do critical jobs or earn much at all tend to want somewhere to live too (and subsidising their private sector housing costs in areas with housing shortages usually costs more in the long run) Not really discussing the slowdown of building and mass-selloff of council owned housing since 1979 is a curious omission from an otherwise detailed description of public policy on housing. Private sector housebuilders have different incentives from public authorities, and maximising the profit from a site need not mean maximising the number of available homes (especially not given Britons with purchasing power were the original suburbanites). Nor does it mean building on all the limited supply of local land suitable for development at once, when it can be released in tranches (homebuilders have several years worth of plots with planning permission for every home they build in a year)