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What do you think of these solutions; 1 - Create a independent body for housing growth "The house bank of England" and thier responsibility is to ensure 0% YOY
by matt-p 3y ago
What do you think of these solutions;
1 - Create a independent body for housing growth "The house bank of England" and thier responsibility is to ensure 0% YOY house price growth by increasing supply to the point prices no longer rise, but no further. No negative equity created but also no above inflation price rises for a decade or two. This is not particularly different than when they do QE (for the middle class/wealthy who are often savers).
2 - growth areas: I'm thinking south London, Cambridge, Oxford, Leeds, maybe Manchester. Government builds houses and commits to buy any house for the value of it on $scheme_announcement_date for houses brought before that date. Scheme will last 25 years. Increasing the density of a city should actually draw house prices up in the long run as it will bring better transport links, more economic activity with greater productivity/efficiency.
- petesergeant 3y agoThe second is something I’ve thought about and probably the closest to something that could work, although I think the UK is naturally too free-market minded to accept it. I suspect the status quo is much more popular with the voters though.
- matt-p 3y agoI honestly believe it does depend on the voter. For 2) Conservatives would never be able to even if they wanted this, however labour have the option of picking say Oxford or the home counties to do this in where they have very few voters to lose in the first place. They would still get in on a national election.
- dukeyukey 3y agoOxford has two MPs - one Labour and one Lib Dem. But in a town as expensive as Oxford, there's probably lots of voters keen on lowering housing costs.
- matt-p 3y agoHah, didn't know that. I think the point stands though, plenty of areas where doing this would gain a net benefit in terms of national (and perhaps even local as you say) voter support.
- petesergeant 3y agoI mean you also need to account for the fact that government and parliament aren’t the same, and that it’s parliament who can and would ultimately need to legislate to wave away green belt and local planning objections. Far from clear that that gets through a Labour majority parliament, even if the government wants it to. re Oxford, there’s a shed-load of ugly and very well connected land around Kidlington that you could dump a large, high-density town into, and Oxford West is a Con/LD swing seat, but local opposition is fiercely against.