Yes we need to build a million homes but we don't need £146 billion in public subsidy to do so

Some of the beautiful 'green belt' that CPRE want to save

It beggars belief really. The National Housing Federation along with Shelter, the CPRE and the Chartered Institute of Housing propose, as their solution to the housing crisis, a programme costing £146 billion over ten years to build 1.45 million homes - that's a public subsidy of over £100,000 per house. These self-serving institutions have not specified where they'll build these homes but you can bet your bottom dollar that, with the involvement of those NIMBYs-in-chief, CPRE, the homes won't be troubling the residents of nice leafy suburbs very much.

I'm guessing that the target for developing these homes will be all that brownfield land in inner cities - where else would we put all the poor people, eh? You know the former industrial land that requires millions in decontamination, the scraggy bits of wasteland inside industrial estates and other sites currently languishing in deriliction because nobody can develop them viably.

It's not that there's no case for new social housing but rather that these proposals, by including intermediate market solutions, will act to further screw up a housing market already made sclerotic and inefficient by the worst ravages of our strategic planning system.

There are two models for delivering homes in volume - the 1930s models and the 1950s model. This bunch of self-interested organisations want the latter approach - massive government investment - because it suits their business model and expands their power and influence in the housing market. Back in the 1950s, in a war ravaged nation with millions of destroyed and bomb-damaged homes, there was a justification for that government action. Right now there is no justification beyond the self-harm inflicted on our housing markets by government regulation and the planning system.

The involvement of the CPRE in these proposals tells us that the main aim isn't to solve the housing crisis but rather to preserve the green belts that represent 13% of England's land - mostly in the very places where people would like to settle down and raise a family. Rather than pleasant suburbs close to the countryside and linked by good public transport to city and town centres, we're going to get high rise blocks on constrained sites in inner cities, unpopular housing crammed into hard-to-access sites and maybe a couple of high profile whole estate developments that will merely repeat the mistakes of the 1970s by putting the least well off far away from the snug middle classes.

The housing crisis is, in large part, a crisis caused by the inability of the emerging young middle class - all those millennial professionals in good London jobs - to afford a home with a garden like the ones they were raised in. The only way to resolve this problem affordably is to significantly increase the supply of land in places where those millennial professionals want to live. And this is not in a shared ownership development in Lambeth.

It is perfectly possible - the 1930s prove this - to build the homes we need without extensive public subsidy. What's required is that we make major reforms to our planning system - returning green belt to it's original purpose of preventing ribbon development, doubling the supply of sites with potential for housing and scrapping 'community infrastructure levy' as it is simply a tax on building houses. If there's a case for spending £14 billion then its on providing the schools, railway stations, bus routes and road improvements those new homes will need.

For most rural - exurban really - places with 2,000 of more homes, a 20% increase in this supply will not destroy them or the countryside in which they nestle. Rather that increase will improve the chances of them keeping the post office, a good local store, the chemist, a couple of pubs and the local primary school. And with this provision safeguarded these places remain communities (especially if some of the new housing is social housing) rather than dormitories for the urban wealthy.

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