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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No Bradford doesn't have a housing crisis...

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Nor is it worsening. Yet we keep being told this:

Bradford has an affordable-homes crisis which is worsening year-by-year, the National Housing Federation has warned.

The federation, which represents housing associations, says a rising number of people are being priced out of a property market where the average house price is £142,000 but average annual earnings are £18,500.

Ah, the NHF again. So let's deal with the issue - firstly it's not simply about house price, it's about rents, but let's start with those prices.

According to those nice folk at Zoopla the current average price for houses sold in Bradford is £118,940 which is a slight rise (less than 3%) on the previous year. But if we look at the 'affordable' bit of the market - terraced properties and flats - we find that the average is below £100,000.  Still too much for those on Bradford's average earnings but only two-thirds of the NHF figure.

Which brings us to rents. Again looking at Zoopla we find an average rent of £486 per month - not super cheap but hardly at crisis levels. And again the average for terraced properties is at or around £400 per month.

Moreover, I'm prepared to bet that there are parts of the city where rents are lower still - indeed little different from social rent levels - and we know that you can buy a property (about 60 are on the T& A website right now) at £50,000 or less.

No-one's saying we don;t need to build more houses or even that there aren't problems wrought by a combination of a growing population and low wages. But there isn't a crisis. Not even a little one.

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...and Bradford Council want you to think there's a housing crisis

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For some while now the Labour folk running Bradford (into the ground) have been telling us that there's a 'housing crisis' requiring us to build loads and loads of houses all over the place to cope with our growing population.

However, it seems that this growing population is, in fact, leaving:

Internal migration statistics, released by the Office of National Statistics yesterday, show around 4,000 more people left the district than arrived in the year ending June 2012. 

We'll be finding out that the birth rate statistics the Council are using are wrong next.

Mind you in the same newspaper they're running:

Bradford’s Housing Timebomb, which calls for more affordable homes to be built on brownfield land to help the 21,000 local people stuck on social housing waiting lists. 

The 21,000 figure is, of course, a complete fiction - this is the number of people registered on the Bradford 'choice-based letting' system which isn't a waiting list. Anyone can register and no questions about housing need are asked. However, this doesn't stop self-interested lobbies like the National Housing Federation.

In Bradford there are perhaps 6,000 people actually in some kind of housing need in any given year and around 2,000 social rents coming onto the market in the same period. If a net figure of 4,000 people are leaving (mostly leaving behind an empty home), it seems to me that the housing development need in Bradford is pretty close to zero.

And this rather explains why there's over 5,000 houses planned that aren';t being built. Put simply, there's no-one to buy them.

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Bradford doesn't have a 'housing crisis' - not even a little one

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Almost exactly a year ago, Cllr Val Slater, scourge of the middle classes (and Buttershaw councillor who lives in Bingley), had this to say about Bradford's "housing crisis":

“We do have something of a housing crisis and when there’s a shortage of any commodity, the prices go up"

This was in response to news that, in 2011 Bradford's house prices has risen by nearly 10% and Cllr Slater leapt on this to try and justify building 45,000 more houses in the District - mostly on green field sites in the Aire Valley.

Yesterday the same news story popped out - except that Bradford's house prices have fallen by nearly 10%. Surprisingly, Cllr Slater wasn't there to with draw her "it's a housing crisis" argument for building more houses.

But then Bradford doesn't have a housing crisis - we have a few problems, the historically large families in the Asian community have led to a shortage of large family homes and a degree of overcrowding and there are places like Holme Wood where the private market is almost entirely private rental sector these days. These are, however, problem that reflect the City's demographics and economy rather than any lack of housing supply. If I were to make a prediction, it would be that, if the City's economy picks up, we'll see abandonment in less popular areas with a large PRS and low demand (e.g. Holme Wood, Buttershaw, Allerton).

What we don't have is a crisis in housing supply. Not even a little.

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