The housing market crash is just beginning | Economics | The New Statesman

House prices are falling, rents are rising, and pubs, clubs and our cultural spaces are disappearing due to landlordism.

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Anoosh Chakelian, Britain editor, is joined by our business editor, Will Dunn, and assistant culture editor, Ellen Peirson-Hagger, to discuss the housing market crash, the impact of people moving out of London and landlordism on renters, both private and commercial.

Read all the pieces mentioned in this video here:
Will’s piece – https://www.newstatesman.com/business/2023/10/uk-housing-crash-just-beginning

Ellen’s piece – https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2023/10/landlords-killing-culture

Anoosh’s pieces – https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/society/2023/10/housing-battle-hastings-council-bankruptcy
https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-report/2023/11/demolition-britain-newbuild-schools-too-dangerous

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The New Statesman podcast is now on YouTube. Anoosh Chakelian and New Statesman colleagues including political editor Andrew Marr discuss the latest in UK politics news, helping you understand the forces shaping British politics today.

Watch all the latest episodes of the New Statesman podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSfumUEfFlcKkWutY2eMoOSOXIikSxOil

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Today we’re diving into a critical issue that hits close to home for many across the UK the state of our housing market and specifically the D state of the rental market housing in the UK has become increasingly unaffordable during the last two decades buying a home is an

Unattainable Prospect for many in the country and the challenges facing renters are now reaching a Tipping Point and we’re here together each of us cuz we’ve been looking at and Reporting on different aspects of the housing crisis over the past few weeks and the sort of

Wider effects that it’s having on all of our Lives um will do you want to tell us a bit about what you’ve been looking into yes I’ve I’ve been mainly looking at the way um the housing market um house prices and rents um are is changing as a result of

What’s changing in The Wider economy especially the change in the price of debt because um almost everybody buys a house buys it with debt and um a lot of people who rent at home are paying off their landlord’s debt by doing so so that’s the principal change that under

Lies all of it is how how expensive is it to borrow and that that’s what has this um this enormous effect on the on the wider economy because it it cuts into people’s disposable incomes as well and Ellen when we talk about the housing crisis we often talk about people who

Can’t afford their rent or they can’t buy a house but of course when rents go up it means people who run public venues are also in trouble you’ve been looking into that yeah exactly I’ve been researching and Reporting on how landlordism affects um our cultural space

And the Arts life in the UK um and even as a journalist who’s been reporting for some years now on on Art spaces and the culture Industries I was surprised um myself to learn just how much of an impact landlordism has um on on the viability of of our cultural spaces um

And the fact that Arts venues Cinemas um music venues don’t own their buildings um is a huge problem um for for our cultural life in the UK okay and it is affecting the state of our towns as well even if you aren’t directly if you’re lucky enough not to be directly affected

By the housing crisis it will still be having an impact on your neighborhood that’s something I’ve been looking at the number of councils that are at risk of bankruptcy because they are no longer able to supply enough temporary accommodation for people who end up homeless in their areas that’s a

Statutory Duty they have to fulfill but they just don’t have the places to put them in and that’s pushing their budgets to Breaking Point and you know really pulling at the fabric of some time around the country um but let’s get an an update on the actual state of the

Housing market at the moment will um everyone’s sort of saying that house prices are going down but that’s not quite true is it yeah I mean it’s always possible to find two headlines about house prices that will directly contradict each other um and that’s because there are two different very

Distinct ways of looking at the economy so um you know if you’ve been on BBC News website this month you would have seen um head line saying house prices rise for the first time in 6 months uh and house prices see biggest monthly rise for more than a year and that

Sounds like oh you know back in business for house prices but equally um last week you would have seen uh a headline um I’m not sure if PBC reported it but uh saying prices have undergone their first annual fall since uh 2012 and that’s that’s the more realistic picture

So prices do normally um rise in the Autumn um people have a look at houses over the summer and then kind of complete in the Autumn October is normally um the biggest month but this October has been the weakest October since 2008 um and and even that is you know

That that little um dip in house prices of sort of 2 to 3% depending on where you measure from that’s a nominal change and that’s the really important thing is that’s happening in a year of very high inflation um so from March 202 2 to September of this year in real terms

House prices fell by well over 133% SS the estate agents have said that average real house prices by October weren’t any higher than they were at the end of about 2015 so the housing crash is still going on and it will continue to go on for some time um because so next year

About another 1.6 million households will come to the end of their fixed rate mortgages um and um mortgages are are much more expensive than they are they were when those people took them out so if they’re 2-year fix rates or fiveyear fix rates those will all be more

Expensive but some of them buy really quite a lot um because um despite the uh adults being back in the room uh in the economy since the truss episode that hasn’t stabilized um Government Bond prices all that much which are the main sort of um one of the main references by

Which mortgages are priced um so there’ll be a lot of people paying um a fair bit more every month um and the the main underlying um point about house prices is just the thing that inflated them has stopped so you know after the financial um crisis in 2008 uh the bank

Of England started doing quantitive easing um which I won’t go into an enormously long explanation of but it inflates assets so it inflates share prices inflates things that are already owned um and particularly inflated um house prices by by a lot and um uh governments knew that was happening but

They they even then they still stepped in because rather than saying well we’re doing this one thing on the one hand which is inflating the the um the cost of buying a house uh so we’ll do something else to address that the thing they did was to further pump the market

With things like help to buy which was 29 billion quits worth of um government back loans to to firsttime buyers just try and cram more people into the already overheated Market um and those things aren’t happening anymore they’re not doing help to buy anymore um QE isn’t happening anymore the opposite of

QE is happening interest rates higher so um there isn’t uh any reason to expect that um uh house prices have will have you know the same kind of upwards momentum um that they had in the past um even with house builders doing less building um it’s it’s unlikely that

You’ll get the same same stimulus on that on that kind of uh level um the good news is um that falling house prices are really good you know they’re good for everyone it’s not you know like nobody complains about all the price of Bread’s going down or the you know it’s

It’s it’s it’s a kind of inflation that people have been kind of tricked into thinking what uh worked as a sort of substitute for or uh for for growing wages or for you know not not having the same pensions that people in previous decades had people were tricked into

Thinking well my house is going up by lows in price so that will kind of work as a pension or you know that will make up for the fact that my my real wages haven’t really uh grown but obviously then you get to a turning point like

This in the economy and they start to stagnate against inflation or go down and um that uh that kind of fairy gold uh turns back into leaves again um but but you know so the the the um the illusory growth that was created uh isn’t there anymore but um you know if

People’s wages are given some years to catch up to house prices then that that will be good because you know obviously making um it more affordable for firsttime buyers to buy house is good but also um you know it’s good for for everyone uh because you know the gap

Between the property you might buy next get smaller if the if the prices are smaller the only thing that Rising prices do is makes it more expensive to move um people take out bigger and bigger mortgages um so it’s it’s kind of um a long-term picture of stagnation or

Falling Market but that’s probably all right for for most people um the real problem is rents um because the other effect of um this uh change in in the dire of prices um as reported recently is um the fact that oh for for decades people have bought um houses to um rent

Out to other people it’s been a you know it’s government policy and monetary policy have made it a very Sound Investment because you could get a return from your rent get somebody paying off your mortgage and the price of your asset at the house would go up

So um it was kind of a no-brainer and you don’t have to um pay National Insurance contributions as a landlord so um you know it’s been been very easy to make uh money from the the rentier economy but the maths on that have now changed so it’s now um too expensive to

Um pay the the rent interest for most um B toet small bolet landlords to really get into the market and actually make any money out of it and that is putting pressure on the supply of rental properties as landlords get out of the market and that means that rents

Are forecast to continue Rising um uh quite a lot um there’s quite a wild Divergence of um forecasts on uh rents and personally I think some of the forecasts that have been made for how high they will get um are unrealistic because I just don’t think the rental

Market can can support that much more you know people just won’t be able to squeeze renters that much harder um and we see this in in London because um there was a trend from about 20 13 up until the pandemic people in their 20s were moving out of London um and that

Trend was um sort of halted by the pandemic to a certain extent because um it just changed the Dynamics of where people were moving anyway that trend has resumed um so a recent survey found that nearly half of renters in their 20s who um moved moved outside the capital so

There that’s a resumption of that Trend and that’s one of the um just one way of looking at what um what Ellen’s um been reporting on which is the the way in which this particular kind of inflation um affects culture it kind of you know sort of dissolves the the communities

That people can build up the cultural institutions they can create the things they can participate in you know London is a city that culture relies on the influx of young people looking for for jobs either from around the country or from abroad if they can’t afford to live

Here it’ be a very different place yeah and it affects the electoral map as well interestingly we’ve been talking a lot on the sort of uh political podcast about um the changing politics in places like the home counties and suburbia because you do have these people who you

Mentioned moving out of expensive cities and taking their political values with them to areas that otherwise you know hadn’t been populated by these groups so it does have a big societal impact I mean Ellen what’s been the parallel impact for people who are struggling to

Pay the rent on um I think you looked into music venues pubs um Cinemas everything that we can expect on a on a High Street to make our lives culturally Rich yeah well I think I think kind of stepping back a bit most shocking to me

Was even to think about the fact that when you have a venue say a popular Cinema chain take a curen you know the big curen Cinema in in Mayfair in London um that’s been there a really long time you think about about it as as as Ken

It’s the cinema that’s the building but actually Ken the brand doesn’t own that building they’re subject to a landlord um and it’s not so much in the cases that I was seeing it’s not so much that these venues couldn’t pay the rent but actually that their landlords were

Choosing to kick them out of the buildings so the case that’s ongoing um with Ken in Mayfair is that the the holding company um which is based in Jersey um 38 Ken lease plans to end Ken’s lease in order to renovate the building um Ken um have told me that the

Cinema wouldn’t otherwise close it’s financially viable um it’s obviously got a great spot in the center of London’s west end and it’s particularly popular for events and premieres um but the landlord intends to renovate the building to open its own Cinema on the site pushing out a brand that’s been

There um for 90 years because they think that there’s a better way to profit from the building so it’s not I mean obviously would be would be awful if if these places couldn’t afford to pay the rent as it is but it’s not even that it’s even worse it’s that they’re not

Being able to continue um to put on um the performances or the showings or or to have the community space um they have had um up until now and it’s and it’s happening all over all over the Arts so there’s the Cur an example it’s also

Happening a lot um with music venues um and I came across um this idea really through the work that the music venue trust is doing um they’re an organization um that supports um small Grassroots music venues um which they Define as yeah small to mediumsized venues that focus on showcasing new

Music so this is not your O2 acmy um it’s it’s you know small community spaces maybe just with under capacity but they’re really important for for keeping Regional music alive particularly outside of of cities um and also for getting bands on the touring circuit um the classic thing is that you

Know even artists as big as a cheeran once played Grassroots venues everyone has to start out somewhere and that’s how you you Rise um and um according to data from the music venue trust more than 35% of Grassroots music venues have closed in the last 20 years which is a

Huge amount you know more than a third and really interestingly 93 % of those are tenants and the typical operator has just 18 months left on its tency so the idea is that there are people you know business people music lovers music fans who have set up a business and they’re supporting their

Local art scene but with just 18 months on a tency just like as a renter with a few months left on on your housing tency there’s no way to plan for the future um obviously the pandemic made the Live Events space even more difficult and you know in my reporting speaking with

Various venue owners I know that the effects of that are still being felt as of course are the effects of of the cost of living Crisis crisis and people feeling like they just don’t have the disposable income to buy gig tickets cinema tickets theater tickets whatever

It might be so there’s there’s a number of problems but but the very fact I think that these cultural spaces can’t feel secure in their building um and know that they’ll be there in in a couple of years time means that there’s lots of things they just can’t do in the

Building they can’t um and and also it’s again it’s a bit like being um a private renter in terms of Housing and that you know they wouldn’t just be able to um renovate the building maybe put a new bar in knock a wall down open a space to

Do something else with it um there these um business owners that are very limited just like a a t a renter is any of us who who rent our flats and couldn’t just suddenly paint a war black if we wanted to um so I think I think we

Have to be really careful when we’re thinking about the particular situation that these owners are in um and and as I say you know it goes from a small um music venue um to to a brand like Ken which you assume is secure but it is

Just not the case because of the way that the the ownership rights are around around these buildings I think that’s a really good example of just sort of how corrosive um it is to concentrate on sort of nonproductive Assets in your economy those businesses that Ellen’s

Talking about even a very small um you know sort of community art center like those are productive businesses that are then you know um helping other businesses like you know Acts or um you know sort of musicians to to create stuff that they’re going to sell to other people that’s you know that’s

Productive economic activity uh and some of that um Ed Sheran um whatever you think of as music I’m not going to share My Views podcast um is a major export you know that and Britain does very well out of its cultural exports um that’s extremely important to our economy and

If if you have other businesses that are just kind of shunting that aside in order to um concentrate on the returns from the the nonproductive asset you know they’re not um necessarily creating more jobs or more products to sell into into the economy from the inflation of

The cost of that property that they own then um you’re you’re doing some economic damage like right across the economy yeah and a good example of that is some of the places that I’ve been looking at that have been suffering a sort of Perfect Storm of all of these

Different factors that we’re talking about from rents being too expensive to houses being Out Of Reach to you know a scarcity in housing stock and I think the place where this is most extreme in the country at the moment is in Hastings which is uh on the Sussex Coast um it’s

A poor town but it’s close to London which is you know quite a toxic combination for an area it also happens to be beautiful as well which makes things you know sometimes good for the tourism sector there but very difficult in terms of the gentrification Trend which has meant lots of londoners have

Moved down particularly during the pandemic um on London salaries being able to buy up quite what was quite cheap housing um which has then become Out Of Reach to locals so the typical let’s just take Hastings as an example um the typical rent for a one-bed flat there is now £85

A month which is which is huge in a town where the median full-time salary is 25,500 um and this is the area where rents have um risen 11.7% that’s more than double the average rise that was over 2022 to 23 um and house prices have also doubled

There in 10 years which is one of the biggest spikes that we’ve seen anywhere in England and the impact this has on locals is that they can’t afford to rent or to buy in the place that they’ve grown up in and that they work in often

In quite low paid service sector jobs so they become homeless and I think there’s a misunderstanding slightly in the public perception of what homelessness means most homeless people are not living on the streets you know rough sleeping as the phrase goes they are stuck having to be in temporary accommodation you know inappropriate

Housing for their needs often sometimes better breakfasts and sort of bed sits this is called temporary accommodation and it’s down to your Council to provide that that room for you but the problem is because there’s nowhere to put people because there’s been so few houses built you know this isn’t unique to Hastings

But there’s there’s been far too few houses built there over the past few decades um it’s it’s costing Hastings which is having to use all sorts of different places like hotels and things 5.6 million this year on temporary accommodation which is half its entire council’s budget

And so that doesn’t just affect you know the people who are waiting to find housing it also affects everyone who uses Council services in Hastings it affects the roads and the libraries and uh social care and everything else that councils the bins have have to have to

Spend their money on so you know Ellen’s talked very vividly about the effect that this can have on our cultural life but it’s also our sort of the public realm the the way that we interact with our neighborhoods it’s having an impact on that as well even if you know you’re

One of those londoners lucky enough to have bought somewhere cheap in Hastings and have quite a good quality of life you don’t want to see your town degrading that way either no I it’s it’s also um just on on some of the other reporting um that you’ve done uh on um

Councils that have been um bankrupted or I know councils can’t technically go bankrupt but we’ll use that phrase uh um or near bankrupted by um the the ways in which they’ve had to try to make money M because um they were you know the the really long-term picture is that um when

Um uh councils uh were told to to sell off their Council housing um under um right to buy under Margaret Thatcher uh the beginning of the 1980s they’re also told by the treasury that they you know they had to meet certain requirements before they could borrow anything at all

To um build more housing and instead um they so they C effectively stopped building house building was taken over by um people um who were doing it for profit uh and then um councils now as as you’re reporting from Hasting shows have to spend all this money on um finding

Accommodation for people that they could have built in previous decades and they they would now be effectively making return from or or not having to spend um money on and instead they spent it on these mad schemes like shopping centers or gone into business with some quite

Question able people who have seen the council coming and thought ah I know I can you know I know they’re desperate for returns they’ve got all these obligations and I know they can’t go bankrupt so I know the government will always run underwrite it in the end there’s been a number of different

Examples of councils that I’ve written about who have you know speculated and actually they they were encouraged to do this they were encouraged to make these riskier investments in the Coalition years when they were cutting their budgets they were saying but you can invest in x y and Zed and and they’re

Not seeing many of those places aren’t seeing Returns on those Investments which again has a direct impact on people’s lives and I just want to say one more thing about Hastings actually which I think is probably the most shocking fact that I found there the leader of the council had actually

Called for a homes for Ukraine style scheme in Hastings that was the refugee scheme that that the UK government introduced when Russia invaded Ukraine to take in refugees here into people’s houses but for locals you know can you open your spare rooms can you give up a

Space in your garden where you can build a prefab for someone who doesn’t have a place to live I mean it’s quite extraordinary that Britain in the 21st century has to make that kind of call yeah it’s absolutely shocking there are some alternative ways that some people

Are trying to do things in a very hostile environment I mean I spoke to this um Grassroots Community landlord in Hastings that were hooking rents to the median income and I I spoke to some people who were managing to live affordably there but you know it was on

A small scale and it’s about how you scale up those kind of schemes Ellen you found some similar models that venues were trying to adopt didn’t you yeah I did um I’ve looked into a number of different venues and and programs a lot of them are using Community ownership um

As as a way to to raise funds to buy the building back from the landlord um ensuring that a building stays um with with the business and therefore the build the the business has security um in the future it’s it’s a it’s an idea that has been around for for a long time

Um and I think one of the areas in which we’ve seen Community ownership that be most successful is with our pubs um in the UK the campaign for real ale um reckons that there are about 150 pubs in the UK that are Community owned um and

Actually my my local pub in in nunhead in South London um is one of them the the IV house um was closed in 2012 and sold to a property developer um and they planned to gut the whole building and turn it into flats and if any of our

Listeners have been to the IV house you’ll know what a shame that would have been because it’s an amazing historic building which has a gorgeous 1930s Music Hall in its center it’s really really interesting architecturally and obviously also hugely important as a social and community space um for the

Local area um but a group of regulars applied to English Heritage to get the building grade two listed status and to have it categorized as an asset of community value value which protects a building from an immediate sale and so with that extra EXT ra time the group um

Fundraised and managed to buy the pub from the owners before it could be sold to the developer and in 2013 The Ivy House reopened um as a community-owned community run PB and 10 years later it’s still open um it’s a great Community Hub they put on all sorts of different

Events reading groups um really important social initiatives for the community as well as being um a live music space um so this kind of model of community ownership is something that is being talked about in more and more sectors um the music venue trust the um initiative that I mentioned earlier um

Have done a similar thing um with a scheme that they launched last year called music venue properties um and they had a list of Grassroots music venues around the UK that they were um hoping to to buy back from from the landlords um with this community ownership model

Um so anyone from you know average music bands to to Big investors um such as some of the country’s biggest record labels were able to invest um in in this scheme um and the first of those um sales went through earlier this year um and that’s of The Snug which is um a

Grassroots music venue in Aon um in Greater Manchester um it’s just 100 capacity um it’s one of very few live music spots in the area um and it’s used as a coffee shop in the daytime turns into a gig room at the weekends but it’s a really important Community Asset a

Space um and the building was up for sale um the the owner of The Snug didn’t own the building the landlord wanted to sell it and probably the owner thinks to turn it into Flats because she’s seen lots of local commercial properties bought up and turned into Flats in the

Area but because of this music venue property scheme um the building has been bought by the so-called friendly landlord of of the music venue trust and so long as the snug operates as a music venue it will be secure in its tency um which as I’ve as I’ve said is is vital

For for the kind of development that we need um and the kind of um sustainability that we need in in the sector and I think it’s really important to think of you know obviously we’ve spoken about housing and the impact on on people’s lives and of course having a

Secure home is is a human right um but also when we’re thinking about the kinds of towns and cities that we’d like to live in we we all know that you know a town a city is a better place if there are music venues theaters Cinemas pubs

Community spaces not purely for for the sake of the Arts and the culture and the entertainment that happens there but just to have spaces where people can come together and share ideas share stories be with other people um so I think thinking about landlordism within this cultural space um is imperative and

I think I think we need to be having more and more conversations about about the ways that landlordism affects the Arts because as I said before it isn’t something that I see talked about much you know we talk about venues closing because of Licensing issues or because

Of rising energy costs um the the whole kind of late night alcohol licensing issue is is a common one um but to be thinking about who really owns our buildings and our premises and the brands that that we love um I think I think is vital yeah and I absolutely

Agree with you and there is an irony isn’t there because um you’re talking about what kind of towns cities neighborhoods we want to live in often at first it’s in the interest of the landlord or the housing developer to make an area into a sort of desirable

Location before they build the houses so I’ve been writing about this trend called meanwhile space where you know perhaps underused High streets and vacant um units are done up in a nice way and you know nice local businesses that otherwise might not have been given a chance to put into these places and

They become quite artistic and exciting to people who want to move to perhaps an area that’s a bit more affordable but doesn’t have much going on there and these are often backed by housing developers and the people who are who are going to profit from it knocked down

And then housing is put in as soon as they’ve got the interest sort of ramped up in the area so there’s that strange sort of artificial culture that’s sometimes pumped in somewhere because of the landlord landlordism you’ve just been talking about Ellen but there’s obviously you know there is knowledge

Among these people of what they need to draw particularly younger people to an area and that’s now being exploited as well um I remember uh hearing about a a London property developer who would before he um started doing up a a block of flats um he would um open a Bookshop

On the same street CU everyone wants to live near a Bookshop and then the Bookshop wouldn’t last all that long after the Flats Sal it’s incredibly cynical but it is yeah like you say it’s an irony but you know the fact that somewhere has cultural institutions um makes people want to

Live there because there just more to do you know more chances as Ellen said to to um uh spend time with other people um but then that also you know causes um property prices to inflate which imperils those institutions because the owners of them think well I could get

More out of this if I turned it into the kind of housing that everyone else is buying so you do need some sort of mechanism to protect that or you just have this constant cycle of people seeing it solely as a means of making money and um you know then the the the

People who have moved to those places then watch them degraded by the the thing that caused them to to move there yeah I mean we’ve been looking into for a separate Piece Will into lots of these schemes these housing schemes where which are quite new where people have

Been left without the things they were promised often they promised that there would be a pub on the estate or even a GP surgery or a primary school and these things just don’t appear once the builders leave town um which is quite a common experience it also works the other way I

Suppose if if you know if younger people for example are being pushed out of London because um they can’t afford to live here and I know it’s the same with other major cities that has an impact on ticket sales for for for live music comedy theater whatever it is of course

Older people and other kinds of people go to those events as well but if we’re thinking about that kind of younger Market um as well as the general cost of living crisis and people not being able to afford um those tickets but if people aren’t living in the major cities then

They cease to become cultural hubs yeah anyway absolutely and like you Ellen I met someone um I met this group uh it was sort of half Community Land Trust half social Enterprise that were buying up old buildings sort of disused buildings to turn into both Works spaces cultural spaces and flats um affordable

To rent to their um to their tenants and I asked the woman who ran it this place was this um organization is called Hastings Commons and it’s sponsored by various groups you mentioned um uh I think you mentioned historic England I think that was one of their funders

National Lottery and some local funders as well to help them buy the buildings and she said you know we’d love to do it on a grander scale and we’d love it to happen around the country there there are some other examples of this kind of thing happening around the country but

You know the policy atmosphere is extremely hostile and I wonder will what what kind of thing do you think the government or an income government could bring in to try and make try and make the housing crisis um sort of less acute for people uh you’ve seen actually in

The King’s Speech they did uh bring in this renters reforms bill but even scrapping no fault evictions which has been promised since 2018 even that is delayed now because they need to reform the courts in order to be able to have some kind of mechanism If a landlord

Does want to evict a tenant but can’t use that section 21 notice anymore yeah I mean it is a really difficult problem to solve um because um there has been like I said this enormous movement of wealth as a result of policies that weren’t directly housing policies necessarily you know particularly

Monetary policy um but also um more closely related policies like help to buy where they have just you know they’ve moved enormous amount of money around and then it it it would it would take a great deal of effort to to turn back the clock on that um and um you do

Um a lot I think most people agree that you need a lot more house building but you need house building of a particular kind so just having a Target to build a certain number of houses isn’t necessarily going to help I mean there are a quarter of a million empty houses

In the UK um it’s about where people want to live um you know where people can get to work from um it’s also about um you know just I think one of the main things to do is to be honest with people about the effect that we’ve been talking

About of rising property prices and how they’re they’re not actually free money they are you know a socially culturally and economically corrosive and um to to set that out and then to say so we are going to do things that you know allow this market to I mean I can’t really see

Any government saying we’re going to allow a particular Market to stagnate but we are going to manage this Market more closely so that as house builders you know get back into building again as people are buying properties um it’s not subject to the same Galloping inflation

That it’s had for you know over 15 years um since the crash and then before that in the 80s and ’90s there are other periods of of very high inflation in housing um that all resulted from you know good intentions just having these unattended side effects um and then

Separately yeah you you just need a much higher standard of rental protection um so yeah and you need you need new landlords um so that that might be private companies um there’s some arguments for for why that they might be good at that rather than you know uh individuals renting houses to one

Another companies can be be more accountable um but uh you know what’s worked in the past is obviously um social landlord is is councils really having the the money to do that but um yeah I mean you could almost look at the um the enormous movement of wealth as uh

You know from the Thatcher era to now as being a movement of wealth from from local councils from you know publicly held assets of housing into the private sector and that’s yeah once once you privatize something it’s very difficult to to get it back yeah and unfortunately

With councils in the state that they’re in they’re they’re often not great landlords even when they are still running housing as we’ve seen from the state of social housing in some parts of the country as well before we finish can I just um bring up another um piece um

If you’re reporting an no of course you can we which um is uh I think another example of the amount of money that people can get out of um uh building things in this country and the the vagaries of the planning system but also um just an incredible story of um

Irresponsibility and greed um so it’s it’s a piece about um schools uh and this isn’t the the air rated concrete crisis which is affecting lots of schools around the country those schools were built in 1970s yeah your piece is about schools that are built in what

2020 2021 2021 most of them yeah and these schools brand new schools they look absolutely beautiful I went to go and look at one recently um are now having to they’re now having to be demolished and the children who have been sent to these schools by very

Excited parents um are often stuck home learning which we’ know from the pandemic experience how terrible that is for a child’s future prospects um or stuck in sort of temporary accommodation tents outside their brand new schools with their fingers freezing trying to do lessons so it’s a real Scandal and it’s

This um department for Education building program3 billion PS one of the contractors uh in that program has gone bust and there doesn’t seem to have been much of a contingency plan yeah yeah and I just I just wanted to mention that because I I I I think um everyone should

Go to go to our website uh search for I think if you search for new Statesman demol Britain uh you’ll you’ll find it straight away and um do read that piece cuz you won’t you won’t read that reporting elsewhere and it is an absolutely incredible story about a

Terrible Scandal that’s going on in in our country thank you so much will thanks so much for watching we’d love to know what you think please make sure you leave your comments below and if you enjoyed watching this podcast you can watch more of our videos on our YouTube

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