Yimbys need to start talking about immigration
Will Britain’s housing crisis only be solved via the supply side?
That’s certainly the opinion of Yimby thought leaders, who relentlessly – and rightly – mock the attempts of Conservative governments to try yet another demand-side reform to meet the 300,000 homes target (which it hasn’t met since taking office).
But the idea that the housing crisis can only be solved through supply-side reform is as ludicrous as thinking we are just one more demand-side subsidy away from paradise. Far from it being solely a party problem, housing is a political one, and a systemic one; no government has hit the 300,000 homes target since 1977.
And even this as-yet unmet target isn’t high enough, particularly given near-sequential years of all-time high immigration figures. The 300,000 homes target is based on a projected immigration figure of 170,500; yet immigration into the UK last year was 745,000 – 339% of the projected level.
Familiar enough, but the whole piece is well worth reading. It highlights an extraordinary inability to take numbers seriously. The issue is not complicated, the numbers are not higher mathematics, the conclusions are blatantly obvious. The only real mystery is the incompetence, but maybe that is not a mystery either. Social and political malice may be a better explanation.
Not only would lowering migration help alleviate the housing crisis by reducing demand, it may also provide a tool to help defeat the entrenched Nimbyism that prevents further supply; as Andrew Orlowski has previously pointed out, ‘voters want to see demand addressed before talking about supply.’
However the housing crisis is solved, it will involve a combination of both supply and demand-side reforms. But after this CPS briefing, it is time to accept that reducing immigration will be a key ingredient in that mix.
3 comments:
It's perhaps not only incompetence. One of my favourite Latin phrases is "gutta cavat lapidem", literally “the water drop bores through the rock”. This suggests that many small activities may have a large effect, collectively.
So how many people are involved in providing housing? There are the politicians, the Political Parties, the Civil Service, public servants, large and small building firms, large and small manufacturers, unions, solicitors, conveyancers, mortgage suppliers, the Great and Good, media, and the public.
If the people in each of these groups are only 95% convinced that we can build new houses then the probability of enough people being convinced to have a house built is 0.95 x 0.95 x 0.95... If only 45 of these interactions are involved (and some groups are involved several times) then the likelihood of a new house being built is just 10%. It's not necessarily that people are incompetent or lazy but that it is too easy to convince themselves (in a low probability environment) to be less than fully committed.
Even when the Government moves into high gear the natural resistance is high. See the Wikipedia article "Prefabs in the United Kingdom" for an insight into past initiatives. This suggests to me that rather than appointing a Housing Czar
to push things through (which will generate new resistance) what we need to do is remove some of the 'interested bodies' from the system. Mostly the government and local government involvement. Completely revise the planning acts and building standards to the bare minimum and resist (and keep resisting) the urge to gold plate standards because of Net Zero (for instance).
But asking a Bureaucrat not to interfere... heresy.
Yes, that's a lovely article. Some are good because they point out new truths, and raise things we have never considered before. But this, as you say, points out a sober fact which politicians cannot deny, they can only distract our attention from.
It really does make you wonder whether all the Whitehall "thinking" is done in Departmental silos.
DJ - that was pretty well my experience in the public sector. Important IT projects for example would have too much input from people who were not convinced that the project ought to be done, could be done or was any better than the do nothing option.
Much larger projects suffered from the same problem, too many fingers in the pie. So much is gold plated to create the illusion of meticulous diligence when all it does is perpetuate rather than improve.
Sam - the issues are so obvious that it's difficult to explain. I'm tempted to put it down to political malice, partly because the stupidity is so extreme and partly because malice has become a more significant aspect of the political arena. On the other hand, so has stupidity.
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