Five years ago I was engaged in some fierce twitter discussions with countryside campaigners over the draft National Planning Policy Framework (the National Trust described me as one of their fiercest critics). Opponents of the NPPF, which condensed 3,000 pages of planning policy into a 55-page document, claimed it would lead to a surge in house-building on Green Belt and greenfield land and “concrete over the countryside”, a phrase that they used repeatedly. Here is a particularly egregious example of the propaganda war that was being fought at the time. Continue reading →

“Make me one with everything”, is the Dalai Lama’s famous request to a New York hot dog vendor. Whilst Buddhism has a unifying theory of happiness I have a unifying theory that the housing crisis underpins almost every social, political and economic problem of our time.

Take inequality. Housing is a primary cause of wealth inequality between the rich and poor. According to John Healey, MP, the bottom property wealth decile has £2 billion of debts but the top decile own some £1.5 trillion. The wealthiest 10 percent own 40 percent of property wealth in the UK, the bottom half own just 8 percent. As house prices have risen so the inequality gap has widened. Continue reading →

The Guardian published a very good article this week pointing out that investment in social housing was the solution to the present housing crisis, something the SHOUT campaign has long argued for.

This prompted one of our critics, Peter Hall, to tweet, “Translation: I have no new ideas, so may as well regurgitate the same old 19th century ‪#goldenage thinking…”. Our SHOUT colleague Alison Inman responded with a Life of Brian-ish,“What did the Victorians ever do for us?” Continue reading →