Everybody knows there is a housing crisis – it has been building for the last 50 years. The victims are all around us. A few – fellow citizens reduced to sleeping rough on the streets – are visible, but most are hidden: families stuck in temporary accommodation, millions of young people denied the opportunity to follow in their parents’ footsteps in owning their own home.
That is why, soon after launching in January, Prosper UK set up an expert-led Housing Commission. The new political movement exists to develop ideas for economic growth, of which housebuilding is an important driver, and to occupy a centre ground left vacant for too long. Both mean tackling the housing crisis head on.
My interest in housing goes back to my first job at the Conservative Research Department, and as housing minister in Theresa May’s first government I worked with Sajid Javid on the white paper Fixing Our Broken Housing Market, whose reforms got us close to the holy grail of 300,000 homes a year.
After a couple of years in which Nimby backbenchers held too much sway, we now have a government that wants to build more homes again. It has made some welcome changes to the planning system and increased funding for affordable housing. Yet it is falling far short of its ambition to build 1.5m homes in five years.