Last updated on 14/10/2024
Housing: Approaches to Policy. Part3.
by Trevor Locke
Housing, employment and transport: why we need joined-up policies
In the previous part of this series, I looked at bricks and other kinds of building materials and asked if there could be viable alternatives to traditional construction materials. I considered how building design might change to take account of the rise of new materials. I move on, now, to discuss the kind of policies that are increasingly playing a part in the supply of accommodation.
It is often said that Britain has a housing crisis. The Government hopes to supply a million new homes by 2020 [Guardian, September 2015]. But, over the past four years, only 47% of the amount needed in England has been built [BBC News, September 2015]. It is the scale of the housing shortage that leads people to talk of a crisis. The National Housing Federation was quoted as saying that about 245,000 new homes were needed each year in England. Gill Payne, director of policy and external affairs, said: “In some areas, there is a drastic shortage causing prices to soar, putting homes out of the reach of many people” [BBC, September 2015] The BBC’s Inside Out programme on housing, drew attention to the shortfall in housing supply as matched against housing need between 2011 and 2014. The crash of 2008 is often blamed for this shortfall but it is not the only factor. According to the Inside Out programme ‘critics say the change has also made it easier for “inappropriate and unwanted” developments to progress.’ Politicians have criticised the National Planning Policy Framework of 2012, claiming that the said changes to the NPPF were required to ensure “the same weight is given to the environmental and social as to the economic dimension” with “due emphasis on the natural environment”. Clive Betts is quoted as saying “Councils must do more to protect their communities against the threat of undesirable development by moving quickly to get an adopted local plan in place.” Even the National Trust said the MPs’ report was another indication the NPPF had allowed “streetwise developers” to ignore the wishes of communities [BBC, 2014].
Housing is a minefield of conflicting policies and opinions. To navigate a path through this confusion, I set out my agenda of key policy issues: I begin by discussing the need for affordable housing before explaining why I think housing policy is the key to everything. I then look at the issue of renting before considering three interconnected policy areas – housing, employment, unemployment (economic status) and transport. I then discuss how better use can be made of existing housing stock. This agenda is about the need for joined-up policies.
The need for affordable homes
Are people ready to move away from standardisation and established traditions? If the media is to be believed, the average ‘Jess and Joe’ want to get married and start a family and as part of this, they want to own a home of their own. But does ‘Mr & Mrs Average’ want to live only in the traditional house? Through the medium of television, we have seen people who have abandoned the traditional notion of the house and built themselves homes from materials you would not find on the average housing estate – such as blocks of straw. Others have done away with the conventional idea of a slate roof and covered their structures with earth and grass.
Many recent television programmes have shown people restoring old buildings, converting them into family homes often by doing the work themselves. Flat roofs have not been popular but the development of new materials has now made them much more viable. The house-building industry is still providing large quantities of structures based on the traditional idea of two stories with individual rooms for different purposes: lounge, kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, etc. House designers have not moved on in their concept of what constitutes the kind of houses that people want to live in; but then, neither have house-buyers.
In post-war Britain, there was a trend to build ‘pre-fabs’ – prefabricated houses built in bits in factories and then assembled on site. Prefabs were cheap, cheerful and provided a quick fix to the shortage of housing after the blitz. The decades of the 1940s through to the 1960s brought us the baby boom and, as those generations grew into adulthood, demand for housing increased. Recently, the lack of access to mortgages, following the financial crash of 2008, has led to an increase in rented properties. Couples and new families, not wanting to be stuck at home with their mums and dads, are going out to find rented accommodation, often because this is the only option open to them. In the urban areas, this is fairly easy but in the countryside, it is much more of a problem. House prices in rural areas is very widely beyond the reach of workers in villages and rural areas.
Today, the baby boomers of the 60s are downsizing. Having brought up their families, couples find themselves living in houses that are bigger than they need. Couples, aged 60 and over, are moving into smaller properties. Whilst this should be releasing houses for occupation by younger people, the problem is that house prices have increased and the mortgages needed to buy these properties are hard to come by. Recent predictions show that ‘house prices are set to increase by more than previously expected in 2015. The CEBR now expects the price of the average home in the UK to rise by 4.7% – up from its March forecast of 1.5% growth. A chronic lack of properties being put up for sale has pushed up prices in recent months and is one of the reasons behind the upward revision to the forecast’ [Centre for Economics and Business Research, 2015].
The British are wedded to the idea of the single occupancy house as the basis for family life, unlike our continental neighbours, in Europe, for whom the apartment block is the standard form of housing. Single-occupancy houses are more expensive to build and require a lot more land than is the case for multi-level apartments. House-builders and government policymakers see no need to attempt to change the public’s demands for the typical family unit; they are comfortable with the belief that families know what they want and there is no need to change anything. Political policy is wedded to freedom of choice and not much given to trying to change such choice. Politicians have made a big thing about new-build [Hope, 2016]. To them, housing supply is all about building new houses; it is hardly ever seen as being about the better use of existing housing stock. In order to get supply anywhere near the level of demand for houses, in England today, the solutions are always stated as being about building new homes. Only the more radical politicians give credence to the idea that the supply of housing might also include a wider set of options.
Our notion of affordability, in housing, is important but it is strangled by our servitude to traditional ideas – more so now than it was in the previous century. If people really do want affordable housing, I would argue, then they should change their stereotypical ideas about what constitutes a home and the materials used in house-building. In any case ‘affordability’ is a relative concept; it is not just about the price at which houses are offered for sale – it is also about how much money people have to pay for them. Can people afford to buy new houses?
Well, certainly not in London. House prices vary considerably around the UK (as do incomes) and what is affordable in one region might well be too expensive in another. People cannot easily move from a high-price area to one where houses are cheaper, any more than they can easily chase after higher paid jobs in other parts of the country. Newly-elected Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn has a policy on housing and in it, he begins by saying ‘A secure home is the foundation of a happy life and decent housing for all is the foundation of the good society. For too many people their housing is not a source of security, but a cause for anxiety [Corbyn, 2015]. I pick this out, not because I am a fan of this politician, but because he has a neat way of saying things that I too happen to believe, such as the above quotation. I go some of the way with him but when I read ‘The housing crisis cannot just be solved by building more homes, although this is a major issue that needs to be tackled. It is more complex than that: to tackle the housing crisis we also need to address problems of inequality, regional disparities of income and wealth, taxation policy, the labour market, our social security system and planning regulations’ I begin to part company with him. As I argue in this section, there is a need for joined-up policies but it is a matter for debate just how many policies need to be joined up to make a housing position that is credible and effective. It will take many decades to make an impact on inequality and disparities in wealth and income. These issues referred to by Corbyn are large-scale issues that are important but housing is something that people need today and demands immediate actions that cannot wait for a fairer society to develop. Corbyn goes on to set out a raft of practical measures that will, in his view, solve the housing crisis to which he refers. The challenge that confronts policymakers in housing is which policies can, and should, be joined together to create an effective approach (or strategy) to housing supply. It is some of these issues that I now go on to discuss.
Housing is the key to everything
If you do not have a home, you cannot get a job. If you do not have a suitable home, you might find it difficult to marry and start a family. Most people who are homeless are also likely to be unemployed. It’s not just a question of being homeless. Often the problem is more about inappropriate housing and unsuitable accommodation and these can be pivoted on poor employment. Energy poverty rides on the back of inappropriate housing; people who live in accommodation that is not suitable are likely to suffer from high energy costs, which will lead either to inadequate heating or people failing to feed themselves properly, in order to keep up with the demands of energy suppliers. Poorly built houses are also likely to suffer from damp, drafts and lack of insulation. This is more likely to be typical of ageing housing stock. Modern housing has to conform to higher standards of building regulations.
Policy requires us to look at housing and employment in one single package; the two things are closely interrelated and you cannot deal with one without, at the same time, addressing the other. I will argue, below, that government policymakers are failing to do this. A population that achieves optimal levels of employment requires optimal levels of housing; that is my position but I fail to see this reflected in the manifestos of political parties or in the policies being issued by the government. Joined-up policies are not characteristic of today’s breed of politicians. This goes some way to explaining why the basis for homeownership or occupation is changing so much. When David Cameron said that he wanted to sweep away planning rules requiring the construction of affordable homes, in favour of first-time buyers, did he stop to think what the employment requirements would be for that? The kind of jobs that would be needed to support loans for first-time buyers was not mentioned in his speech at the 2015 Conservative conference. It is pointless planning to build thousands of starter homes for a market that does not have the employment prospects needed for sustainable access to these markets. Coming up with a credible package would need alignments between employment and wages, mortgage lending and construction incentives. Meeting housing need targets does not depend on whether it is about buying or renting or any other form of tenure; it is all about how the employment economy either enables or hinders access to the finances needed for any kind of accommodation. We can only get to grips with the housing crisis once we have locked access to housing into access to jobs and have synchronised both of them. Part of this process involves working with income sectors, seeing how lower-income or middle-income families will fare as homes and jobs are brought together.
Renting a home
It is said that we need 250,000 new homes if we are to keep up with housing demand, [de Castella, 2015]. In that context what do we mean by ‘new?’ Do we mean new build or do we mean more supply of housing stock of all kinds? Around four million people are now renting their homes [Owen, 2014]. In many continental countries, renting is the standard tenancy. Now that house ownership is so difficult to achieve in England, renting looks like it will become the most frequent approach to securing accommodation. For policymakers, the key issue is one of renting not being as secure, for tenants, as it ought to be.
New residential tenancies had increased 2.5% in the first month of 2015; ‘The figures show the highest growth occurring in the East Midlands, Scotland and East Anglia with rents rising 6.2%, 5.7% and 5% respectively.’ Furthermore, ‘the average rent in the UK is now £889, compared to £867 at the end of 2014, and £799 in January 2014’ [Property Wire, 2015]. This is still more than the equivalent monthly mortgage repayment. Lewis Dean said that ‘rental prices of homes in England and Wales have grown more than house prices for the first time in two years. Rents across England and Wales reached a new record high at £789 in June, 1.4% higher than the £778 recorded in May and up 5.6% since June 2014. The hike means last month was the first since July 2013 where rents rose more quickly than house prices for comparable properties, with this annual rate of house price growth standing at 4.5% over the 12 months ending June 2015.’ [Dean, 2015] This is rather startling, given that economists are predicting that house prices will rise dramatically in the years ahead.
Since the crash of 2008, the availability of residential mortgages has declined; the effect of this is that young people have either continued to live with their parents or have moved into rented accommodation. Added to this, a substantial number of older people have left large family homes and transferred to the rented sector. Renting a house or flat was no longer the preserve of students and people living in an area for a short while. A shortage of new housing has also fuelled this trend. The demand for rented accommodation has grown and this has led to an increase in prices, so much so, that the price of renting has increased faster than house prices. What dogs prospective renters is the requirement to provide a deposit. The majority of rents demand that a tenant must pay a deposit to cover fixtures and fittings. On top of this deposit (which is supposed to be refundable at the end of the tenancy) monthly rents must be paid in advance. It is common for landlords to ask for one month’s rent in advance. The law requires deposits to be lodged with a tenancy deposit scheme that is backed by the government [Government website, 2015].
If monthly rental payments are higher than for equivalent mortgage repayments, the impact on disposable income can be seen straight away. Disposable income for a large section of the population has been decreasing as accommodation overheads have gone up, both for rents, mortgage repayments and inflated energy costs. This has an impact on the economy as a whole; spending on retail products is lower than it might be, dampening demand and strangling the purchase of goods and services.
Following the general election of 2015, lending for housing purchases increased by nearly thirty per cent. That sounds like good news, but the picture is far from optimistic. After declining for a long time, applications for mortgages have picked up. According to the Valuations Office Agency, ‘the median rent recorded between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2015 in England was £600’ [Valuations Office Agency, 2015]; still more than the median mortgage repayment.
Predictions of the trends in renting suggest that it will continue to rise and to be a major method of securing accommodation for the foreseeable future. The main problem with this is that renting, in this country, is far from secure. The legal rights of tenants who rent their housing are complicated. If renting is to become the norm for a large sector of the housing market, something needs to be done about security of tenure. Linsey Hanley has argued that ‘There is nothing wrong with long-term renting per se: it’s the norm in most European countries, where the law tends to favour tenants. And so it should: a tenant’s need for secure shelter takes moral precedence over a landlord’s right to safeguard his income’ [Hanley, 2015]. This gets to the nub of the renting issue – that if the Government is to protect housing consumers then it must provide them with security of tenure and sort out the complex mess of legal rights that thwarts the ability of renters to stay in their homes.
As the Civitas report acknowledged, there are a lot of people who are denied access to other housing options, who are dependent on renting but their security of tenure is inadequate, under current law, and something needs to be done about this. The Civitas report argued that ‘A new regulatory framework should be considered that would curb future rent growth and improve security for tenants. This should include indefinite tenancies within which rents (freely negotiated at the outset between landlord and tenant) would only be allowed to rise in line with a measure of inflation [Civitas 2015]
The rented sector of housing is not just about private individuals renting out properties; in many large cities, apartment blocks are owned by property developers and speculators, drawn into this area of investment by the strong demand for rents and the profits that can be achieved from renting. The tenants rent through local agents and have no relationship with these remote absentee landlords – most of which are anonymous companies often located far away from the properties they control. In the view of the Civitas report ‘In order to encourage investment in new housing, new-build properties would be exempt from this regulation, but landlords would be encouraged to enter voluntary longer-term arrangements with tenants where this is mutually attractive. Institutional investors might be particularly receptive to such a framework’ [Civitas 2015].
The problem facing lawmakers, and those who drive political policy, is that they have to achieve a balance between security of tenure for residents and enabling investment in the rented sector for landlords. Moving the balance of rights and responsibilities too far in favour of tenants could deter landlords from bringing new properties into the market or even invite them to move their investments away from housing to other sources of profit. Security of tenure (or lack of it) can be a problem for those who cannot afford to buy houses; in many cases, people have no other choice than to rent accommodation simply because they do not have the funds for a deposit on a house or cannot secure a suitable loan for the purchase. The terms and conditions of rented tenancies are often set to deal with problems, such as people who fail to pay their rent or move out without giving adequate notice. In my view, this is a mistake and the terms of rental agreements should address the basic principles of letting to responsible customers and leave it up to the law to sort out situations that go wrong. Giving tenants security is important because flats and houses are not just property – they are homes. Having a secure home is important to people’s health and well-being. It is part of a family’s (or individual’s) general security and getting the balance right should be the goal of both landlords and government policy and legislation.
This issue is brought into focus by the measure, announced by The Chancellor, in his summer budget (of 2015), that taxation benefits on buy-to-let are to be changed. The aim of the measure was to make taxation fairer for individual residential homeowners. George Osborne said that his aim was to create a more level playing field between those buying a home to let and those who are buying a place to live in. Be that as it may, analysts and commentators are saying that the disadvantages of this measure will outweigh any benefits that it might confer; some maintain that the effect of the measure will be to raise rental levels and reduce the supply of accommodation. I examine the impact of the measure on my blog [ibid]. The Chancellor had added three per cent to stamp duty on buy-to-let and second homes. This does not apply to properties of up to £40,000 in value. Landlords also face higher taxes on their rental income [This is money, 12th January 2016].
De-regulation of the housing market damages the long-term prospects for tenants and this can have a knock-on effect on the economy generally. Policymakers need to grapple with the relationship between jobs and homes and ensure that people have access to accommodation that offers them security of tenure. Lenders, such as banks and credit companies, do not look favourably on people with multiple addresses, who have moved house many times. They prefer clients who have lived at their current address for four years or more – not always easy to achieve when security of tenure is inadequate. Renters tend to be more mobile than householders and can clock up several addresses in a relatively short period of time (staying put in one place for an average of 3.5 years.) Even if we discount students (who rent homes whilst they are studying and then move on when they get a job elsewhere) renters move more frequently than house owners.
Government policy-makers are faced with a variety of tenures; when it comes to forging policy to do with security of tenure, they have to fit it into social housing, council housing, some other less common forms of tenure, as well as the private rented sector. Such policies are subject to moral and ethnic debates that focus on the rights of individuals to security; there is nothing wrong with that but governments are more likely to be concerned with the financial and commercial consequences of the law. Even so, individuals are worried about their security rather than the profitability of property speculation.
For economists, there are several issues in all this. The percentage of income that goes into providing somewhere to live (and energy to run it) is a factor determining the outcome of disposable income. The national economy relies on strong consumer demand for products, food and domestic retail consumption. Increasing housing costs are not good for the economy as a whole. The strength of the economy has always seen employment rates as being a key factor. Economists are beginning to realise that the cost of housing is a key factor in determining the strength of consumer demand. Housing costs are nearly always the biggest single expense for families and individuals and rising accommodation costs hold down consumer demand for goods and services in the domestic sector. This is true both for mortgages and rents and for energy costs. Building a strong economy involves joining up policies that affect employment, housing and transport.
Housing and employment
Most people in this country need two things: somewhere to live and a job to pay for it. There is a reciprocal relationship between housing and employment. People need a home in order to get and hold down a job; people need jobs in order to be able to fund a home and meet their energy bills. People are locked into this ‘catch-22’ cycle of needing two things at once. This works well when times are good but when people lose their job or their homes are put in jeopardy, they find themselves in trouble.
If we are to have policies that work, we must be able to make housing and employment work together in a way that reinforces them both. So, how does the housing market relate to employment? What proportion of the labour market can afford housing?
What people are being paid relates directly to the type of housing they can access. Those with well-paid jobs, that have long-term prospects, will be able to attract mortgages. Mortgage providers are less keen to fund those whose jobs are short-term or occasional – such as those on zero-hours contracts. It is not always the level of pay that gives access to mortgages – it is more to do with the long-term prospects for continued employment that will fund a mortgage over its term (typically 25 years.) People who are on zero-hour contracts are not good prospects for mortgage providers. Precarious employment arrangements are not good for home ownership and access to mortgages and leases.
Despite the fact that the UK has a record level of employment – the best since 1971 – homeownership is as low as it was in the 1970s. Can government policies be synchronised so that there is both full employment and a strong supply of housing? Traditional homeowners (in terms of their employment status) are becoming a smaller proportion of the labour market. It would be wrong however for policymakers to assume that they need only provide good employment to sort out home ownership and accommodation. You cannot buy security of tenure in the rented sector if it does not exist. You cannot get a mortgage if your income and job prospects are inadequate.
People who have to survive on precarious jobs are finding it more and more difficult to gain access to suitable housing. The Labour Party’s pre-election headlines (of 2015) placed emphasis on increasing the supply of new-build housing; but if they do not have synchronised policies for employment, too few people will be able to buy into that housing and the policy will fail. What people need, to access new-build housing, are jobs that offer long-term stability and a predictable income. New build houses are more difficult to secure than rented properties or other forms of accommodation tenure. In some respects new building housing is not the answer – it is actually just part of the problem.
Around 15% of the labour force is now self-employed. There has been a huge increase in people gaining their primary income from a small business. ‘Nowadays, although it is not impossible for someone who is self-employed to secure a mortgage, it can certainly be a difficult process because lenders are far less willing to take what they see as a risk on those with a ‘non-standard’ income’, claims one website [Thisismoney, 2015]. Lenders want to see a history of business success and to be convinced that this will continue over the life of the loan. That immediately places people into age categories. With our ageing population, more and more older people are economically inactive and securing the best (most secure) accommodation is very difficult for people who do not have a secure income. Pensioners might be able to show that their income is secure but, if they are over 55, they will still find it difficult to get mortgages. Lenders are reluctant to provide housing-related loans over short periods.
In 1971, half the population was renting and the other half owned their homes. The number of people in work is now at its highest level since 1971. What proportion of employed people can afford access to housing? We hear a lot about the difficulties that people have in securing a mortgage, especially for those aged 20 to 25. These might be people who are in work but the kind of earnings they have does not always give them access to housing. If we now have record numbers of people in housing, why are so many not able to get a mortgage or cannot afford to rent suitable homes?
Guy Standing has written about The Precariat, a social class formed by people suffering from ‘precarity’, which is a condition of existence without predictability or security [Standing, 2011]. Many of these are people whose income is precariously based on things like zero-hours contracts. These are casual workers who lack a long-term reliable income, the kind of income which would allow them to secure permanent housing. If your job cannot be relied on to provide you with enough money over a long enough period of time, then you are likely to have difficulties in accessing the kind of housing you desire. Housing requires permanent employment, a stable income over a long period and a level of income that will convince mortgage providers and people who lease or rent apartments that you are a reasonably safe bet. Zero-hours contracts might offer a handy fix for some people, for some of the time, but in the long term, they create a disadvantage in terms of housing.
With the growth in unreliable employment and more risky self-employment, gaining access to secure accommodation is presenting increasing difficulties. If the retirement age is increased beyond its current levels, this will also have a knock-on effect on housing. The Government’s commitment to increasing the level of the national wage, it is said, will result in large numbers of small businesses failing, including those that are self-employed and micro-enterprises [Inman, 2015] That bodes badly for the housing market; mortgage defaults will increase dramatically and the overall level of personal debt will soar. The success of wage increases will be offset by the unintended consequences of failure to meet housing costs. We all thought that the national wage was a good thing; perhaps now we can see its unintended consequences we will have to think again.
Housing and unemployment
Older people are caught in traps with their existing mortgages and their inability to secure loans to fund a settled and secure old age. Older people are in the best position if they have equity locked up in an existing property that they own. However, many wish to pass on their homes to their children, who might find it either difficult or impossible to obtain a mortgage of their own. Where someone has substantial savings, they can offer a suitable level of deposit to secure a mortgage or a lease. Those aged over 60 are in particular trouble because they cannot provide the appropriate length of time needed to pay back a loan. ‘With less time to make the repayments than someone twenty or thirty years younger, the lender will need to know that you will have a sufficient income in retirement to be able to make the repayments and cover the term of the mortgage’ [Sosmart, 2015]. There is evidence that a variety of brokers are now setting out to cater for borrowers aged 55 or over, who do not wish to re-mortgage their existing properties [Eccles 2014] ‘Around 350,000 over 65s still have a home loan according to the Office for National Statistics – and over the next decade, the Financial Conduct Authority says 40,000 retired people a year will see deals come to an end so they will have to re-mortgage or repay any remaining debt. With the average mortgage in retirement worth around £30,000 and some older people determined to trade up, not down, the challenges for borrowers are intense’ explains one website [Thisismoney 2015.] Older borrowers, aged 60 or more, find it difficult to secure loans for housing but it is not impossible, however difficult it might be. The additional problem they face is that their initial repayments might be higher than would the case with younger people because older people have less time to clear the debt. Those aged 65 might be lucky enough to borrow over a 15 or 20-year term. There are few lenders willing to deal with people who are at or have passed retirement age. If the age of retirement is to go up, there will have to be changes to the way that funds are lent for house purchases or leases. This type of borrowing will be sensitive to the government’s long-term plans for state pensions. Even those with private pensions are by no means safe, given the uncertain future of their funds. Raising the retirement age purely for employment reasons will have unintended consequences for housing and hence the need for joined-up policies. Measures such as the national wage and raising the retirement age need to follow through to see what will be their likely consequences for housing and consumer demand. These could prove to be deflationary measures.
Developing policy concerned with the housing needs of older people is not easy. For one thing, life expectancy and health risks change, the older the age of the person. Where older people have an existing property, which they own or on which there is an outstanding debt, the options are there, however daunting they might be. But older people with no existing property ownership are in a dire position. Unless their circumstances can be catered for we will see the return of a level of poverty and homelessness in our ageing population that has not been witnessed since Victorian times.
Employment, these days, is far more varied than it ever has been. Gone is the age of the lifetime, permanent career. Getting a secure, full-time job with a good salary is increasingly difficult and the labour market is now geared to younger people; employment for people over 50 is a real challenge. Housing choices are dependent on income and if you can’t find paid work and self-employment is not an option, then you might be in a precarious position. Jobs might well be available elsewhere but if you cannot afford to move to access those jobs, then you are stuck. Large numbers of people are commuting long distances in order to get jobs not available in their home localities. Older people find it difficult to move because they are tied to the localities in which their dependants live and the families on who they are dependent. Economic migration within the UK is not an easy option for those aged 60 and over.
Employment and transport
Employment is often dependent on transport. Some policy makers have added transport into the housing/employment equation. Some have gone on to put this into a regional context. We can look at England as a whole but when you regionalise the equation, there are areas of the country that need special attention. Some local authorities have developed policies that address the issue of the supply of land as being the key to dealing with meeting housing needs. Policy-making, therefore, has to balance two sets of supplies: jobs and homes. This approach also needs to consider travel to work areas – the ability of people with jobs to travel to work, to areas away from their homes. This is where transport comes in – if the supply of transport lags behind the supply of housing and the availability of jobs (within a travel-to-work area) then people are going find it difficult to get housing within a reasonable distance of where they want to work. The choice of where to live, for the majority of families, dictates where their workplaces can be. They have to take into account their relatives (particularly dependants and those on whom they depend) and access to schools and health care if they have specific needs in that respect.
Formulating housing policy is a non-starter if not related to employment and education and, I would argue, transport. Joined-up policies are the most likely to be credible and effective because they pull together these variables that all depend on each other. If we want our housing policy to succeed we have to make sure that the labour market has a sufficient proportion of employed people who have the kind of income that is required for stable homeownership (whether via mortgages, leases or tenancies.) The more people whose jobs fall into the short-term, precarious, end of the labour market, the more difficult it is going to be to have a robust housing policy. Allowing employers to determine the market for jobs is bad for the economy; it is free-market-ism of the worst kind. Allowing more and more employers to indulge in short-term and zero-hours contracts is also harmful to the economy as a whole. Developing key policies in isolation from each other is a practice that cannot join up jobs, homes, education and transport and for that reason, it does the country no good at all. Policies that join up employment, transport and housing supply and more likely to result in a strong economy, than those that are developed piecemeal.
I will now look at some of the issues that affect the supply of housing stock, how we can make better use of land and the possible options for addressing the shortfall in housing supply.