I was recently in the US and found myself binge-watching a show called “Forged in Fire”. A result of the History Channel’s pivot towards reality TV, it is essentially a Bake Off-style competition, but instead of creating cakes, the contestants create replicas of historically significant bladed weapons. Its educational merit may be dubious, but it’s an entertaining example of the “dudes rock” genre of history. However, watching as a foreigner, something else stood out.
For the final challenge in each episode, the two men left standing (I don’t recall seeing a single female contestant) would return to their “home forge” to spend a week crafting a complex sword. Each time it was a reminder of the higher living standards most in the US seem to enjoy. First, these hobbyist swordsmiths have amassed a few thousand dollars of equipment. More striking, however, is the space – from garages to outbuildings – they have in their homes to dedicate to their craft.
When we talk about the housing crisis, the most important point is always affordability. Glancing around the world, however, something else is apparent: the contrast between housing scarcity and abundance. Elsewhere, homes are not just cheaper, but bigger and better. This ultimately is life-enhancing and why increasing supply should be seen as the best way of alleviating the problem. The goal for escaping the housing famine should be a housing feast.
On almost every metric, British housing is worse than that in other comparable countries. British houses are old, with most built between 1932 and 1980, and a large chunk before the First World War. They are also cold, losing heat almost three times quicker than European averages – even in places with chillier climates. This is partly why our housing crisis flows through to horrifying effects on health. Our homes are not just expensive, they are often bad. Most of all, they are small.
Though other Anglo-sphere countries have affordability issues, money still gets you far more. The average Canadian house is more than double in size of the average UK home. While North America is helped by the vastness of the nations there, even in Europe, most other countries have bigger houses than the Brits. The Netherlands has a population density a third higher than the UK and still manages houses with fifty percent more floorspace. An Englishman’s home is less a castle, more compact, cold and yearning for an upgrade.
This again is rooted in the veto-heavy, scarcity-inducing nature of our planning system. The restrictions on building drive up the costs and timeliness of gaining planning permission and increase the value of land with it. Not only do we make it hard to build enough houses, but we incentivise building them badly. By making planning permission the bottleneck, and a tough one to pass through, the pokiness and poor quality of Britain’s housing stock is likely to continue.
Making it hard to find building plots means developers are forced to maximise output from them. The incremental cost of finding new opportunities to build and getting permission (along with the delay, which impacts cash flow) means it is far better to squeeze more onto one site. To do that, they have to be smaller. In addition to this, the planning system and the cost of housing make it hard to compete on quality.
As developing plots is a lengthy and costly affair, it favours big builders who can obtain more credit and manage bumpy cashflows effectively. There’s little scope for smaller developers who might try and break through, by offering better quality. This was largely affirmed by the recent CMA investigation into the housing market. On top of that, limited supply means that customers can’t really afford to be picky anyway.
The biggest push factors when people buy houses are usually location and cost. Most people’s lives mean that they only want to live in a certain area. As that place will likely have a restricted flow of housing onto the market, the “niceness” of the property is going to be a secondary concern. Certainly, there is unlikely to be enough choice for them to be exacting on quality, especially when it comes to new builds. With no market pressure not to build small, shoddy homes, that is what we will be left with.
This is also where the arguments about re-rationing the housing supply fall. Many on the NIMBY spectrum reject the idea of building more, pushing instead for redistribution. Sometimes this means people – urging those in property hotspots to head to other bits of the country. Other times it is about housing itself, calling for more efficient usage of existing stock, whether this is urging old people out of family homes or reducing second home ownership and empty homes. Most of these are unconvincing anyway, but their real weakness is how they fail to address the poor quality of British housing. That can only be done by building.
For sure, we could probably make our homes go further. Indeed, the market has made that happen already. Family homes become HMOs, flats are shared, and people endure long commutes to finally have a place of their own. The more efficient use of scarce resources is, however, a poor alternative to abundance, especially when the main barrier to abundance is our regulatory connivances. This is what we should be shooting for.
Housing should be seen as a form of wealth. Not just in the monetary value it can command, but the quality of life it could deliver. Small, cramped, shoddy houses are bad, and big, splendid ones are better. There’s a raft of intangible benefits that flow from having better, more affordable housing. The simple space to do the things you want, whether that’s a fully functional forge or just an extra room for your books and clothes, is a wonderful thing, especially if it is possible to do it exactly where you want to live. It should be in reach of more people. Instead of baulking at excess, aiming for housing abundance could widen its accessibility to more.
Rather than threatening the over-housed with stricter rationing, we should look at making it the norm. Spare rooms and space to play should be less of a luxury. The same holds for second homes. Across Europe they are more common, giving more moderately off people the pleasure of a cabin in the woods or a bolthole by the beach. At the same time, the range of choice should encourage quality, as builders compete for buyers, not the other way around. The long-term vision of housing campaigners should be this generous solution.
Over the last century, one of the real triumphs of progress has been how housing has improved. It largely became more affordable, but beyond that, it became better. Slums were cleared. Running water and electricity became ubiquitous in the developed world. This resoundingly improved life, health, productivity, and a dozen other things that made life better across classes and circumstances. By creating the housing crisis, we have stopped this improvement. We talk about it most in terms of pricing, but we should be just as aware when it comes to the intangibles.
Housing abundance would address both. Unlocking the flow of new housing has been shown to bring down rents and prices. It could also unlock other things too. New technologies are always improving houses, from the comfort of underfloor heating to the smart sustainability of the Passivhaus. If you’ve explored a smart AirBnB you know the fun of having a pool, or a sauna, on-premises. By including scarcity in housing, we have made many of those improvements the preserve of the very rich. We are on the brink of doing the same to even having enough space to feel comfortable.
One of the criticisms of YIMBYism is that it focuses too much on certain types of tenure, or house. The scale of the crisis has made it an increasingly middle-class movement, which at times focuses more on professionals than the poor. The joy of abundance, however, is that you don’t have to choose. More and better houses benefit everyone, with a vision of quality and space for all. It is, I concede, not a policy position as such, but a mindset that informs what the eventual outcome should be.
British homes have become a reflection of scarcity and its consequences. Outperformed by comparators in Europe and the Anglo-sphere. This should be a source of shame and determination. It's time to shoot for abundance. Yes, that means lowering relative rents and mortgage costs and eliminating all of the worst elements of housing poverty. But it should also mean bigger houses, that keep in the heat with all the mod cons for all. Maybe even a place to craft a sword.
One thing I would note - a big part of the reason America has bigger houses is because they have embraced suburban sprawl. This is a difficult circle to square with YIMBYs who generally tend to also be urbanists who like density and don't like traffic lanes.
Personally I don't know where I stand on this. Either you have tiny houses which are hard to bring up kids in; or you have bigger houses but the kids can't walk anywhere because stuff is too far away/they have to cross busy roads.
Between 1919 and 1939, approximately 4 million new dwellings were built in this country. Considering the relatively smaller population then, it was a remarkable achievement. It meant that in those 20 years, one-third of the British population was re-housed in bigger and more attractive properties, and many with gardens. Strategically, this was an asset when the Luftwaffe came, as the population was spread more thinly in the new suburban areas.
The big change came with the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act when all development came under local authority control. As 'planning' had won the war effort, it was believed 'planning' would improve housing. Since then, the establisment of Green Belts and increasingly bureaucratic control, and endless interferring by quangos (environment agency, English Nature etc) has stymid development and encouraged NIMBYism. The NIMBIEs forget that the land on which their 1920s and 30s houses stand would have been unspoilt open countryside or farmland 100 years ago