The price of housing has gone up roughly 3 fold in the last 15 years (adjusted for inflation). The reason why this is not because bricks have become really expensive, it's because there us a shortage of supply. The low supply is not because our island is "full", but because planning permission is really expensive an hard to get, hence making it harder to build houses than what it should be. The consequences of this action is that it made homeowners really rich, especially at the higher end of the scale. It also meant only te middle-classes could pit down deposits before the age of 30, putting those homeowners on the lower end of the scale in a lifetime of debt, increasing rents (hence making it harder to save for a deposit), and therefore creating less of an incentive for those in council housing to move out, hence decreasing the supply of council houses for those who need it. Overall this has reduced social mobility, and it's all the fault of the "fights of the working class", New labour.
Because of this the government do token schemes, like "part rent/part buy", but the biggest help would be if they got rid of all the planning permission, taxes and energy assessment which stop houses being made. I could accept house prices going up due to increased prices of materials etc, but when it is being done Artificially, by the direct actions of a mainly pretend "progressive" government (although the coalition have not done anything different) just to win the votes of the "squeezed middle" (read: the voters which labour/conservatives need to win elections), then these people can fuck
Off. Let's build more houses on the green belt. It's better to have more people in affordable homes, than for a rich people to have a nice view from their estate (only 5% of the country live in rural areas anyway, and it's mainly the roh)
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