Dispatch from 2035: The Housing Crisis is Over
23 April 2024
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Kristian Niemietz writes for City AM
IEA Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz has written for City AM sketching out a possible future in which Britain finally solves its housing crisis.
Returning from the year 2035, Kristian wrote:
“The year is 2035 and according to provisional figures released today by the Office for National Statistics it is the tenth year in a row during which house prices and rents grew at a slower rate than wages. This is the result of the great British building boom, which has seen housebuilding rates soar to the highest levels since the 1930s.
“The generation currently coming of age will be the first generation of Britons in a long time who have never known anything other than steady improvements in housing affordability. They have no active memory of Britain’s housing crisis, which used to cause so much misery among Millennials and Generation Z.
“It was initially controversial, but it worked. Britain’s housing revolution didn’t just solve the housing crisis itself. It also had several positive economic side-effects. It increased labour mobility, it increased productivity, it cut the cost of doing business, it improved work incentives, it led to fiscal savings, and it made the economy less volatile.
“Today, in 2035, Britain is not just a much richer country than it used to be. It is also a politically less polarised country, which is more at ease with itself. Future historians will wonder what took us so long.”
Read Kristian’s full piece here.
You can also read Kristian’s new paper Home Win: What if Britain Solved its Housing Crisis?.
Returning from the year 2035, Kristian wrote:
“The year is 2035 and according to provisional figures released today by the Office for National Statistics it is the tenth year in a row during which house prices and rents grew at a slower rate than wages. This is the result of the great British building boom, which has seen housebuilding rates soar to the highest levels since the 1930s.
“The generation currently coming of age will be the first generation of Britons in a long time who have never known anything other than steady improvements in housing affordability. They have no active memory of Britain’s housing crisis, which used to cause so much misery among Millennials and Generation Z.
“It was initially controversial, but it worked. Britain’s housing revolution didn’t just solve the housing crisis itself. It also had several positive economic side-effects. It increased labour mobility, it increased productivity, it cut the cost of doing business, it improved work incentives, it led to fiscal savings, and it made the economy less volatile.
“Today, in 2035, Britain is not just a much richer country than it used to be. It is also a politically less polarised country, which is more at ease with itself. Future historians will wonder what took us so long.”
Read Kristian’s full piece here.
You can also read Kristian’s new paper Home Win: What if Britain Solved its Housing Crisis?.
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