{"text":[[{"start":5.05,"text":"Almost nothing matters as much in life as getting a roof over your head. But many countries are failing at this fundamental task. In places such as the UK, Ireland and large parts of the US, younger people in particular are complaining that housing is becoming out of reach. "}],[{"start":21.8,"text":"In an age when rightwing populism is on the march, the issue has been embraced by politicians of the left. Andy Burnham, the man due to become Britain’s next prime minister on Monday, promises the UK’s biggest programme of government-built housing since the postwar period. New York’s mayor Zohran Mamdani wants rent controls."}],[{"start":41.7,"text":"So, are such plans the answer to the housing crisis? Or might they make it worse? To understand, we need to get to grips with what the housing crisis really is."}],[{"start":53.650000000000006,"text":"Housing pressures are rising"}],[{"start":55.900000000000006,"text":"These days countries need more homes than in previous decades, even if the population isn’t growing. The reasons for this include longer life expectancies, falling rates of marriage and the shift away from multi-generational households."}],[{"start":70.10000000000001,"text":"Then there is the rise of so-called superstar cities, economic and cultural motors that both generate and attract high incomes."}],[{"start":79.25000000000001,"text":"Across many parts of the world, housing supply has not kept up with demand. The nature of demand also presents difficulties of its own. As cities ranging from San Francisco to Lisbon have shown, when an inflow of very high earners collides with insufficient construction, prices and rents soar above the levels that many locals can afford."}],[{"start":100.30000000000001,"text":"In Dublin, high immigration and an influx of tech money have contributed to a 40 per cent jump in housing demand since 2011, while the number of homes has grown at only half that rate, creating perhaps the worst housing shortage in the developed world."}],[{"start":115.55000000000001,"text":"One consequence is that rents in the city have risen more than twofold in a decade, outpacing increases in incomes."}],[{"start":122.35000000000001,"text":"Another is that the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds in Ireland living with their parents more than doubled in the 2013 to 2024 period, from 19 per cent to 42 per cent — more extreme even than the trends in cities such as London, New York and San Francisco."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":140.55,"text":"Affordability vs shortages"}],[{"start":143.20000000000002,"text":"High rents often capture the headlines — and promises to rein them in can net votes, as Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign has shown."}],[{"start":152.50000000000003,"text":"But rising rents are more a symptom than an underlying issue. Policies to keep housing affordable without addressing shortages can have perverse effects."}],[{"start":163.25000000000003,"text":"“Rent controls ease pressures for people who already have a home, but they don’t house the people without one,” says Ronan Lyons, a professor of economics at Trinity College Dublin. “They manage the impact of scarcity but don’t resolve it, and can even make it worse.”"}],[{"start":178.35000000000002,"text":"Other well-intentioned moves can also prove counter-productive. "}],[{"start":183.45000000000002,"text":"US research shows that large corporate landlords can help lower-income households move into areas they could not otherwise afford. But a big housing bill that became law last week restricts the number and type of homes such providers can buy and rent out. A policy ostensibly aimed at improving housing affordability may worsen it. "}],[{"start":203.4,"text":"London has made similar stumbles. Research by the London School of Economics found that overseas investment was crucial for delivering large developments that were then rented out to locals. But following an increase in surcharges and other regulations over the past 10 years, much of this investment has dried up. "}],[{"start":223.3,"text":"Housing shortages can only fundamentally be addressed by building more homes — the right sort in the right places."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":230.35000000000002,"text":"To some, such arguments might seem pro-landlord or pro-developer. But those most affected by shortages are the people with the least of all. It’s true that it is now much more difficult for high-earning young professionals to live in the kind of houses that their parents did. But, wherever you look, things have been getting much worse much faster for those on lower incomes."}],[{"start":253.70000000000002,"text":"Among the bottom third of earners, the share of young adults living with their parents now stands at 75 per cent in Dublin and San Francisco, 55 per cent in London and almost 40 per cent in Ontario, Canada, and New South Wales, Australia. All have increased by double digits in recent decades."}],[{"start":273.8,"text":"How do we get more houses built?"}],[{"start":276.75,"text":"Unless cities want to reject jobs and income growth, the primary answer to the housing crisis is as simple as it is difficult: build more homes. The question is how to get to that destination."}],[{"start":288.4,"text":"Most housing economists argue that relaxing restrictions on building will encourage private-sector construction, easing shortages and putting downward pressure on prices and rents. But there is disagreement on the details."}],[{"start":301.45,"text":"Two recent studies of the US found little indication that building constraints have consistently made a difference in recent decades. On average, housebuilding has tended to respond similarly to demand growth in areas with very different restrictions on development."}],[{"start":316,"text":"But there are many well-documented cases where planning liberalisation and other pro-development policies do appear to have delivered impressive results, suggesting the details matter."}],[{"start":327.3,"text":"The most widely cited example is New Zealand. In 2016, large areas of Auckland, the country’s largest city, were rezoned to allow higher-density building. The experiment provided positive results for both supply and affordability. The kind of multi-unit housing now allowed experienced a construction boom and rents stopped rising so rapidly. In fact, in real terms they remained flat."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":353.5,"text":"Look also at Austin, one of the most construction-friendly cities in the US. Late last decade, as housing demand rose throughout the American Sunbelt, supply in cities such as Miami failed to keep pace, and rents soared as a result. In Austin, by contrast, the increased demand set off a residential construction boom so large that rents not only dropped in real terms, but nominal ones too."}],[{"start":377.6,"text":"The biggest rental reductions were for low-income housing, and the proportion of young people able to obtain their own home jumped from 70 to 80 per cent."}],[{"start":386.6,"text":"Some argue that private developers will not knowingly build at rates that would cause prices or rents to tumble. Austin suggests a grain of truth here: there are indications that developers miscalculated and “overbuilt”; construction subsequently fell to a 15-year low in an effort to stop rents from falling any further."}],[{"start":406.55,"text":"But those kinds of events — supply-driven improvements in costs and affordability — are only possible when the rules allow, or when, in other words, they are loose enough to encourage construction."}],[{"start":418.90000000000003,"text":"And Auckland is an example of what can go right if planning liberalisation is ambitious enough and focused on the most economically attractive cases. If developers are allowed to build new homes in low-density parts of affluent, growing cities, it makes large-scale new construction the new profit-maximising choice."}],[{"start":437.85,"text":"The cities where housing is now too expensive to build"}],[{"start":441.95000000000005,"text":"Then there’s the opposite case: the cities where regulations painfully limit housebuilding. Perhaps the most stark examples are London and Dublin. "}],[{"start":451.20000000000005,"text":"In both, it has become economically unviable to build in many areas because of factors such as unpredictable planning regimes, rules that stop city growth into outlying areas, costly design requirements and a host of levies and charges."}],[{"start":467.65000000000003,"text":"New regulations are often well intentioned — as was the case with the extensive fire safety rules for high-rise apartment blocks in London after the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, in which 72 people died. But the rules have nonetheless made development so expensive that new home construction in London has collapsed to one of the lowest levels of any city in the developed world."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":490.00000000000006,"text":"In fact, in these superstar cities, new housebuilding has become so expensive that people now cannot afford to buy homes at the price they can be built. In both London and Dublin, large numbers of sites have received planning permission yet construction has stalled because completing under current regulations would mean not just reduced profits but making a loss."}],[{"start":512.45,"text":"In one cautionary tale, the London Borough of Croydon issued a blanket permission in 2018 to allow homeowners to redevelop large single-family homes into compact apartment buildings at the same scale."}],[{"start":525.8000000000001,"text":"These small developments took off, concentrated in the suburb of Purley, adding hundreds of new apartments at prices affordable on a typical London income. Supply and affordability improved almost overnight."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":538.1500000000001,"text":"But it didn’t last. The new policy became a key focus for anti-development campaigners in a fiercely fought mayoral election, and the borough’s new mayor repealed it just four years after it was announced. With that, the small projects came to an abrupt halt."}],[{"start":554.8000000000001,"text":"By contrast, one of the biggest UK housebuilding success stories of recent years has been Manchester, where Burnham was mayor for nine years until last month."}],[{"start":564.4000000000001,"text":"Construction in the city centre has boomed over the past decade after local officials worked closely with private developers to adapt regulations and incentives so that when demand arrived, homes would quickly follow."}],[{"start":576.6000000000001,"text":"Why did one scheme endure and the other not? Manchester spent years trying to build support for what was to come, while Croydon’s plan was controversial with residents from the outset."}],[{"start":586.7000000000002,"text":"And while Croydon’s plan triggered disruptive construction in affluent suburbs, Manchester’s was centred on high-rise apartments on brownfield sites where development was less disruptive to existing residents."}],[{"start":600.0000000000001,"text":"This is one of the big challenges of housebuilding. The most economically attractive sites for developers are often those where deregulation faces the most local opposition. Austin and Manchester both show that durable development often requires years of careful planning and communication rather than pulling a single lever overnight."}],[{"start":620.4500000000002,"text":"Supporting the poorest"}],[{"start":623.7000000000002,"text":"On balance, the evidence shows that housing shortages can be addressed by carefully planned, well-targeted moves to make construction easier. That is particularly the case in areas where building has completely iced up."}],[{"start":638.0000000000001,"text":"But such moves will not be enough to protect the lowest-income people in the most high-demand cities. "}],[{"start":645.1500000000001,"text":"Even in success stories like Austin, rental evictions have continued on trend despite the construction boom. "}],[{"start":652.0000000000001,"text":"And while Manchester is a clear success story on getting homes built, its previous housing shortages were so bad that the impact of the construction blitz on costs and scarcity has been muted."}],[{"start":663.6500000000001,"text":"Rents have risen more than incomes and affordability has worsened for its poorest residents. The rate of people who have been forced out or priced out of their homes is one of the highest in the country."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":674.5000000000001,"text":"All the same, rents in Manchester have still risen less steeply than in other cities that have built fewer homes. The lesson here is not that market-rate building doesn’t help, it’s that housing shortages are sometimes so huge that even record building rates barely make a dent."}],[{"start":690.8500000000001,"text":"This is consistent with research showing that while private-sector development usually helps both rich and poor, its benefits are initially muted in the hottest markets with the most acute shortages."}],[{"start":702.5500000000002,"text":"So there is an important role for the state, particularly in helping lower-income people in the world’s most desirable cities."}],[{"start":709.8500000000001,"text":"Private is not enough"}],[{"start":712.9000000000001,"text":"Setting out the goals for his premiership this month, Burnham made clear he thinks the answer to the housing crisis is a massive expansion of the role of the state. He has announced plans to build tens of thousands of new government-funded homes over the next decade. This would come at great expense, requiring an injection of public funds equivalent to a one percentage point rise in income tax."}],[{"start":736.6000000000001,"text":"This leads to what is perhaps the most important part of the answer. "}],[{"start":741.2000000000002,"text":"The same lighter regulations that can help jump-start private housebuilding can also bring down the cost of public housing by reducing rent and prices — and hence the burden of subsidies shouldered by the state."}],[{"start":753.1000000000001,"text":"Look at Vienna and Helsinki, two cities that long avoided the affordability and shortage problems that dog many superstar cities. They did so not only by establishing a big social housing sector but also by achieving far higher rates of private-sector construction than the likes of London. They also acquired land much more cheaply than it realistically could be today, under less acute demand pressures."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":776.3000000000002,"text":"Today, however, Vienna faces many of the same challenges as other growing high-income cities. Housebuilding rates are declining, private sector rents are climbing steeply, and rising land prices threaten the viability of future social housebuilding. "}],[{"start":790.4500000000002,"text":"It is a reminder that the main answer to the main housing problem — shortages — is to make every effort to boost supply."}],[{"start":797.5000000000001,"text":"This is one of the most pressing challenges facing high-income countries today and one of the thorniest to solve."}],[{"start":805.1000000000001,"text":"Ingrid Gould Ellen, professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, says it can only be solved through giving private developers the incentive to build homes at a profit, while also delivering state support for means-tested affordable houses. "}],[{"start":822.0500000000002,"text":"“Ensuring regulations allow developers to build new housing is critical, but new market-rate housing alone will not be enough to address the needs of very low-income households,” she argues, as she calls for a combination of deregulation and state intervention."}],[{"start":836.8500000000001,"text":"Striking such a difficult balance will require carefully planned policy, consistent communication and work with the private sector on stripping down counter-productive regulations. Fixes that work in some places may not always translate to others. But failure to act will keep millions of lives and livelihoods on hold."}],[{"start":860.95,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1784360052_2578.mp3"}