Right, we have done the work, we know the history. What we have to do is identify why young people today have such difficulty getting on the first rung of the home-owning ladder if that is what they want to do. We shouldn't forget that as house prices have risen with consequent increases in deposits and mortgage payments that many today opt for the easier way out of renting but even this has an initial deposit which is too high for many on low wages.
There are two main reasons. The first is a shortage of houses, as the need has risen the number of new private builds has fallen due to planning requirements, lack of demand due to recession and low incomes and the diminishing profit from building. In a better world, the cure is quite simple, do what we did after WW2 and put government money into building affordable social housing, in other words council houses. Unfortunately the prevailing ethos in government is that 'people should stand on their own feet'. This would be fine if we hadn't been hit by a succession of economic difficulties triggered by the bank crisis of 2008 because one of the consequences of that little problem is that all the money was thrown into rescuing the banks leaving nothing for the people at the bottom of the pile who have been hit with depressed wages and conditions leading to lower family incomes. There are many today who are doing full time jobs who can't even scrape together the deposit for a rented house. It is because two young friends of mine are in this position that I was triggered into writing about housing.
At this point I have to break cover and confirm what many of you have suspected, I am one of those old dinosaurs who believes that social goods like housing, education and health care are the keystones of good governance. The well-being of the general population should be the the main priority of government, not the pursuit of vanity projects which benefit only the haves and leave the have-nots abandoned in the wake of the ship of state. The aged, disabled and disadvantaged should not be left to fend for themselves. The mark of a civilised country is that it puts in place safety nets for society, not go on about benefit cheats and health tourism. One key element of this 'civilised' attitude is to help young families to gain their independence in their own home with secure tenancies or ownership agreements. This not a cheap policy but it is essential to society because in that way we avoid creating a new underclass of those who are regarded today as 'the undeserving poor'. This is a reversion to 'The New Poor Law' of the reign of Elizabeth I and it didn't work then! The situation can only get worse as computerisation and more 'efficient' industries nibble away at unskilled and even middle class jobs. Inflammatory stuff I know but this is 21st century reality.
The problem is that robots don't buy cars.
