With the average house price hitting a record high £254,822 and rents rising at their fastest rate in five years, for many in Britain home ownership is a burning aspiration destined to remain just that. Writing for the Times, CPS think tank director Robert Colvile presents the solution as glaringly obvious: to break through price inflation, we need to “build, build build.”
Those who oppose such a motion are often seen as medieval louts, whose “emotional” and “misguided” response has gained them their very own acronym, NIMBYs (“not in my backyard.”) But whether in or out of the closet, NIMBYs are hardly a reactionary minority. Given the option, no one would likely wholeheartedly endorse the growth of more of the hive-like conglomerations that crowd so much of the UK already, all too often designed in stark contrast with their surroundings.
For the most part, reluctance to new builds comes from a fear they might be ugly. This might seem like a shallow concern, in comparison to people’s need for housing. But there is an argument to be made for our need for everyday beauty. The influence of the environment on one’s psyche has been proven incredibly powerful and, admittedly, modern developments can feel almost punitive. With all their austerity, they bring to mind the economical turgidity of Soviet-occupied Berlin.
Along with dubious architecture plays the old capitalist trope: making the biggest profit with minimal effort. In buildings made to accommodate not the interests of residents but those of the developers, craftsmanship is sure to be superseded by optimisation and saving—not exactly a formula for beauty.
What follows is that the median floor space for flats in the UK is 43sqm (just under the size of four car parking spaces), natural light is optional and more than half of buyers of newly-built homes in England complain of major problems with construction, unfinished fittings and faults with utilities. Many new builds simply aren't designed to last for more than 20 years. This hasn’t gone unnoticed. “Poll after poll suggests we prefer the homes built before planning really began with the 1947 Planning Act, not those that came after,” Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said at the launch of the Office for Place earlier last year.
One might even say that building new houses is irresponsible, and not just because of the enormous carbon cost implicated, in direct conflict with the government’s net-zero strategy. Too great are the chances that they might be snapped up by buy-to-let landlords, creating the scenario for more of the exploitative living conditions that private renters in the UK are subjected to in their millions. This, after all, is what happened in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008: buy-to-let landlords bought two million extra properties, and several thousands more were snatched by foreign investors to be used as offshore tax havens—which might have something to do with the alarming number—80,295 in London alone—of homes lying empty.
A solution isn’t really a solution if most people oppose it; and if there is something that unites people even at such moments of intense political divide as this current period, it is NIMBYism. A much more agreeable (and far more satisfying) initiative than building more houses would be to impose heavy taxes on vacant and second properties, thus persuading landlords to put them back on the market. That’s what Vancouver did in 2017 as an attempt to bring down prices in one of the most expensive housing markets in Canada. The “Empty Home tax” charged 1 per cent of the property value (since raised to 3 per cent) for properties not occupied for at least six months of the year. A city report found the number of existing vacant homes in Vancouver fell from 2,200 to 1,600 between 2017 and 2020 after the tax was implemented.
Vacancy tax might not be enough to meet demand for available housing in competitive markets—but if building is inevitable, it must be carefully planned rather than rushed. You could call it a change of priority: not to “build, build, build,” but to think, think, think.
