William Clouston Explains the Housing Crisis in 5 Minutes

[@ajs41]

It's mainly caused by the fact that the population today is 10 million higher than it was 25 years ago.

[@Sean-p3o]

Mainly caused by the Economic Model and living beyond our means Add in overpopulation too that Both are linked

[@simianwarthog]

100%

[@shd4618]

No other reason at all? Where did the demand come from?

[@StephenSeabird]

Several reasons not mentioned, not necessarily in this order: (a) Immigration, (b) families not staying together, (c) the elephant in the room that if you are rich enough it's possible to buy several houses and rent them out, so that (d) any new houses merely add more chips to the property-scam roulette wheel, (e) the dependency of a domestic economy depending on the buying and selling of property to keep turning, and finally - very important - (f) an attitude to housing as an investment rather than as something essential to a stable society. To all the above, the disappearance of council housing estates, where many working class people had stable communities, and selling them off was deeply destructive, and secondly the political elite began simply to forget that a country, any nation, is not only 'the economy' - and thus ignored other aspects of good governance, i.e. its civic duties, maintaining all we call Cultural in the broadest sense, the maintaining of the law with a working community-oriented police force, the care of the elderly etc.

[@masonhancock5350]

Import millions of people, add very little new housing. Prices skyrocket. Oh, and wages stagnate, jobs get scarce. Not sure why this is such a mystery.

[@oliverlittle9243]

If a large enough percentage of the public become home owners, will that not create the political incentive to keep prices high. Also, so many politicians and members of the political class have multiple homes, do they don't actually want prices to go down?

[@pwcfuster]

Excellent from Mr Clouston.