Tyranny Of The Majority

Here's the chart showing the percentage of English households who were owner-occupiers since 1953 (from DCLG). Clearly, in the 1950s, a majority of voters were tenants, most of whom were keen to own their own home and with the money to pay for it, so it was politically expedient to allow a lot of new houses to be built. And the private tenants who didn't like renting privately but couldn't quite afford to buy were keen for more council housing to be built. So both Labour and Tory governments allowed a lot of new houses to be built (for owner-occupation or council housing). Housing standards improved markedly.

The same applied in the 1960s. In the 1970s, we passed the 50% owner-occupiers mark and hit 60% by 1980, which is clearly enough to give owner-occupiers an electoral majority, and the whole political equation flipped over. Once a solid majority were home-owners, people noticed that increasing supply tended to dampen price increases and so there were votes to be won by restricting the supply of new housing, thus giving the majority - owner-occupiers - the illusion of wealth.

For a pithy definition of the Cult of Home-Owner-Ism, I refer you to this exchange over at Obo's.

Which is why new construction plummeted in about 1980 and has stayed low ever since. And don't get me started on giving away taxpayer-owned council housing for political gain, which was a cunning way of creating the illusion of an increase in wealth without a single brick being laid on another (ultimately it was just an increase in private sector debt and an increased burden on the taxpayer renting it all back again from 'private' landlords):Home-owners lapped this up of course, swallowed the BS about 'protecting the countryside from the blight of urban sprawl' and 'giving people a stake in society' have spent the last thirty years spouting it back.

I suspect that there is a natural upper limit to the number of owner-occupiers at around two-thirds, so those two-thirds can exploit the one-third beneath them who want to 'get on the housing ladder'. If they gave away all council housing to its current occupants for free, that would temporarily boost the number to nearly ninety per cent, so new construction would grind to a halt, prices and rents will rise even higher, so no young people will be able to buy, and the number will drift down again.

We also know in practice that half of the council housing they give away will end up back in the hands of landlords, or that the owners will move elsewhere and rent out the home rather than selling it - there'll always be people who don't earn enough to be able to scrape a deposit together and have stable enough earnings to be able to get a mortgage.