They own land! Give them money, however indirectly!

From The Evening Standard:

Reading FC plans 'world-class' conference centre to cash in on Crossrail

'Nuff said.

Also from The Evening Standard:

Pete Redfern, chief executive of housebuilder Taylor Wimpey who led the review, said its findings reveal the “challenges that young people face in buying their first home.”

The report urges Government to devise a long-term strategy for housing, and immediately create an independent Housing Commission, which could make recommendations on long-term solutions.

While the report welcomes the building of more homes and the Government’s Help to Buy and Starter Homes schemes, it concluded more needs to be done to challenge relative wage rates and mortgage lending. They also suggest providing specific subsidies for certain “qualifying” groups to help them get on the housing ladder.

It appears that the report steered clear of the old "it's about lack of supply" myth (seeing as Taylor Wimpey and their ilk are complicit in that). The report appears to just take higher house prices (and rents) as a given, one of those immutable facts of life. In a way it is of course, if taxes are collected from earnings instead of land values, there is a natural tendency for land ownership (inherently a government subsidy) to become ever more concentrated in ever fewer hands.

The report compares the Good Old Days with the current "crisis", I can't be bothered to read it but I bet it doesn't recommend re-implementing Georgism Lite, which kept a lid on rents, prices and mortgage lending for most of the last century and thus led to the huge increase in owner-occupation and corresponding decline in private renting (i.e. more equitable distribution of land ownership); with plenty of social housing as a safety net.

Redfern Review is available in full wide screen Technicolour here.