Tag Archives: housebuilding

The “Building Communities” motion last autumn left us with a target of 380,000 new homes a year, despite opposition from ALDC and most of the Party hierarchy. The grassroots, especially the young, don’t trust their colleagues who have to work with government at all levels.

Targets like this are gestures that discredit our radical tradition. They are not policies and they are bound to fail unless a Party has policies that can deliver them. Noticeably none of the policies in the motion were opposed. Just the target.
The national housing target merely “feeds the beast” that is the cartel of national homebuilders and speculative landowners, in combination with lenders who between them kill our real economy. I began my working life 50 years ago as a chartered builder working for one of them. I wondered why housing site construction always made a loss until the regional manager took me aside at a training function and said: “Tony, we make all our money on land deals.” So began my inyerest in land economics.

“Investment” in a finite natural resource simply hands over wealth created by entrepreneurs and workers, to be locked up in bank balances as unearned gains. Legalised theft. It inflates the balance sheets of large companies that plunder and speculate at our expense. That wealth needs to be re-invested in things society needs, not in pandering to greed.