If politicians are promising more houses at the election, we need to ask them what they are going to do about the supply of housing. That is the main argument of Housing by Christian Hilber, part of the CEP #ElectionEconomics series.

Housing affordability is a key concern of an ever-larger fraction of UK voters who are crammed into artificially limited space. At the same time, a lot of wealth lies in housing assets and there are many vested interests in keeping things this way, such as current homeowners and private landlords.

Substantive reforms could solve the housing crisis, but politicians of all stripes back away from such reforms out of fear of being demonised by the vested interests. Instead, proposed policies tend to tackle the symptoms - rather than the causes - of the UK's housing affordability crisis.

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24 April 2015     Paper Number CEPEA033

Download PDF - UK Housing and Planning Policies: the evidence from economic research