The finance–housebuilding complex

Abstract

This chapter introduces the main themes and arguments of the book. It asks why despite innumerable reports and studies and Government announcements over decades the housing crisis continues and is getting worse and more intractable. What are the main blockages to resolving the housing crisis? Why are there housing shortages when Government has poured billions of subsidies into the volume housebuilding sector? The chapter highlights the emergence of the ‘finance-housebuilding complex’ and its role in perpetuating the crisis. It explains how the social and affordable housing providers have become financialised, entangled in property development deals to the detriment of local communities. Local residents groups have begun to provide housing for themselves through community land trusts and co-ops but without reforms of the land, housing and planning system at a national level, the housing crisis cannot to resolved.