Compare the housing situation in the UK with Singapore, for example, where 90 per cent of people own their own homes, unlike in the UK when at the height of the housing boom 70 per cent did, a number that has now dropped to about 65 per cent.
We are no way near that level, even though we are a highly sophisticated society, seventh wealthiest in the world.
If there are about 150,000 new homes being built every year, and 250,000 people in need of homes, then it is simple arithmetic: build more homes.
Of course, there are a number of reasons given for the shortage and how to resolve it, apart from the obvious need to build, including forcing us in to becoming a nation of renters.
But even if we were to rent, oppressive policies such as over intrusive rent control, multi-occupancy restrictions or extended tenants’ rights, all these will simply remove some of the rooms and flats presently available from the market.
Despite the background noise about high rents and shortage of social housing, the authoritarian personalities who drift into local and national politics still want to control the relationship between landlord and tenant.
They have introduced health and safety to an extent that goes far beyond the protection of tenants from faulty gas and electricity installations and the removal of slum conditions, to one in which even a creak on the stairs can now be a criminal nuisance.
More state oppression will simply bar the amateur landlord from the market, leaving it to the professionals and the Peter Rachmans of this world – one set with a battery of lawyers to protect their interests and the others who could not care less about the law.
Instead of encouraging the private home owners whose children have flown the nest to let their spare rooms, the health and safety monitors and a number of other busy bodies are interfering in the relationship between landlord and tenant.
Recently, Professor Danny Dorling, of Oxford University, in his book All That Is Solid, re-opened old wounds with a savage polemic on the housing market. Apart from more new-builds, how about the re-introduction of Miras, which was abolished in 2000?
Of course, all homeless people cannot be helped onto the ownership ladder for all kinds of reasons including mental health, family breakdown, public health and other social handicaps, but that is what the social safety net is there for.
