The problem in the UK is under-occupation of houses, rather than a shortage of houses. In other words, there are more than enough houses for the population to fit into, the problem is that a lot of home owners have a lot of unused bedrooms.
The culprits here are the owner-occupiers rather than the landlords. IIRC, 50% of owner-occupied houses have two or more spare bedrooms, but only 25% of rental houses have two or more spare bedrooms.
The solution is to have a spare bedroom tax rather than a property tax.
In addition to your points, having a net-migration of ~600K[0] and only ~255,000 homes being built[1] per year (March 2022-2023), we're getting stuffed. Barely enough supply to house the new people coming.
Or we could just build more homes, rather than cramming everyone into a smaller space.
You know, like when we built a ton of social housing in the 60s.
Enforcing the flatshare life on everyone is about the worst idea I can think of.
edit: build up, build out, build down, do whatever. I'd prefer normal homes with gardens and I think most people would - I see no reason to limit ourselves - but right now we could do with anything. Shuffling the deckchairs solves nothing.
There is nothing in principle preventing us from building rows of town houses again and giving families somewhere to grow and live. We don't need to handicap ourselves with Dickensian/third world notions of one room per person.
> Or we could just build more
> homes, rather than cramming
> everyone into a smaller space.
With a spare bedroom tax, the average space per-person doesn't change, but the median rises and the cost drops dramatically.
> This message written from my
> study, which you'd tax me to
> be in because of course any
> luxury must be eliminated.
A spare bedroom tax only applies to houses with two or more spare bedrooms. It also replaces propert tax, and so in your case you'd be better off financially.
I feel the problem with the way the UK builds apartments is just so unsatisfying. The ones built targetting the luxury demographic seem to be habitable and provide ammenities that a commuinity would have. Such as grassland and seperate outdoor space.
Outside of these the rest just don't provide actual living spaces. They seem to be thrown up without any care for quality of living.
Edit: I do agree with you, I just wish living in an apartment didn't feel so reclusive.
There are lots of good options if your house is bigger than you need. Where I live in Bath, UK it's common to turn a floor of a large house into a self-contained flat. Also there's the option of renting a room to a lodger.
The culprits here are the owner-occupiers rather than the landlords. IIRC, 50% of owner-occupied houses have two or more spare bedrooms, but only 25% of rental houses have two or more spare bedrooms.
The solution is to have a spare bedroom tax rather than a property tax.