The housing crisis gap - the difference between the current housing stock and the number needed for everyone to have a decent home to live in - is more than one million homes.
The government aims to build 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s to help ease a chronic housing shortage across the UK. Yet local authorities say they are struggling to meet these demands because of a dearth of available land, leading to as many as one in 10 new homes being built on high-risk flood sites since 2013.
The BBC's Housing Briefing estimates that we have built 1.2 million fewer homes than we should have, and the need for more homes is increasing.
The calculations suggest it will take at least 15 years at current building rates to close the gap, and that not enough of what is being built is affordable. Government statistics show that the number of young adults living with parents is on the rise.
An analysis of planning documents reveals that 11,410 new homes have been planned for land the government considers high-risk of flooding in the seven English counties where thousands of properties have been devastated by flooding since November.
The government aims to build 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s to help ease a chronic housing shortage across the UK. Yet local authorities say they are struggling to meet these demands because of a dearth of available land, leading to as many as one in 10 new homes being built on high-risk flood sites since 2013.
Engels wrote a commentary on the Housing question in the late 19th century that still largely holds true today. He makes the point that the ownership of pompous and oversized and empty dwellings owned by absentee lanllordds could elevate in an immediate manner the housing crisis, that is a chronic condition under capitalism where essential shelter is a commodity like every other commodity produced under capitalism. In my view, the system can be thought of as resting on a tripod of automobiles, fossil fuel, and real estate. The collapse of any one would cause the entire system to tumble.
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