Letters: We can’t build our way out of the housing crisis

Excess demand

Sir: Liam Halligan (‘The house mafia’, 26 June) treats us to an exposé of the shoddy products of the mass housebuilders. In the course of his article, however, he accepts as given that the solution to the housing crisis is to build more houses.

The problem, however, is not one of deficient supply; it is a problem of excess demand, driven by ultra-low interest rates, kept so low for so long that the result has been an out-of-control housing boom.

The young are being prevented from buying a house, not because housebuilders hoard land and refuse to build, but because buyers with access to eye-watering amounts of borrowed money have forced prices so high that they are now out of reach of most. You could cover the entire south-east of England in houses and it would have little impact on house prices, because the demand is, in effect, infinite. However many houses you build, there will be any number of potential buyers outbidding each other to buy them.

Until interest rates are returned to more sustainable levels, and the QE policy is abandoned, building more and more (substandard) housing will have no effect in bringing home ownership within the reach of the vast majority of the young.

Alan Doyle

Sunbury on Thames, Surrey

Building confidence

Sir: Jessica Douglas-Home is surely correct that in large measure the vote in the Chesham and Amersham by-election was a warning to government (‘Blockheads’, 26 June). Whitehall published two major documents last year concerning planning and the environment. The first was ‘Living with Beauty’, the report of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission under the chairmanship of the late Sir Roger Scruton. This was a tour de force of research, analysis and proposals for creating liveable and loveable places, as well as sustainable growth.