Dead air
Posted: June 12, 2014 Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning, Private renting 1 CommentThere was a telling moment at the end of last night’s Radio 4 debate on housing: the sound of complete silence from the audience.
The dead air came in response to a question from presenter Mark Easton asking people at the debate at the London School of Economics (LSE) how many of them think our political leaders are doing their best to solve the housing crisis.
But I am not sure if what sounded like mostly a young audience was tremendously impressed by the answers from the panel either and that may have been down to the way the question was framed in Housing: Where Will We All Live?
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 
Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
In the rest of the article, Jules Birch discusses the experiences of professional Londoners, including Holly Baxter, a management consultant, who find themselves unable to afford property. Baxter stated that with exception of the designer, Wayne Hemingway, none of the panel had any idea about the human reality behind the housing crisis. She took issue with the panels belief that building more homes is the solution to the crisis. It’s only part of the solution, and will take about 1-2 decades before it begins to make an impact on house prices. The problem was that these people – from the middle income groups – were outbid by the buy to let crowd and rich foreigners, who wanted a home in London as an investment. This was completely ignored by the panel, with the result that the audience and Baxter were shocked at how out of touch the so-called experts were about the reality of the housing shortage, and its real effects on the lives and morale of ordinary Londoners.