Forget Brown’s apology – it’s time for big thinking about the future

March 4, 2009 by
Filed under: Credit crunch, Politics, Public policy 

The media’s facile and self serving obsession with whether Gordon Brown says sorry (damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t) detracts from a much bigger question. Will our Prime Minister, or any other politician, start to talk seriously about how the new world we are entering into will and should be different from the old? Or will he persist with the argument that if only we find a fix for the crisis the new world can be just like the old, except with new regulation for city whizz kids and lawyers to find try to circumvent (thus defining the contours of the next crisis).    

Finding myself on an expert panel yesterday at the National Housing Federation (including Vince ‘Oracle’ Cable) I tried to disguise my limited grasp of the detail of housing finance by going all visionary. 

Behind the arguments about whether the Government should spend more on new social housing or whether housing associations should be more willing to buy unsold or half built properties from developers (even if they aren’t appropriate for most social housing clients), the bigger question – I argued – was whether the crisis might see an end to the tenure hierarchy of the last thirty years.

If, as a result of the market or of a new policy framework (as I advocated in my blog yesterday), we see the end of the idea that a house is an investment rather than somewhere to live, the allure of owner occupation could diminish. Renting can be cheaper, less risky and more convenient. Indeed, there is authoritative research that says high levels of owner occupation are bad for the economy as they reduce labour mobility.

There are lots of grim social housing estates (although the LSE overview of Labour’s record, which I mentioned last week, suggests there has been real progress in the worst neighbourhoods) and the recession will make them grimmer. On the other hand, there are other estates which have seen real success in developing strong social networks and popular community facilities. Indeed the best social housing estate is a much livelier and more interesting place than the kind of soulless, badly-built. private new build estates that have sprung up in and around our cities over the last twenty years. 

Lots of factors are going to change the nature of housing demand over the next few years. There are reports that divorce levels are dropping with the recession as people can’t afford to move out. Many migrants have gone home. Buy-to-let has collapsed. But could the biggest change of all be that we start to see renting, and even social renting, not as a tenure of last resort but of choice?

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4 Comments on Forget Brown’s apology – it’s time for big thinking about the future

  1. Matthew Cain on Wed, 4th Mar 2009 10:00 am

    2. Only yesterday the great Warren Buffett made a similar point. He said:
    “”My family and I have enjoyed my present home for more than 50 years, with more to come”

    “Enjoyment and utility should be the primary motives for purchase, not profit,” he said.”

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7918448.stm

  2. Liam Murray on Wed, 4th Mar 2009 12:11 pm

    3. A bit tangential to you main post but on the apology thing there is something to the idea that Brown is ‘damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t’.

    I’m not a Brown supporter but a couple of weeks ago I took a stab at how Brown might approach this politically if he decided that he needed to tackle this contrition meme that the media have latched onto – how could he kill the potency of the charge without actually handicapping himself? I came up with:

    http://www.liammurray.co.uk/2009/02/is-this-how-brown-might-apologise.html

    Of course my version is too blunt and local to be included in anything he says to Congress today but I still think, what with Darling’s softer stance earlier this week we might be heading to something along these lines….

  3. matthewtaylor on Fri, 6th Mar 2009 8:41 am

    4. Thanks Matt

  4. matthewtaylor on Fri, 6th Mar 2009 9:03 am

    5. Thanks Liam. In case you didn’t read it at the time, this was my advice to GB (which antagonised Prezza and led to a mini public spat between us!). http://www.matthewtaylorsblog.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=1075

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