The Great Housing Debate
It was a quite frankly bizarre exchange between two candidates who both showed off their political naivety
“The idea of blaming our housing crisis on immigration is wild to me actually, Robert.” Wild indeed, when the laws of supply and demand are so difficult to comprehend. “Do you think that if we lock down our borders, that we are going to solve the housing crisis”, she probed further.
“The thing is, the more people you have in a country, the more houses you’re going to need”, responded Kenyon, in a line returned with either a great deal of condescension in mind, or just a sheer lack of intelligence. I am minded to back the idea of the latter being true.
“You using immigration on the issue of housing, I think is absolutely unjust” surmised Wakefield, before attempting to conclude the conversation with Kenyon. Unfortunately for the Green candidate, Fiona Bruce then allowed Kenyon to put his question forward again, “Does immigration have an affect on housing?”
At this point, evidently frustrated, Wakefield returned her serve with the same level of condescension delivered to her by Kenyon earlier. “Whoever lives in this country, has an impact on housing, of course. The numbers of people in a country, thats not necessarily to do with immigration.”
As of now, I am still unsure as to whether the Green candidate has been explained the system by which immigration and emigration functions, as the number of people living in any country at any one time is entirely to do with it, but if this mind numbing exchange demonstrates anything close to the best of what Britain’s two insurgent political parties have to offer, then we are well and truly done for.
I was however desperately intrigued by the data behind this, and the fundamental caveat here is that I am only looking at the total number of homes completed in each year and the theoretical demand created by net migration. There is evidently not a surplus of housing stock in the UK, but when context is a applied through the net housing needs of migration, it should help to guide us on the impact of immigration.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the average size of a UK household is currently 2.35 people. An entirely unhelpful figure in most regards, but for this it is actually rather useful. By applying it to the net migration figures, we are able to discern the net housing needs on a year by year basis over a much longer period of time.
From 2012 until the now infamous Boriswave of 2021-2023, the net housing needs as a result of migration sat comfortably below the number of houses completed every year. This is the most clear reminder that migration is not the sole driver of the need for greater housing supply.
For years, the level of migration in the UK had a notional, but not overwhelmingly significant impact on the level of available housing supply, but it would be wrong to suggest that in recent years, in large part due to the substantial amount of net migration.
Net migration now appears to be on a downward trend, which over a longer period of time may begin to resolve some of the pressures placed on the system by the Boriswave.
But with the government already struggling to fulfil their aims to construct 1.5 million homes by the end of their first term, with the least amount of homes built last year since 2020, it will likely be a long road to alleviating Britains housing crisis.