0:00
As someone who talks about the housing
0:01
crisis a lot, I thought I'd seen it all.
0:03
But my colleagues at the Center for
0:04
Policy Studies unearthed a piece of data
0:06
that even shook me. In the last
0:08
financial year, London began
0:16
in a city of 9 million people where
0:18
whether you're renting or trying to pay
0:20
off a mortgage, housing costs are a
0:22
significant chunk of your income. And we
0:24
have over a 100,000 children living in
0:26
temporary accommodation. We could only
0:28
start construction on 4,000 homes and
0:30
that's a 72% decline on the financial
0:32
year previous. And let's be honest, we
0:34
weren't hitting great numbers then
0:36
either. This isn't an isolated problem
0:37
in London. Our research shows that
0:39
across England, there was a fall in
0:41
every single region. Across the country
0:43
as a whole, it averages about a 17%
0:45
decline. That's tens of thousands of
0:47
homes that aren't being built. Labour
0:49
has a target of 300,000 homes a year or
0:52
1.5 million over this parliament. And
0:54
they've talked a good game. Planning
0:55
reform as a phrase was mentioned a
0:57
record-breaking 520 times in Parliament
