Governments have a bad habit of taking action which achieves the opposite of what they are, or should be, trying to do. Nowhere is this more true than in the housing market in general and homes for rent in particular.

The value of houses is absurdly high as is the level of rents. This creates a double bind for young people; they can’t save for a house because their rent takes so much of their income. The result is that the average age at which people buy their first property has risen by around a decade since the 1980s. It is not that young people don’t want to buy their own home but that unless they have a particularly well-paying job or help from their families they simply cannot.

The baby boomer generation looks upon rising house prices as rather nice and doesn’t care too much about rental levels because they rarely pay rent.

The result is a massive intergenerational unfairness which as well as being wrong in principle causes changes which will have a profound impact on our society. One of the reasons women put off having children and have fewer of them is that this is a “choice” forced upon them by economics; for many it is not a choice at all unless they also choose poverty.

There are........

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