Are there actually housing shortages though? Where are all these homeless people?
Mostly being kept at great expense in B & B and the like, or you could pop down to the Embankment late one night and ask them.
'Children' and married couples into their 30's are still living at home with parents because they can't afford to move out.
People that will soon be evicted because their 'Fixed rate' mortgages are coming to an end and we are all holding our breath waiting for the finance sector to collapse.
It is well past time that we recognised that this is a two-tier country, those that can afford housing and those that cannot.
Even the government accepts that there is an urgent need for ten million AFFORDABLE homes to be available by 2010. (Fat chance) and demand is already up by 14% this year alone.
It is going to be a grim decade ahead for the majority of wage-earners, and the hardest part of all is to de-stigmatise the concept of renting in the face of the 'Must-own-my-house' impetus which is designed for restraint rather than freedom.