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This is wrong. You cannot solve the housing crisis without building more homes. Scrapping housing need targets would be playing into the hands of NIMBY homeowners at the expense of renters and anyone who dreams of owning one day. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/01/13/ministers-should-scrap-plans-build-300000-homes-year-say-countryside/
We have failed to build enough homes for decades. We are one of the worst performing nations in OECD for housing supply and for house price inflation. As a result we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the young and poor, to the older and wealthy.
Organisations that lobby against this do not have the interests of the young or the poor at heart. It's not enough to say "we just need more affordable homes". We need more of all types of homes. Even if we *only* built affordable we'd need hundreds of thousands of them a year.
Organisations that want to preserve the character of the countryside should not be throwing renters under the bus to do so. They should not be getting into bed with the anti-development brigade. They should be putting forward ways to build sufficiently that they *do* approve of.
How? Advocate for greater density in cities and towns, and building around public transport hubs (EVEN if it is greenfield). Advocate in favour of well designed extensions to existing settlements. Advocate for new towns *and state where they should go*. Do not pander to NIMBYs.
But of course no one wants to stick their head above the parapet and say where we *should* build. Because the homeowners with their vested interests & ample free time in retirement shout much, much louder than beleaguered young renters living in cramped HMOs.
But it's a ticking time bomb. Politicians who don't have the courage to stand up for renters now will find their parties in trouble in the future. Private renting has doubled from 10 to 20% of the population in just a few years - in some areas it's ~40%. Can't ignore us forever
