WHEN FULL LVT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED, WILL WE STILL NEED SOCIAL HOUSING? 

  

 We don’t have ‘social food’ or ‘social clothing’ thanks goodness! Yet once there were Mao’s hordes of blue-denim clad Chinese. Not any more. We wear the clothes we fancy (very cheap because of the self-same hordes) and have such food choices that obesity is our main problem. I’d like to make the case that Social Housing should go the way of the blue denim uniform. In the post-LVT era, houses will be so cheap, so plentiful and yes, so good that state-organised house-building and renting will seem no more than an ancient curiosity. 

No more social housing? Everyone choosing and buying or renting their own preferred housing. That’s such an odd idea for us to take in now. So it’s not surprising that current wisdom can only conceive of a world where Big Brother in one form or another organises housing for the ‘less-well-off’. Consider these recent papers from wise and sensible commentators: