Between the unimaginable and the unthinkable: pathways to and from England’s housing crisis

This paper provides a critical perspective on England’s housing crisis, characterised here as a concentration of wealth in residential property which is driving up prices and reducing access to the homes that people need. Housing has become a wealth machine and government has arguably lost sight of its social function. It is important that planning draws a functional distinction between housing as an asset and housing as a social good. The paper ends by considering how a decoupling of housing’s ‘home’ and ‘asset’ functions might be achieved through land-use policy.