This looks very much like another of this government’s spending promises with a ‘cheque in the post’ aspect, which eventually bounces out of sight. Or comes from some other part of the housing budget and is not knew money. But let us take it in good faith and accept that it is real and will not be cancelled. So we are pleased. Except it is nothing like enough.
The housing problem is much bigger than it looks and its consequences have been seismic. At its heart was the mantra that there was something dodgy about renting, that tenants should be allowed to buy their council houses for a song and the government could pocket the money and not replace the house. It ended with people having to take crippling mortgages to buy in some cases little better than a hovel and rents of private housing rising to such a level that the government has to come up with billions to subsidise un-affordable demands, to stop homelessness engulfing millions of families. In other words the priority above all else of property ownership has completely skewed the economy, reduced earnings growth, inflated assets and destroyed the industrial base which once powered Britain.
To put all that right will cost a good deal more than £2 billion in 2021.