Making sense of the housing white paper

Young people, their faces pressed against an estate agent’s window, gaze at all the lovely homes they’ll never, ever be able to buy. That’s the image the communities minister Sajid Javid conjured up while unveiling the government’s long-awaited housing white paper week.

This snapshot of young housebuyers’ despair was meant to symbolise a broken housing market where, on average, house prices are nearly eight times average salaries. ‘If we don’t act now,’ the communities minister said, ‘a whole generation could be left behind’.

So what did the government propose in its white paper for England, initially intended for publication late last year and then in January 2017? More importantly, will this housing finance reform white paper actually make a difference to the number of affordable new homes available to buy? Let’s take a closer look.

Years of neglect by successive governments

The housing crisis, according to ministers, goes back many years and is largely due to the failure of previous governments to build a sufficient number of new homes.