The housing shortage is very location-specific. Stoke-on-Trent were selling houses for £1 and giving renovation grants to anyone who promised to actually live there and make the area less run down.
If only there were ways of moving jobs out of London. London housing by comparison needs to go up more - not the >10 story tower blocks, more like 5 storys. Unfortunately this would probably involve clearing a lot of picturesque spacious Victorian terraces.
The UK is a ridiculously unsustainable mix of mega-high demand cities with others in almost constant decline. There's no reason everybody has to work in London, Birmingham and Manchester.
That, and stopping developers sit on land while they wait for house prices to come up. Screw it, if we need houses so much, why aren't councils renationalising housebuilding?
There are so many more, objectively better options than continuing the cycle we're currently locked into.
My understanding is that the densely populated cities are the most sustainable form of living we do. It reduces carbon emissions because we need don't have to drive so far to get to the shops or work, and we can use public transportation, further reducing the carbon emissions. The housing gets expensive, because of demand, but it reduces destruction of wildlife habitat. http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/04/why-bigger-cities-are-gr...
(I also agree with the points below about the housing shortage being localised. We should do what Silicon Valley did a long time ago and move some firms to a new area.)
If only there were ways of moving jobs out of London. London housing by comparison needs to go up more - not the >10 story tower blocks, more like 5 storys. Unfortunately this would probably involve clearing a lot of picturesque spacious Victorian terraces.