A publication from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation puts the debate on affordable housing into context, clearly showing that even in the lowest price areas like Rochdale or Stoke, on average about 20% of households cannot afford to buy even the cheapest house available - and that takes no account of whether those houses would be suitable for their family needs in any case.
The study was undertaken by Professor Steve Wilcox of the Centre for Housing Policy at the University of York. It draws on house price data from Halifax Plc, and on data from the Government's Family Expenditure Survey, Census, Labour Force Survey and New Earnings Survey, to compute local household incomes.
The knee jerk response, that these problems are a result of artificial restrictions in land supply caused by the planning system simply doesn't wash in these circumstances. These are areas where there is no 'new land' and where creating land for housing by and large means clearance of existing houses. Even more importantly these are districts where across huge tracts no one wants to build.
