Tackling the housing crisis has reached an impasse. Despite countless reports and government announcements over decades, nothing in housing seems to change for the better – not enough new homes are built, prices keep going up, affordability gets worse, the young are priced out and homeless numbers grow. Local communities are deeply dissatisfied with the planning and housing system. Local authorities are continually on the defensive from development pressure and are having rings run round them by developers, landowners and property consultants. Meanwhile, we await the almost inevitable property slump after the boom years of the mid- 2010s.

This book seeks to answer the question of why nothing seems to change – and what we should do about it. It is unacceptable that property market forces seem so powerful and the government so complicit that the housing crisis has become a fixed part of life in the 21st- century UK. It is imperative to find out why we are so trapped and then to do something about it. The argument of this book is that there is no mystery to the current crisis. There is an alignment of the finance– housebuilding complex and the government perpetuating, and, at times, manufacturing, the housing crisis to suit their interests. The property lobby is so powerful and pervasive that no government and no local authority seem able to resist it. Indeed, as this book shows, there is a virtual conspiracy by market players to deliberately limit the amount of housing to keep land and house prices on an ever- rising trajectory, with governments unwilling to challenge it because they rely on a rising property market for taxation and political donations. This is the hidden reality of power behind the housing crisis that must be tackled if we, the people, are to unblock the impasse.

In the Preface to the book, Ted's story tells of a community in South London literally priced out by commercial development pressure, with seemingly nothing that local authorities are able to do about it. In fact, what is worse, local councils seem wittingly or unwittingly to collude with developers and landowners in the loss of social and affordable housing, and the social and cultural life that goes with it.