Leaders | Rooms for improvement

How to solve Britain’s housing crisis

The outrageous cost of housing constrains the economy and poisons politics

ON EVERY side, Britain’s politicians are grappling with problems of immense scale and nightmarish complexity. How to manage the departure from the European Union? How to help a crumbling health service cope with an ageing, weakening population? How to deal with persistent regional deprivation? Yet one national scourge that holds back the economy and poisons politics is readily solvable—politicians just need to be brave enough to act. That scourge is the cost of housing.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Rooms for improvement"

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