It's trickier than that in the UK. Demand for housing, even rental housing, currently outstrips supply in much of the country (certainly in the parts with major economic activity where people want to live). Our planning system mostly dates from the late 1960s and was designed to limit urban sprawl. That's getting very painful in light of the population growth we've seen over the last two decades, but the system has a powerful NIMBY lobby that defends it from any attempts at reform...
That's not true anymore and hasn't been since about 2010 when the last coalition government introduced the concept of "localism" whereby locals, rather than planning officers, had the power to grant or stop new developments. In practice, this meant that a bunch of OAPs on the parish council were pitted against speculative developers' legal teams and has resulted in a massive increase in new housing development. But, this development is not the "cheap" housing that's arguably required for people to get on the property ladder, but "high profit" housing that makes these private development companies the most money. Obviously they want to make as much money as possible. They 'are' required to build a percentage of "affordable" housing, but this is defined as housing with a cost of less than 80% of the other (high price/profit) properties in the development. The result being that the poor can't 'afford' affordable housing.
... if they just hand a wrench to a co-conspirator in a murder case..
maybe it's more like: "where can I buy some weed?" pirate bay: "ask that guy in the corner"
Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced. - John Keats
