Dude wrote a whole butt article about it Meeting housing needs within planetary boundaries requires opening the black box of housing “demand”

TLDR in tweets https://x.com/_StefanHorn/status/1792916334461747613

The key idea of the paper and research agenda is that housing can be used very differently: 1) to meet the housing needs of the population, and 2) as a luxury good or status symbol. Housing policy is typically about achieving 1).

The central tool to deliver housing policy has been to "just build more homes". However, it has been shown that this is both ineffective and resource-intensive. We therefore take a step back to look at the entire housing stock.

It turns out that, in England, there are already more than enough houses to meet housing needs. But a large part of the housing stock is not used to meet housing needs. Around 19% of bedrooms in England are second or further spare bedrooms.

Surely the majority of these under-occupied homes will be located in small villages in peripheral regions away from jobs? Not very much. With the exception of London, under-occupied homes follow the population. Most are in major cities, including in the prosperous SE.

How could under-occupied housing help quickly and resource-efficiently meet housing needs? We discuss a range of policy options, including taxation, adequate homes for 'empty-nesters', and shifting to tenures that more effectively meet housing needs.

In all cases, clearly distinguishing housing needs from other uses allows for more targeted policies: For example, taxation could exempt housing needs and focus on under-occupied housing, in addition to second and empty homes, which all compete for the same housing stock.

!neolibs