The housing crisis is at the heart of our national nervous breakdown

Abstract

If we built the houses we needed, the anxieties and fears that motivated the Brexit vote would at last recede.

Over the past three years, commentary about the nervous, uncertain condition of Britain has repeatedly veered into questions of “belonging” and community. These things tend to be framed in terms of culture: conversations about whether liberals and leftwingers can speak to people attached to nation and place, angst about flags, understandable fears about the point at which such things blur into nastiness and bigotry. In the process, one crucial point is rather missed. If you are going to talk about whether people feel rooted, and the absolute basics of community, there is one subject that ought to command your attention: that of the basic, primal idea of home, and the fact that far too many people in this country either do not have one, or worry that the one they possess might be about to get snatched away.