2014年经济学人 添砖加瓦 政府促进房地产建设的步伐跌跌撞撞（在线收听）

New homes

Building blocks

The government makes a lame attempt to boost house-building

AS GEORGE OSBORNE prepared to deliver his autumn statement, on December 2nd, Danny Alexander, his Liberal Democrat deputy at the Treasury, announced a slew of investments in infrastructure. These included a much-needed 15 billion (24 billion) for roads, as well as 2.3 billion for flood defences. Mr Alexander tried to make much of the coalition's plans on housing, too, trumpeting 13,000 new homes to be built at Bicester, a town in Oxfordshire, which would then be designated as a garden city. The government will need to do much more, however, to solve Britain's housing problem.

On average, 140,000 homes have been built in each of the past four years, far fewer than the 240,000 new houses needed annually. With supply constrained, house prices continue to rise, by 19% in London over the past year. There is an estimated deficit of as many as 1m houses.

Bicester is in the arc north and west of London's green belt that is ideal territory for more house-building: it is good for commuters to the capital and other hubs of employment such as Oxford and Cambridge. It is the arc where, after the second world war, the government built several garden cities—new towns that combined employment with a pleasant place to live. Bicester has good transport links and plenty of brownfield land (most of the new homes will be on land now owned by the defence ministry). It also has an MP who supports more construction.

Yet the Bicester houses are “not even a drop in the ocean,” says Paul Cheshire of the London School of Economics. The politicians are just going through the motions, he says. “This is political window dressing.” And that is assuming the homes even get built. Construction at the other recent attempt to fashion a new garden city—in Ebbsfleet, south-east of London—has barely begun.

Locals in Bicester are not pleased, either, raising familiar concerns about crowded schools, bad traffic and stretched health care. “We don't even have a proper hospital,” says Claire, a hairdresser. “How are we going to support 13,000 more homes?”

Meanwhile, Mr Alexander suggested another solution to the lack of housing: the first government involvement in house-building in a generation. He announced a pilot scheme near Cambridge to build 10,000 new homes, warning developers, “If you don't build, we will.”

The answer is simpler, says Mr Cheshire: the government should amend planning regulations to allow construction on the green belt. “Nothing short of radical” solutions will solve the problem, he says. But the benefits of such changes take a long time to filter through. The drawbacks for NIMBYs are apparent immediately, especially just ahead of an election.