Great chart from Marc Rubenstein’s netinterest on SubStack, title “Housing the Young” , 28Jun2024.
The narrative of affordable housing, especially for the younger cohort, is becoming louder in the media, all across the world. From potential rent controls in Berlin, reducing local council planning friction and more social, affordable and public housing, in the UK and Australia.
The chart is interesting if we just focus on the purple section and tie that back to economic regimes. Post WW2 till the Great Inflation (circa 1945-1980) saw a huge boom in local authority supply of housing, marking big government and more Keynesian direct policies. Post-1980, we saw a wave of privatization under the Thatcher-Reagan Friedmanite policies, leading to less government-directed policies and a concurrent drop off in local authority housing supply.
I believe that the purple wave will develop again over the coming years. Similar policies in the past such as subsidies, price controls, zone initiatives, new public housing, and higher densities will all come.