Daily Telegraph: "We need new houses built on fields, not these 'mixed-use’ Soviet estates"

Link to Daily Telegraph

"... The insistence on housing quotas of 'affordability' by governments has had a negative short-term impact.

"Sir Adrian Montague has been reviewing the rental market for the Coalition, and wants the quotas done away with altogether. His report this week suggests that such requirements have put developers off building (Keith’s opinion appears not to be unique), with the result that even the private rented sector is becoming less available to those waiting to get on to the ladder.

"Thus the law of unintended consequences: there aren’t enough houses in London, so the cost is too high. The government intervenes with affordability quotas, which will never be sufficient to deal with the root cause of the housing crisis.

"Those quotas put some buyers off, which in turn puts the developers off, which in turn leads to rents for those locked out of the market becoming inexorably higher."