Firstly, ours is a small island with relatively few areas that would traditionally be regarded as suitable for building programmes. The expectation, of course, was that the private sector would pick up the slack and make up any shortfall in Britain's housing stock, but this hasn't quite materialised, for a variety of reasons.

Since the 1980s, when council houses were sold in their millions, public bodies have, partly through policy and partly owing to a lack of funding, all but abandoned large scale housing construction projects. The primary cause of the housing crisis is the lack of new houses being built.

In this short article, we look at some of the reasons for the housing crisis and the effect it is having across Britain, as well as at some of the proposed solutions. To date, the issue has proven fairly intractable. This is especially damaging for young people who hope to buy their first home, and there has been a much-belated effort at government level to find some solutions to help these aspiring first time buyers. However, the crisis has been decades in the making.

This tends to create the impression that the housing problem is a relatively new phenomenon, while in truth, we are just now seeing its worst consequences, with there being too few homes available and those homes that are on the market being far too costly. The term 'housing crisis' has entered our national vocabulary in dramatic fashion over the past few years.

Other words for housing issues