To think that housing economics are to do with much more than "simple supply and demand"?

[HaroldsSocalledBluetits]

It's trotted out so often as a truism, but I don't see how it can be the case. I'm no expert btw. But there seem to be plenty of houses, it's just that patterns of ownership have changed due to wealth concentration/accumulation - a third of households can no longer afford to be owner occupiers, while a substantial amount of people can afford more than one. But that's just due to how much money people have, with some having a lot and others having very little.

Also, there is homelessness but that is caused by difficulty accessing housing due to societal vulnerability not being addressed. It's not because there is an insufficient amount of houses.

Aibu to think that the shift in housing tenure is more indicative of an increasingly polarised society, rather than to do with number of houses?

it’s not an overall lack of homes but a lack of homes where people want to live.
I agree homelessness is due to issues with mental health and addictions predominately not the lack of physical places.

What you're describing in your first para is supply and demand.

Demand for housing has risen because the population has grown and people are living in smaller households. Supply (ie building) has not kept up.

This makes prices rise, which makes it a desirable asset, which means that people buy investment properties... leading to less supply for buyers.

Your second point isn't so simple, but I don't think a major cause of the problem.

How is what I am describing supply and demand? Everyone has a house, so there are sufficient houses. It's just that how they are owned has changed. Whereas fifteen years ago a post office worker (say) would have bought a house, now they rent one from someone else. The house is still there, the person is still housed, it's just a different kind of tenure because there is someone with much more money than him who has access to that asset, and his access is removed due to disparity in income.

Not everyone has a house! There is massive overcrowding (particularly in London), and growing homelessness (much of it hidden homelessness eg sofa surfing).

There is overcrowding in the poorer sections of society, sure. But there are also lots of empty luxury apartments and single people living in mansions on eg Bishop's Avenue. There is plenty of space that is underoccupied. Other spaces are overcrowded due to insufficient access to adequate space caused by poverty.

But those empty houses aren't contributing to 'supply'. They're unavailable, either because they're owned by oligarchs or because they're in places with no jobs so realistically you can't live in them and work.

Overcrowding isn't just an issue for the poor. Just one example - Younger people are increasingly living in house shares for ages after university when in previous generations they would have been able to buy a house. There was a report this week saying that it's such an issues that it's caused many people to have fewer children because they've not been able to move into their own place until much later on.

You're right btw that filling empty homes is part of the solution, but will only scratch the surface.

Just some facts:
Population of England
2001 - 49.1m ; 2011 - 53.0m ; 2017 - 55.6m

I just don't think that it's any coincidence that we are moving back to being a rentier society - which we were historically - at a time of growing disparity between top and bottom incomes. The two are interrelated because those with money have access to property assets, while those without rent.

This was the traditional state of affairs in the UK. The trend was bucked by the Attlee government and subsequent era of consensus politics that people between 1950s-1970s experienced, which is the only time that owner occupancy was something available to the majority. It came about because society was relatively flat, at least among those who worked to earn money - even company directors did not earn hundreds of multiples more than their employees and with a unionised workforce wages allowed for owner occupancy for the masses as those masses earned enough to buy.

Now that has gone we appear to be reverting to the earlier model of property ownership being concentrated in and controlled by fewer people, due to their having much higher salaries than the lower centiles of society who have no means of matching their spending power, due to income disparity.

Other way around. Median Income inequality is fairly static, wealth inequality (ie, house prices) has risen.

In 1992, the top 1% earnt less than £500,000. Twenty years later, it was close to £1 million. Ie more than double. The bottom 10% have not seen anything like the same increase.

Also, those empty houses are still houses! That's my point - there are loads of houses. It's ownership of them that has changed. They've become wealth parking vehicles, money laundering receptacles, investment opportunities - they've become all kinds of things, but they're not available for working people in the lowest three centiles to buy. Your point that they've been removed from supply in that sense is right, but that doesn't mean it's a question of supply and demand - it's an issue of wealth concentration.

The top 1% aren't massively relevant. Clearly they have an impact on house prices in Chelsea and this will slightly ripple out, but take out the super rich, and most other people have stayed roughly where they were pre 2008

But they aren't the same as in 1985, which was the peak of home ownership. Since then owner occupancy has decreased while inequality has increased.

Because since 1985 jobs have gone to a variety of different countries....all of which pay their employees less.

Again, there are still lots of jobs around. They just don't pay enough to allow for home ownership for the bottom 30%. Unemployment is actually quite low right now, but there are more people classed as self employed (who are employees to all intents and purposes but working under the gig economy which pays less than minimum wage) or working in zero hours contracts which again doesn't allow for home ownership. Meanwhile those who are not in this situation can pay more for houses and so the price goes up. People are still housed, so there are houses - it's just that a significant proportion can't buy.