Britain’s Soviet-style planning system means that we live in some of the smallest, oldest and costliest homes in the developed world. But is this the housing we want?  Unaffordable Housing: Fables and Myths is the first of a three-part series of pamphlets investigating the causes of, and solutions to, Britain’s housing shortage. Alan W. Evans and Oliver Marc Hartwich ask how Britain’s housing has become the laughing stock of Western Europe.

The key finding is that the British culture of centrally-planned development – a system established by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act and embraced to this day by politicians of all parties – has resulted in a woeful shortage of affordable, desirable, high-quality housing. Unaffordable Housing also tackles myths that have protected the current system of central government planning for too long.