Blaming baby boomers won’t put roofs over young people’s heads, Sajid | Simon Jenkins

Communities secretary Sajid Javid. ‘There is un-used and derelict land everywhere, and scattered, unplanned “executive” estates with no centres or focus, dispersed across the countryside.’ Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

If in doubt, blame someone else. Sajid Javid’s solution to the “housing crisis” is to accuse the baby-boomer bourgeoisie of south-east England of antagonising “avocado-eating millennials”. He says the baby boomers are impeding new houses in the countryside and rendering his Tory-deserting millennials “rootless and resentful of both capitalism and politicians”. What rubbish.

New building is under 10% of the housing market, and has never made a measurable impact on house prices. New housing in green belts would be a tiny fraction of even that figure. As for the number of these actually being “blocked by baby boomers”, it must be trivial.

The real London housing crisis … is homelessness, the rental market and housing benefit

The planning and visual impact of the current sprawl of executive estates into rural England is anything but trivial. It is ending Britain’s mostly noble record in town and country planning. It is tearing up everything the Tories have said for decades about local democracy. For Whitehall to seize control of rural land – rumoured to be Javid’s intention – and hand it to developers, would be the greatest act of nationalisation in British history.

Housing in London is not housing in Britain. Even in London, prices are now falling below inflation, and in the richer parts of the city they are plummeting. As for Britain, the latest Economist indicator shows real prices actually down 6% over the past decade, lagging behind Germany, France and Switzerland. In parts of Sweden they have soared by 50%. Yet the mean age of British home-acquisition, 32, is eye-watering to other European countries. Does Javid not have the figures?

Any dispassionate look at British housing at present reveals that urban densities are desperately low by international standards. There is un-used and derelict land everywhere, and scattered, unplanned “executive” estates with no centres or focus, dispersed across the countryside. As development this could not be more inefficient or anti-social. It disperses population, requires ever longer journeys to work, and is costly in infrastructure. It is polluting and carbon-rich. The greenest living today is in “smart cities”. The baby boomers Javid should tackle are in the cities and suburbs, where smart development means fewer gardens and more upper storeys and conversions. Yet the latter is taxed at 20% VAT.

If Javid really cared about London’s urban millennials and their avocados, he would free up the urban property market. He would boost downsizing and relieve London’s hopeless under-occupancy of living space – less than half that of Paris. He would end stamp duty on transactions, and raise property taxes instead. He funks all this for a political row with baby boomers.

Anyway, this is not the real London housing crisis. That is the inexorable rise in actual and concealed homelessness. Javid seems unaware that the poor do not buy houses. They rent. The answer is more temporary hostels, especially for single-parent families and for migrants. It means a promoted (and properly regulated) rental sector, not a persecuted one. It means an easing of housing benefit, that greatest of all safety nets. That is the “crisis”, not some weird synthetic spat between the Tories and the bourgeoisie.

• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist