To fix Britain’s housing mess, think outside the box | Letters

John Worrall on the fundamental shift needed in home ownership philosophy, Barry Jones on community-led housing groups and Duncan Roberts on challenging conventional home ownership

I'm surprised to see Larry Elliott (How to turn the UK's generation rent' into generation buy', 7 February) pointing to tough green belt regulations" and local planning rules" as villains in the housing affordability equation, because, as he has previously said, the housing market isn't a market at all in the traditional supply-and-demand sense. Developers won't increase supply to the point where they have to drop prices. Granting them more planning consents simply gives them more bankable assets, which is why they donate millions to the Tory party.

He does mention a land value tax to deter hoarding, but then compounds his felony by suggesting that the outrageous help-to-buy scheme, which has been bloating prices and developers' profits since 2013, might be part of the future, along with other creative lending wheezes to saddle punters with more debt than banks think they can afford.