17:00 Sunday 8th December 2013
BBC Radio 4
[A]NNOUNCER: We know that we face a widespread housing crisis, but is land the real issue? In Cry Freehold, Chris Bowlby investigates.
(MUSIC) (LYRIC) Went to the housing committee/Stood for two hours in a line/They showed me ..
CHRIS BOWLBY: I’m sitting at my kitchen table, in the house I co-own with my wife in East Oxford. It’s exactly where, a little while ago, this story began with a rather boring letter about renewing our buildings insurance. I’ve got the letter here, and what stood out for me is the big discrepancy between what the insurer says the house would cost to rebuild, and what estate agents tell me the house is worth. The difference of course is down to the value of the land my house sits on. And that got me thinking. We talk endlessly about housing, whether there’s a bubble brewing in the south east, whether the Government’s initiatives will inflate the market, the north/south house price divide. But we seem to talk rather less about land.
(DOOR OPENING)
CHRIS BOWLBY: In this programme I want to show that just as underneath our houses there’s land, underneath the housing issue there is a land issue. And we need to understand both. And I’m going to attempt to show that by exploring my own street, neighbourhood and city, Oxford. Because as we’ll see, Oxford’s housing problem is typical of a growing problem affecting more and more places, especially in the south east, south west and eastern England. It’s a problem which on the one hand makes housing increasingly unaffordable, especially for younger people, and on the other hand puts green spaces in and around cities under intense pressure. Land and land ownership, once you start thinking about it, looks like one of the great dividing lines in our society, and always has been.
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