Sufficient public land is available for such projects and even if it isn't, all that would need to happen is local authorities buy agricultural land (cheap as chips) and grant themselves planning permission, Just like they did post-WW2.

Institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies would be queueing up to provide the funds for building costs. Rents could then be fixed to reflect costs and future contingencies, rather than to reflect "market rates". This would have the reverse effect on the housing market that we saw during the Right to Buy boom and would go a long way towards normalising the housing market.

Unfortunately the Blairites in Labour still attach a stigma to those who can only afford to rent or who simply have no wish to buy their own homes

...and now my children are struggling hard to fund an application to get into a home of their own, whether that be rented or purchased - they prefer to purchase or part purchase only because rents are ridiculously expensive (more than a mortgage would be) and they are potentially held to ransom by private landlords and letting agents (who they and I do not trust one inch) in a way that their grandmother who rented a local authority house for the whole of her life, never was.

Hull White Star wrote:Do you not recieve a car allowance from your employer? Yes, paid per mile. But even with petrol costs covered, the overall expense of owning a car is making it unaffordable. Ferocious Aardvark wrote:Do you qualify for Working Tax Credits? Calculator here: https://www.gov.uk/tax-credits-calculator (You may need to work another 6 hours somewhere I suspect) Some of that stuff you pay may be tax deductible, may be worth having an hour with an accountant. I'm short by six hours, correct. Looking into it, I seem to be trapped in the middle where I'm not putting enough into the system to get anything back, and putting too much in to claim anything in benefit in order to live on.

Hull White Star wrote:Do you not recieve a car allowance from your employer? Yes, paid per mile. But even with petrol costs covered, the overall expense of owning a car is making it unaffordable. Ferocious Aardvark wrote:Do you qualify for Working Tax Credits? Calculator here: https://www.gov.uk/tax-credits-calculator (You may need to work another 6 hours somewhere I suspect) Some of that stuff you pay may be tax deductible, may be worth having an hour with an accountant. I'm short by six hours, correct. Looking into it, I seem to be trapped in the middle where I'm not putting enough into the system to get anything back, and putting too much in to claim anything in benefit in order to live on.

Joseph Heller wasn't too far wrong then?

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."

What about the personal allowance - that's a cost to "the taxpayer" (whoever he is) - should that be abolished?

As to employers paying a living wage, that is desirable but where do all those marginally profitable employers that employ a large percentage of the workforce get the money from?

And so we come back to the cost of housing.

That's the same argument that was put forward when the minimum wage was proposed.
The inherent problem with such a facile argument is that it only applies if and when ...
a) Those employers are competing with businesses that don't have to pay the living wage (and exporters, in general, pay way above that level)
or ...
b) The extra cost of increased wages makes the product so much more expensive that people stop buying it (and we didn't see that happen because the increase per unit was so small as to be almost immeasurable.)

Why should anyone get tax credits? It is costing billions.
Better to introduce a living wage which EMPLOYERS have to pay.
The tax take would be greater.

The personal allowance and its annual increase is a tiny cost compared to tax credits which is sucking the life out of the economy.
Paying a living wage should not be desirable but imperative in producing a high earning tax paying economy.
The more earnings the more spending an economy has. We are in a recession because nothing is going into the tills - then employers complain!

There is a very simple and credible reason why tax credits work better than an increase in personal allowances.

Much was made by the coalition that they had "lifted 3 million people out of tax". The reality was that most of those people would also have benefitted from working tax credits. Those that did, saw that although their tax at source reduced, so did their working tax credits. The greatest number of those benefitting from the increase in personal allowance was the group of people below the 40% tax threshold but who did not qualify for working tax credits.

Increasing the personal allowance may be seen as a benefit but the poorest decile gain relatively no benefit at all