The issues

Housing outcomes are the result of a range of choices and constraints that help to determine demand and supply as modified by government policy. In spatial terms two of the most important attributes of housing are its locational specificity and its longevity. To state the obvious, but an important obvious, housing is built in a particular location which cannot be changed without incurring very significant costs; a particular dwelling is located in a relatively well-defined and only slowly changing physical environment in terms of other housing, infrastructure, accessibility to employment and local services; and what is built initially can only be modified by investing in repair and improvements which rarely change the essential nature of the building except when full-scale regeneration occurs. The vast majority of the housing stock is therefore relatively immutable; what changes is people's attitude to that stock and their preparedness to live there, and thus the factors which affect relative demand for different attributes and locations (Charles, 1977; Whitehead, 1984; Balchin et al, 1995). Given these fundamental determinants and the different histories of demand and supply across regions, it is hardly surprising that housing outcomes vary enormously in geographic as well as personal terms.

One objective of the government is to develop policies that modify demand, the existing stock and new supply in order to help ensure “a decent home for every household at a price within their means” (Department of Environment, 1971). This objective is defined in terms of meeting households’ needs; spatial patterns are not an inherent element of this policy except to the extent that outcomes vary not only because of household and dwelling attributes but because of their location (Department of Environment, 1977; Smith, 1999). Clearly the spatial relationships between dwellings, different activities and regions do affect these outcomes, and geography is therefore a relevant factor to be addressed. Whether these problems have to be dealt with by spatially specific policies, however, depends on both the fundamentals of demand and supply and the relative costs of different types of policy to achieve basic objectives.