In this chapter we address how a London model of development limits the capacity of both the planning system and the market to provide adequate housing. The topic has come to dominate wider debates over the politics of planning to such an extent that for many citizens and groups it is what planning is concerned with.

Much of what has taken place in recent years was unimagined in the 1990s when organizations such as the LPAC saw a global growth model as being primarily about economic and commercial development. It was imagined that the city's planning system should facilitate growth and that there would be a moderate increase in population as workers were attracted to new employment opportunities. However, as we have seen in earlier chapters, the scale of demographic change eclipsed what was predicted. Allied to this was a growing financialization of housing in national and international markets. A combination of these factors generated a housing crisis that is more intense and extreme than that found in almost any comparable city in the world.

As we will see in this chapter, a large part of the problem relates to who is governing housing and how. In line with broader changes, private developers now largely provide housing, with the vast majority built by big volume house builders, most notably by Barrett and Berkley Homes. Local authorities traditionally provided affordable housing, a contested term (discussed below), but more recently responsibility has been transferred to private developers and not- for- profit housing associations and other agencies subsidized by state funds. These have been further supplemented, since 2012, by the creation of arms- length local housing companies, which are owned solely by local authorities but are able to leverage private capital. The most significant examples of these agencies are listed in Table 6.1.

We begin by outlining the state of private housing markets – both owner-occupied and rental – and the extent of London's housing crisis. In particular, we grapple with how the roll- out of supply- stimulating policies and incremental changes to tenant rights have had only a minimal impact in tackling hous-ing needs and have often made matters worse.