The Sunday Times reports here that Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to create affordable housing by overruling local rural planning agencies and making land more available for new housing.  


Under reforms expected to be unveiled this month, councils will be told to:


? earmark new building sites in every village and hamlet where affordable
housing is needed

? use sweeping powers to overrule normal planning curbs in protected areas

? provide incentives for farmers to sell land to developers

? create a generation of new communities on the outskirts of market towns,
similar to Poundbury, the Prince of Wales?s ?model village?.


I especially like the “provide incentives for farmers to sell land to developers.” Unfortunately, NC is doing the opposite with farmland preservation policies that provide incentives for farmers to sign covenants that keep land rural forever.

The British reforms are a reaction to the fact that restrictions on supply of land for housing have driven up prices. Liberal Demorcat Member of Parliament Matthew Taylor issued a report last year that:

was fiercely critical of ?restrictive?
planning policies in the countryside, which he believes are turning many
villages in the most sought after areas of the countryside into exclusive
enclaves of the rich and retired, as locals are priced out. In areas such as
Teignbridge, Devon, characterised by ?chocolate box villages?, average house
prices are 13.5 times the average income.

This should sound familiar. In NC, planning restrictions on land and controls on building housing have driven up prices 25 percent in Asheville and 27 percent in Wilmington.  See the JLF report Planning Penalties in NC: Why Other NC Cities Should not Follow Asheville and Wilmington here.  

Now for the bad news:

Taylor’s report also outlines a policy that restricts the sale of the new housing:

The homes
would have covenants so they could be sold only to local workers and their
prices would be capped so they would remain affordable.

This provision defeats some of the good policy mentioned above.  It is taking a page from the “affordable housing” zealots here in the states.  See the JLF report Un-Affordable Housing: Cities Keep Low- and Middle-Income Families from Home Ownership here.