Clearing up some misunderstandings about housing targets

Another defence of 'Stalinist' planning mandates

By IEA Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz

This week, the new government announced to bring back mandatory housing targets.

It is not an especially radical measure. Those targets have only been abolished one and a half years ago, so on its own, this is merely a return to the status quo ante of December 2022. Nonetheless, it has already led to the usual howls of NIMBY outrage from some quarters.

I have written in defence of “Stalinist” housing targets before (I would, in fact, double or triple them), and when I do, I often get confused responses, along the lines of:

“That’s not very liberal of you! So what you’re saying is, Whitehall bureaucrats should just ignore and override the wishes of local communities. I thought liberals were all in favour of limiting the power of central government! Aren’t you supposed to be in favour of checks and balances? Of local autonomy? Of respecting democratic rules and procedures, even if you don’t agree with the outcomes they produce? Turns out: your liberalism is only skin-deep! Didn’t have you down as an admirer of the Communist Party of China, Mister Oh-So-Liberal Economist!”

This line of reasoning is either disingenuous, or deeply confused, and I’ll explain why.

But first of all: yes, I am absolutely in favour of ignoring and overriding the wishes of “the community”. And if you believe in private property rights – so are you.

Because that is how private property rights work. Once you legitimately own something, it is up to you – and not “the community” – what you want to do with it (provided, of course, that you are not harming anyone). You don’t need to ask “the community” for permission. You don’t need to consult them. You don’t need to “listen” to their “concerns”, or “respect” their “wishes”. It doesn’t matter whether “the community” approves of what you are doing or not. “The community” should mind its own business.

As a starting point, I would apply the same principle to land ownership. If you own land, then the default position should be that you – not “the community” – get to decide what you want to do with that land. That should include a right to build on it.

Now, default positions are there to be deviated from. I accept that we do not live in a society of Lockean homesteaders. The way we use land has an impact on the people around us, and property rights in land cannot be absolute. Nonetheless, “your land – your choice” should be the starting point, and deviations from it should require justification. And until 1947, that was indeed more or less how land use rights in Britain worked.

We are now obviously very, very far away from such a system. We now have a system of collectivised development rights, under which everyone has a say over everyone else’s property. Decisions over development are not made by individual landowners, but, in theory, by “the community” – and since most people are (quite rightly) not especially bothered, in practice, rule by “the community” means rule by nosy busybodies who claim to speak on behalf of the community. Rule by NIMBYs, in other words.

What’s that got to do with housing targets?

Governments eventually figured out that when you give NIMBYs extensive powers to block things, they’ll use those powers to – wait for it – block things. Housing targets are a (very blunt and not particularly effective) tool to limit those powers. They are not “forcing” unwanted development on “the community”. They are not forcing anything on anyone. If nobody wants to build in a particular area, then nothing will get built there. But if a landowner does want to build (or sell their land to someone who does), and the local NIMBYs want to stop them, then targets make that ever-so-slightly harder for them.

That is not how I would do things, if it were up to me. Instead of giving NIMBYs lots of powers, and then curbing some of those powers again in a roundabout way, I would simply not give them so much power in the first place. But within the system we have, any way to limit NIMBY power is better than none, no matter how clumsy or arbitrary. A regulation which said that objections to a proposed development can only be expressed on Mondays and Wednesdays before 8AM or after 10PM would be good. Not because it would have any logic of its own, but because it would make NIMBYism less convenient, which would hopefully act as a deterrent. A regulation which said that objections to a proposed development can only be expressed by someone wearing a Morris Dancer costume would also be a good thing, and if the objection had to be expressed in the form of an actual Morris Dance, that would be even better.

NIMBYs who want to get “Whitehall” out of their communities should be careful what they wish for, because “Whitehall” is where NIMBYs derive their powers from in the first place. I am all in favour of reducing the role of “Whitehall” in our lives (for example, by going back to the pre-1947 land use planning system). But that would not mean unlimited power for NIMBYs to block whatever they want: it would, on the contrary, mean the very end of NIMBY blocking power. It would not mean less development, but much, much more of it.