Reading the runes on the long-term implications of the Covid-19 crisis is extremely difficult with the attempt likely to produce fool’s gold. Covid-19 has generated interesting reactions such as, on 26 March 2020, the Minister for Local Government and Homelessness writing to local authorities asking them to urgently accommodate all rough sleepers — action resulting from an ‘externality’ that many years of evidence-based lobbying has failed to elicit. Will the end of public health threat result in a return to normal? One of the most searing images arising from the pandemic was an interview with a former Uber driver, locked down with two children in a flat on the fifteenth story of a high-rise block and trying to access a five-week advance loan on Universal Credit. Many thousands of people are now experiencing the ‘safety net’ of the welfare state, not as the ‘featherbed’ portrayed in some of the media, but in its stark, austere, harsh reality. Millions may now empathies with their predicament and demand change but how many will make a connection between children living on the fifteenth story of a high-rise block and the highly restrictive land release policy pursued in England?

Paying for the crisis and its long-term economic consequences raises numerous questions. The cost is likely to be far, far higher than the banking crisis with state borrowing extending the cost repayment over many years. Moreover, it may be politically impossible to push the costs onto reduced public expenditure in the health and social care sectors. Housing is likely to experience hard times with the main recommendation of the Affordable Housing Commission — higher up-front grants to social housing providers — falling on stony ground. In this context making housing more affordable will depend on using mechanisms involving no cost to the state, falling on the ‘rentiers’ in the system. Rent control of the ‘fair rent’ variety — reducing housing costs to the consumer, saving expenditure and promoting low-cost homeownership — looks a strong contender. A lot more land release costs the state nothing and makes housing more affordable. Does London really need be surrounded by 10 mile green belt? Higher taxation will be required to pay off the public debt and a land tax, reclaiming the large ‘unearned increment’ from the vast hikes in land prices over the last 60 years should be high on the agenda.