ALL politicians — even the ruling Conservatives — acknowledge that there is a housing crisis in Britain.

They can hardly avoid it. Evidence that there is something rotten in the state of housing is all around us, and not just among the poorest. Children learn in schools about the squalor of the 19th century, the poverty-stricken slums where several families would be crammed into single rooms.

This misery made housing one of the great social issues of the last century — from David Lloyd George’s promise of “homes fit for heroes” to the massive expansion of council house building pioneered by Labour from 1945. The post-war generation grew up in a Britain where, on finishing your education, you could expect to get a job and live in a stable home you could call your own, even if you were not the legal owner.