来源：《卫报》
原文刊登日期：2021年7月6日
If the price of food had increased at the same rate as house prices in the UK over the past 50 years, then today a chicken would cost just under £70. As average house prices in London are more than twice as high as the rest of the country, in the capital that chicken would cost almost £140.
如果过去50年里食品价格的涨幅与英国房价的涨幅相同，那么今天一只鸡的价格将略低于70英镑。由于伦敦的平均房价是英国其他地区的两倍多，在首都，一只鸡的价格将接近140英镑。
The government response to soaring inflation is to promise to build more homes at speed by loosening the planning system. It is a “supply side” solution, which sounds logical: rapidly increase the number of homes being built and prices will inevitably come down. It is a highly contentious approach, but it sounds as if it should work.
政府对通胀飙升的反应是承诺通过放松规划体系，以更快的速度建造更多的住房。这是一个“供给侧”解决方案，听起来很合乎逻辑：在建房屋数量迅速增加，价格将不可避免地下降。这是一种极具争议性的做法，但听起来似乎应该奏效。
The problem is that the housing market does not function like a pure market, and while the UK does have some of the highest prices in the world the affordability crisis is not a peculiarly British issue; it’s a global problem, with an index by the property consultants Knight Frank revealing that global residential prices have risen by more than 60% in the past 10 years.
问题在于，住房市场的运作不像一个纯粹的市场，尽管英国确实拥有世界上最高的房价，但高房价并不是英国特有的问题；这是一个全球性问题，房地产咨询公司莱坊的一项指数显示，在过去10年中，全球住宅价格上涨了60%以上。
Cities around the world, from Auckland to Vancouver, are facing an affordability crisis, with huge price rises in cities linked to global capital flows and foreign investment rather than local circumstances. This ensures that increased supply will not bring prices down; the new luxury apartment complexes that now characterise British cities such as London, Manchester, Bristol and York, to name but a few, remain out of reach for the majority of house buyers. Many are sold “off plan”, straight to foreign investors, before they have even been built.
从奥克兰到温哥华，世界各地的城市都面临着高房价危机，城市房价的大幅上涨与全球资本流动和外国投资有关，而不是与当地情况有关。这确保了增加供应不会降低价格；如今，伦敦、曼彻斯特、布里斯托尔和约克等英国城市的特色——新建的豪华公寓建筑群，仍是大多数购房者买不起的。许多项目甚至在建成之前就被直接卖给了外国投资者。
The flood of global capital into cities followed the financial crisis and has been driven by low or negative interest rates, the growing dominance of global private equity in real estate and quantitative easing. In the UK £445bn was created between 2009 and 2016, which went disproportionately into the hands of the richest, who ploughed it disproportionately into property.
金融危机爆发后，全球资本大举涌入城市，其驱动因素包括低利率或负利率、全球私募股权在房地产领域日益占据主导地位，以及量化宽松政策。在英国，2009年至2016年期间增发了4450亿英镑货币，不成比例地落入了最富有的人手中，他们不成比例地将这些钱投入了房地产。
This is the global context for our extreme housing crisis, which is further fuelled by local circumstances. Chief among these are a private sector lacking incentives to produce more housing, and a social housing sector that builds very limited amounts of social and affordable housing. Margaret Thatcher’s defining policy of “right to buy”, under which more than 2m council homes were sold, continues to decimate the dwindling amount of affordable housing in England. In 1978, the year before Thatcher came to power, the government built 100,000 council homes, the private sector built 150,000 and there was no shortage of housing. Since then, private sector housebuilding figures have failed to make up the shortfall despite repeated policy incentives, such as starter homes, which have contributed to a limited rise in building but added further inflationary pressures by increasing mortgage credit.
这是我们极端住房危机的全球背景，国内情况进一步加剧了危机。其中最主要的是私营部门缺乏生产更多住房的动力，以及社会住房部门建造的社会和经济适用住房数量非常有限。玛格丽特•撒切尔的“购房权”界定政策——在该政策下，超过200万套政府住房被售出——继续大幅削减英国日益减少的经济适用房数量。1978年，撒切尔上台的前一年，政府建造了10万套政府住房，私营部门建造了15万套，住房并不短缺。自那以来，私营部门的住房建设数据未能弥补这一缺口，尽管出台了多次政策激励措施，比如首次置业。这些政策推动了房屋建设的有限增长，但通过增加抵押贷款信贷，进一步加大了通胀压力。