It is time for the housing sector to tackle the 'not in my back yard' lobby head on.
This week's claim that the number of households has exceeded the number of homes appears, at face value, to defy the law of supply and demand.

Usually, where there is a shortage of a commodity, suppliers produce the maximum they can, consistent with making a profit. And if they do not, new suppliers soon emerge.

This is not happening in housing.

While the number of new affordable homes has recovered from the doldrums of the mid-1990s, the government is still not providing enough to meet need and to turn round blighted areas. And in the owner-occupier sector, new housing is being provided at the slowest rate for decades.

Meanwhile, changing lifestyles, longer lives and (for most people) greater affluence, mean that demand is soaring, and with it house prices – at least outside older industrial areas.

The reason that not enough homes are being built is that it has become politically impossible for local authorities to sanction any significant amount of house building without coming under attack from those who oppose all development other than on brownfield sites.

Some of this opposition has respectable reasons behind it: from those who wish to preserve valuable countryside or to reduce suburban sprawl.

But some of it does not. Among the loudest voices are those concerned to preserve the value of their property by ensuring that other homes are not built nearby.

It is quite unrealistic to expect that sufficient brownfield sites will be found. Even where they can viably be decontaminated, restored and given transport access, they may give rise to 'town cramming', or be in the wrong place.

Some of the greatest housing pressure is in the Thames Valley and in England's 'deep' south – there are precious few brownfield sites in such places.

Communities can be destroyed by excessively high house prices just as surely as by excessively low ones.

No one is suggesting a building free-for-all. But if public services collapse because middle and low income earners cannot afford to live in an area, the resulting inconvenience may detract a bit from existing residents' views over open country.