A lament to intervene in the market

The report features references to a ‘market intervention project’ and the ‘affordable housing development programme’, but with no more detail.

Now the States has confirmed that it intends to spend millions over the next few years across the affordable housing network, including social rental, partial ownership, key worker, extra care, emergency housing and specialised service-user accommodation. It seems a genuine, if not particularly inspirational, commitment at £4m. a year.

The market intervention project sounds more exciting but seems, in reality, to be much more of an investigative project, seeking ‘appropriate options in the general housing market to potentially help alleviate current housing pressures’.

So it’s a paper exercise, updating information about the island’s ‘specific problems' before ‘considering the costs, benefits and impacts of potential interventions or whether market interference is justified’.

One suspects we’ve reached that point, though anyone wanting further confirmation could check out page 14 today and hear a mother’s lament for her son and grandson leaving the island to be able to buy a home.

The island in this case is Jersey – but this will be a situation mirrored many more times locally until the States can find a meaningful market intervention.