17/08/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1UGtaPHkW5/?mibextid=wwXIfr
It’s illegal to build the life I’m about to describe.
28.7% of young adults live in their parents’ spare room. There’s enough empty space above Britain’s shops to house every one of them.
None of what I'm about to describe is new. It's normal in half of Europe.
So picture it.
You're 24. Five years in your mum's third bedroom, because a deposit was never realistically happening on your wages.
You move into a studio above what used to be a carpet shop. One suitcase, because it's furnished.
Rent is one number, all in, because there's solar on the roof and a battery in the basement charging overnight when power's cheap.
On the ground floor, there's a cafe. Independent, because the rent on a converted ground floor is something a real person can actually afford.
You meet people in it your first week. First new people you've met since school.
Morning, you go downstairs. Not out. Downstairs.
The old department store two doors up is a skills centre now and you're eighteen months into becoming a joiner.
No debt. A trade this country is desperately short of, taught in a building you can see from your window.
Six o'clock the street fills up. Pedestrianised, tables out, heaters on, people sitting outside in October because someone finally worked out that's what the rest of Europe does.
And you can afford that evening. Not because you're on good money. Because you don't run a car, your bills sit inside your rent, and your commute is a staircase.
Not one brick of it touches a green field. Every building in that picture is already standing.
So why isn't it happening?
Because for fifteen years the answer to housing has been tinkering.
A new licensing scheme. A new EPC deadline. A new tax band. Every one defensible on its own. Together they've left the buildings empty and the young at home with their parents.
And here's the bit that costs me something to say.
Twelve years I've spent turning dead buildings into homes, and I can't do this on my own. The build cost is the same as it is in London. The end values aren't. That gap is why the buildings stay dark, and no amount of hustle closes it.
So I'm not asking the state to step back. I'm asking it to step in as a partner.
Not a subsidy. Each side does what it's good at and both share the upside.
The state does planning certainty, land assembly, guaranteed leases, the ground floors. I can't grant myself permission. I can't decide where the buses run.
We find the buildings, take the risk, fund the works, deliver on time.
Then the state gets homes it never had to build, council tax in perpetuity, and a temporary accommodation bill that stops climbing.
And a share of the equity and the income, permanently. Not a grant handed over and forgotten. A stake in something that keeps paying.
That's not charity in either direction. It's a deal.
The state doesn't need to be smaller. It needs to be braver.
Stop tinkering at the edges. Rip up the rule book and rebuild Britain better.
