Why Can't You Afford a Home?

Throughout the Western world, a whole generation is being priced out of the housing market. For millions of people, particularly millennials, the basic goal of acquiring decent, affordable accommodation is a distant dream.

Leading economist Josh Ryan-Collins argues that to understand this crisis, we must examine a crucial paradox at the heart of modern capitalism. The interaction of private home ownership and a lightly regulated commercial banking system leads to a feedback cycle. Unlimited credit and money flows into an inherently finite supply of property, which causes rising house prices, declining home ownership, rising inequality and debt, stagnant growth and financial instability. Radical reforms are needed to break the cycle.

This engaging and topical book will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why they can’t find an affordable home, and what we can do about it. 3 The Housing-Finance Feedback Cycle and the Deregulation of Finance 31

4 How and Why Economic Policy Went Astray 69

5 Breaking the Housing-Finance Feedback Cycle 94

6 Conclusion 123

Notes 130

"In this excellent book, Josh Ryan-Collins shows that unaffordable housing is not part of nature, and how a number of countries have broken what the author aptly calls the housing-financial cycle, by de-linking land pricing from mortgage-debt pyramiding."
—Michael Hudson, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

"Why can't you afford to buy a home? It's not because of too many smashed avocadoes, or too little land, but too much bank lending. Josh Ryan-Collins clearly explains how bank lending for speculation has made housing inaccessible, and how to tame the beast of finance."
—Steve Keen, University of Kingston, author of Debunking Economics

"This book is the best short introduction I've seen to a burgeoning literature on housing and financialisation"
—Inside Housing

"Why Can't You Afford a Home? is a short, readable and valuable book.... It makes a convincing set of arguments that explain much of our current housing crisis."
—Irish Times

Josh Ryan-Collins is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London.