Household Projections have Had Their Day in Projecting Housing Need @ONS @PlanningResourc #CaMKox

Analysis: New projections wipe out housing need in Oxford and Cambridge under standard method, experts say Lets call it.  Any method which makes such an obviously absurd prediction must be a bad method.  Imagine doing a PHD on housing need in CaMoX based on this you wouldn’t even to to a viva, you’d be laughed at. They had there day in the sun and for decades in roughly worked.  As the economy grew household formation would rise due to people being able to afford it through life choice events (such as getting married, having kids etc.) falling headship/household rep rates etc. Since the great recession that relationship has broken down.  people can now longer afford to form households in the way they had.  A generation rent of enforced sharers and couch surfers and failure to launch young people. If you have to ‘correct’ the national need by correcting up from 159k, to 300k, a correction factor of 100%, as 300-330,000 k a year is what many housing experts correctly state is what we need, then you do have to challenge the basis of a method that requires 100% correction. What is clear is there has been a radical suppression of household formation due to a lack of homes to form into.  Other explanations – such as less international migration, may only be temporary and play a much smaller part, as does the temporary blip up in mortality due to the severe winter last year which dumb trend projections project will happen every year for many years – hmmmm. Similarly the known dodgyness in estimating migration of students to Oxford and Cambridge which massively distorts the numbers. What might replace it?  Base it on population change and a multiplier based on what number of homes would be built in an area if enforced sharing and concealed households were zero. Lets call it the housing gap elimination ratio.  This could be estimated by questions at English Labour Force Surveys or English Housing Survey, with the sample weighted to improve local results in greater housing stress areas.