🚨New Report🚨
Strong Foundations looks at how high housing costs are holding back Britain's entrepreneurs by making it harder to hire the talent they need.
tenentrepreneurs.org/research/stron…
Strong Foundations looks at how high housing costs are holding back Britain's entrepreneurs by making it harder to hire the talent they need.
tenentrepreneurs.org/research/stron…
The report was endorsed by over sixty entrepreneurs including: @matthewclifford, @emmaljones, @woodroffe_simon, @AndrewDixonARC, and @rajdey.
https://twitter.com/yimbyalliance/status/1493155102357602304
The high cost of housing in the UK is making everyone poorer, even if they don’t live in an expensive city and even if they don’t live in the UK. How? 
The cost of housing is expensive in the UK, especially in the most productive cities. Rents in London are 63% higher than in Paris, 30% higher than in Amsterdam, and 90% higher than in Berlin.
@ThegrumpyE says
Sharief Abdel-Hadi the co-founder & CEO, Apricot says "Without a significant increase in housing supply, this problem is only going to make London and the UK an unattractive place for entrepreneurial, ambitious startups and their employees to call home."
Maria Tanjala, founder of @Film_Chain says
This makes us poorer in many well-understood ways: we have less disposable income, lower rates of home ownership, long commutes, poor quality housing, and overcrowding.
But there’s an additional hidden cost.
Alison Surtees the co-founder, Future’s Venture says
By making it harder for people to start and grow businesses, it holds back the rest of the economy. Meaning that we miss out on tax revenue, economic growth, and the new innovations that entrepreneurs would bring. How does this happen?
👩🔬 Talent 👩🔬
If a founder cannot build the right team around them, they are going to struggle to build and scale good companies.
If a founder cannot build the right team around them, they are going to struggle to build and scale good companies.
People are discouraged from moving to where they are most productive.
@JevanNagarajah co-founder of Better Dairy says
@ErikaBrodnock the CEO of Optimum Health
Meaning that companies have to choose to sacrifice productivity to minimise costs
@meribeckwith founder of @LindusHealth agrees
https://twitter.com/meribeckwith/status/1493181540800544771
🏙️ Clustering 🏙️
Doubling a city’s size tends to make its residents between 2% and 11% more productive per capita.
santafe.edu/research/resul…
Doubling a city’s size tends to make its residents between 2% and 11% more productive per capita.
santafe.edu/research/resul…
This is because
💼 People have access to a bigger labour market, so they can change jobs to roles that suit them better and gain more experience
💼 People have access to a bigger labour market, so they can change jobs to roles that suit them better and gain more experience
👥 They have better resources. In a larger city there is more variety and competition for services being provided. For businesses this will mean better support staff, more office space to choose from, and other factors that could make the business more productive.
💬 People have bigger and better-quality networks - making it easier for them to learn from each other, collaborate, and start businesses together. mattsclancy.substack.com/p/entrepreneur…
🏢 Office Rents 🏢
When people are able to start businesses they face higher barriers to entry. After paying extra for less productive staff, businesses are then hit with high rents.
When people are able to start businesses they face higher barriers to entry. After paying extra for less productive staff, businesses are then hit with high rents.
@LanceForman the owner of Forman & Field
What can we do? To solve the problem we need to build more market-rate housing in the most productive areas. The Levelling Up Bill will be an opportunity to do this, so here are some ideas which could be included.
Street Votes: This would allow for residents to vote for new design codes without the input from their local council. For example, a street of semi detached suburban houses could vote to allow moderately dense Georgian-style terraces. policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
Liberalise Green Belts: Green Belts are enormous tracts of land around UK cities on which building is restricted. Because building densely is a good thing we would not want to see green belt designation removed wholesale. But they should be flexible.
We could remove Green Belt designation on land within 800m of a station, which is enough to increase the housing stock by 7%. centreforcities.org/wp-content/upl…
And we could allow local parishes to swap low amenity land with Green Belt designation for protections on more desirable land. For example, they could grant planning permission to intensive farm land, but protect woodland in a different part of their area. adamsmith.org/news/forget-ni…
More Public Transport: In large European cities, two-thirds of people are able to reach their city centre by public transport within 30 minutes. However, in the UK, only two-fifths can. centreforcities.org/publication/co…
Change of Use: We should make it easier for people to convert properties between different types of use. Ideally it would be easy to turn shops into offices, homes into labs, and cafes into co-working spaces, and it should be easy to turn them back again.
Micro-flats and Co-Living: Allowing the construction of new co-living developments, which have private bedrooms and large communal areas would allow more young people to live near the best job-opportunities without being forced into flat-shares. citymonitor.ai/environment/mi…
Community Land Auctions: Councils can raise money by buying pieces of land, granting planning permission to it, and then selling it at the higher price. blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpol…
These ideas have been endorsed by @racheljanetwolf, founding partner of Public First and author of the 2019 Conservative Manifesto
Today, 60 entrepreneurs have signed an open letter, calling on the government to treat this issue as a matter of urgency. telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/0…
Among them are people creating lab-grown dairy products, treatments that can reverse skin ageing, more efficient clinical trials, high-quality food, computing services that make it easier to develop AI. All of them agree that the costs of housing are holding them back.
By failing to solve the housing shortage, the government are robbing us of businesses, the jobs they create, and their innovative ideas. It should be a top priority for them to reverse this damage.
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