For a government, housing is the problem from hell.  Just getting the right diagnosis is hard. Any realistic solution takes decades, and annoys half the electorate. It’s harder on the young. It’s hardest on the most vulnerable. The EU won’t allow governments to throw money at it. And it has knock-on effects on everything from mental health to physical health, employment, foreign investment, regional development, productivity and CO2 emissions. For the last seven years or so the government has tried various strategies to fix it. It relaxed certain building standards, pumped up the housing budget, set up the LDA, paid…

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