In the Sunday Times on 26th November 2017, journalist Rod Liddle makes a case for our need to build new houses being exclusively due to immigration. He claims that the demand for new houses is not due to the British birth rate, which is 1.79 children born per woman. Rather, he says that 8 out of 10 new households formed over the last 15 years were headed by a migrant, and with fewer migrants (and by extension, by leaving the EU), we'd have no housing crisis.
The reason we’re concreting over some of England’s most placid and peaceful scenery ... is almost entirely a result of our uncontrolled and utterly unsustainable immigration, which the government vowed to sort out but has been useless in so doing. Our birth rate is in decline — 1.79 children born per woman last year in the UK — so that’s not fuelling the demand. The reason we are bullied into building more houses is because, catastrophically, we let into our country a net 250,000 people a year. That’s a city the size of Newcastle every year.
Earlier this year, the communities minister Sajid Javid said immigration was responsible for only a third of the need for new homes, his nose growing with every word uttered. This rubbish was exposed recently when it was revealed that eight out of 10 of the new households formed over the past 15 years were headed by a migrant. With fewer migrants, we’d have no housing crisis.
No sources were cited. Is he right to say that the housing crisis is 'almost entirely' due to immigration?
