Oh yes, we approve of this, very much so

Having tried everything else we return to what did originally solve the problem under discussion - Burke and his Little Platoons to the rescue:

The homelessness charity Crisis is going to become a landlord for the first time in its 60-year history, saying the housing crisis in the UK has reached a “catastrophic scenario”.

Matt Downie, the charity’s chief executive, said it was preparing to launch a fundraising appeal to buy its own housing stock as it can longer get access to social housing to help homeless people.

“We don’t want to do this, but if nobody else is going to provide housing, we’ll do it ourselves,” he said.

This was the old method of dealing with housing for those unable to afford or deal with it themselves. As Crisis themselves point out:

He said the charity, headquartered on Commercial Street in London, would be following in the footsteps of housing associations, originally created by Victorian philanthropists in the 1800s to help homeless people and alleviate poverty.

“We’re about 200 yards away here from the first Peabody estate which is the birth of social housing in this country and yet around the corner we’re having to start again,” he said.

That is, having made that detour through trying to get government to solve the problem - and found that it doesn’t - we go back to the solution that works. Those groups of the highly motivated getting on with doing something - the little platoons.

Now, we can imagine all sorts of caveats here. For example, are Crisis going to be asking for grants of tax money paid to buy said housing or are they really going to do it themselves? Or rather, with the money voluntarily handed to them by those who support their aim?

But yes, we approve. Having identified an actual problem they’re going to go and solve that problem directly. Rather than, say, running political campaigns to dismantle capitalism, eliminate landlords and bring on the communal nirvana they’re just going to, you know, provide housing to the housingless.

Imagine how many problems could be solved if everyone just got on with solving them?

Tim Worstall