London Urgently Needs New Homes. Why Can’t It Build Them?

A short walk from the bustling Ealing Broadway shopping district in one of London’s most populous boroughs, a sign promising the construction of a sleek new apartment development has been quietly removed. Instead, the skeleton of a partly completed building sits abandoned. Work has been stalled for almost three years following the sudden collapse of the contractor, whose inability to cover its rising debts and soaring costs wiped out plans to build more than 100 new affordable homes in the area.

London urgently needs more housing. The city’s population has increased by over half a million in the decade through 2023, bringing it to around nine million, yet homebuilding has fallen dramatically. Thousands of projects have been cancelled or indefinitely paused in the past half-decade, and ground was broken on only 5,547 residential homes last year — a drop of more than 75% from a decade earlier and the fewest in at least 15 years, according to Molior London, which tracks the sector. In coming years, the gap between supply and demand is only expected to grow.