Shops into houses

The government has announced plans to turn shops into houses.

This is a policy that ought to kill two birds with one stone; increasing the supply of housing and also dealing with the problem of empty shops on the high street.

There are some problems. Firstly a lot of government policies get announced and then are abandoned when the details are found to be problematic or other interest groups are seen as getting hurt. In this case the risk is probably that many small towns may lose important shops and therefore their sense of identity. The alternative solution might be to allow rents on shops to fall so new business can afford to move it.

The other problem is the supply impact on housing might be somewhat limited. Empty shops are said to number 7,000 in London. But London's population is set to grow by 1,000,000 over the next decade. This means that at least for London converting shops to houses is going to only be a small part of the problem. And some empty shops are not always problem as you need some space into which new business can expand. There are probably other parts of the country where there are more empty shops, but there is probably less demand for housing too.

The idea of having mixed residential and retail does seem quite good and a lot of towns have been adopting it anyway. The benefits are probably more to do with regenerating town centres by increasing footfall and removing unsightly empty shops. In order to be truly transformational the density of housing would need to be quite high, perhaps by bringing flats of students into the town center.