Affordable housing is still a challenge

Boris Johnson's ousting of Ken Livingstone as London mayor raises more interesting questions than those pertaining to the positioning of the political parties. Housing has become one of the hot political topics after decades in which it loitered on the fringes, designated, as it was, as an essentially private and market transaction. And for most people, it seemed as if the market did not let them down. House prices have risen pretty consistently since the early 1990s - and for two decades up to the late 1980s before that. Indeed, you haven't had to look far in recent years to find people whose wealth was enhanced more effectively by staying home and watching pound signs creeping up the wall as their house increased in value than by going to work. Those outside the market - especially those in, or needing, social rented accommodation - have been airbrushed out of the housing debate entirely, perhaps not least because there have been very few journalists, politicians or pundits who rent themselves.