A critical analysis of Nick Bano’s argument on housing, supply, and affordability

In recent debates on housing, a familiar argument has resurfaced with renewed confidence: that Britain does not suffer from a housing shortage, but from “landlordism”. The claim is that abolishing or collapsing the private rented sector would restore affordability, security, and social justice… without the need for large-scale housebuilding.

This view is most clearly articulated by Nick Bano, a barrister specialising in renters’ rights and the author of Against Landlords. His Guardian essay has become a reference point for many online commentators, particularly those using terms such as “rentier economy” or “landlordism” as explanatory frameworks for the housing crisis.

The problem is not that this argument raises moral concerns… it does.
The problem is that it mistakes a complex systems failure for a simple class conflict, and in doing so replaces housing economics with ideology.

This article examines why.

Nick Bano’s argument on housing, supply, and affordability

1. The central claim: no housing shortage, only a landlord problem

Bano’s core thesis is straightforward:

Britain has enough homes per capita compared to other OECD countries
Housing affordability has worsened despite a net increase in housing stock
Therefore, supply is not the issue
The true cause of the crisis is the private rented sector and the extraction of rent

If this claim holds, then policies focused on building more homes are misguided, and the solution lies in de-commodifying housing by driving landlords out.

Everything else in the argument depends on this logic.
Unfortunately, it does not survive scrutiny.

2. The misuse of “homes per capita”

The most significant analytical flaw is the reliance on national homes-per-capita averages as evidence that Britain does not face a supply problem.

Housing markets do not function nationally. They function locally.

A surplus of homes in one region does not relieve shortages in another. Vacant properties in declining or low-demand areas do not house workers, families, or key staff in high-productivity cities. London, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Manchester and parts of the South East face acute shortages regardless of national averages.

Moreover, “homes per capita” ignores household formation, which is the real driver of demand:

More single-person households
Later family formation
Higher divorce and separation rates
Longer life expectancy
Increased labour mobility

All of these increase demand for units even if population growth is flat.

This is not a marginal oversight. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of how housing demand works.

3. Affordability vs supply is a false dichotomy

Bano repeatedly frames the debate as affordability versus supply, as if the two are unrelated.

They are not.

Affordability is an outcome of:

supply
location
income
finance costs
regulation
and expectations

Countries and cities that have stabilised rents over time have done so by overwhelming demand with supply, not by suppressing ownership structures.

To argue that supply “cannot” matter because prices remain high is to confuse insufficient supply with constrained supply. In the UK, planning risk, finance costs, land banking incentives, and infrastructure bottlenecks all restrict new development — particularly where demand is strongest.

Blaming landlords for outcomes produced by these constraints is analytically convenient, but incomplete.

4. The romanticisation of the 1970s private rented sector collapse

A key historical reference point in Bano’s argument is the collapse of the private rented sector in the mid-20th century, which he presents as evidence that reducing landlord participation improves affordability.

What is missing is context.

That period coincided with:

full employment
strong wage growth
defined-benefit pensions
cheap public borrowing
mass council housebuilding
lower household mobility
a radically different demographic profile

Municipalisation succeeded because the state had both the financial capacity and the political consensus to absorb housing stock as private capital exited.

Today, councils are capital-constrained, borrowing is expensive, construction capacity is limited, and political consensus is fractured. Attempting to recreate 1970s outcomes without 1970s conditions is not policy — it is nostalgia.

5. The Vienna comparison — selectively applied

Vienna is frequently cited as proof that landlord-light or landlord-free systems produce superior housing outcomes.

But Vienna was not created by abolishing landlords.

It was created through:

a century of continuous public investment
aggressive, large-scale housebuilding
deep, ongoing subsidies
long-term rent regulation tied to abundant supply
private developers operating within a heavily structured system

Crucially, Vienna did not oppose building. It built relentlessly.

To cite Vienna while opposing large-scale construction is to extract the aesthetic of the model while rejecting its foundations.

6. The straw-man view of developers and supply

Bano dismisses the idea that increasing supply could reduce prices by suggesting developers would never build enough homes to devalue their assets.

This misunderstands how markets function.

Markets do not require altruism. They respond to margins. When marginal profit declines, land values compress, speculative returns fall, and price growth slows or stabilises relative to wages.

No serious housing economist argues that developers will build until prices collapse, only that constrained supply guarantees scarcity rents.

Rejecting supply because it offends an ideological narrative does not protect renters. It entrenches the very scarcity that makes rents punitive.

7. The missing analysis: consequences of landlord abolition

Perhaps the most telling omission in Bano’s argument is the absence of transitional analysis.

If landlords are abolished or forced out:

Who funds repairs and maintenance during the transition?
Who finances new housing while asset values are falling?
What happens to renters during forced sell-offs?
Who absorbs the losses — banks, pension funds, councils, taxpayers?
How is capital flight prevented?

These questions are not technicalities. They are decisive.

Housing is capital-intensive. Removing private capital without a fully funded, politically viable replacement does not liberate renters — it reduces supply, freezes mobility, and raises risk premiums.

The first people harmed would not be landlords.
They would be renters.

8. When economics becomes moral theatre

The repeated use of terms such as “landlordism” and “rentier economy” signals a shift from analysis to moral positioning.

Once housing is framed primarily as a struggle against a villainous class, trade-offs disappear, incentives are ignored, and outcomes become secondary to virtue.

Housing crises are not solved by identifying enemies. They are solved by systems design.

Every country that has made sustained progress on affordability has done two things simultaneously:

built aggressively
regulated sensibly

None have abolished landlords.

9. A more serious starting point

None of this is a defence of poor standards, insecurity, or exploitation in the private rented sector. Reform is necessary. Regulation is overdue.

But serious reform starts with understanding mechanisms, not slogans.

The housing crisis is real.
Renters are under pressure.
The status quo is failing.

Replacing economics with ideology will not fix that.

It will make it worse.

-Rob Stewart