Slum clearance

Quoted in the economists piece on moves to deal with housing overcrowding in Newham: Good housing is obviously better than bad housing, but bad housing is better than none, and when the state gets into the business of licensing goods supply tends to fall. As Henry Overman, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, puts it, “schemes that restrict the ways in which we can use housing tend not to be beneficial to the poor.”