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Housing
楼市
Modest plans
温和战略
The government goes back into housebuilding
政府重回地产建设
WHEN George Osborne is spotted outsideWestminster, he is very often making an appearance on a building site, wearing a fluorescent safety jacket. It was no surprise to hear him claim once again, in his budget speech on March 19th, that “We're gettingBritainbuilding”. Sadly, given the huge extent ofBritain's housing shortage, the chancellor's proposed interventions do not add up to much.
当财政大臣乔治·奥斯本不在威斯特敏斯特宫（英国议会所在地）时，他经常穿着荧光安全服出现在某个建筑工地上。在他3月19日发布的预算报告中，听到其再次宣布“我们正在振兴英国”这番言论并不令人惊讶。可惜的是，由于英国巨大的楼市缺口，奥斯本提议的政府干预收效甚微。
The biggest announcement was that the government will extend Help to Buy, a scheme that guarantees mortgages for people purchasing newly built homes. Mr Osborne also hopes to build a new town at Ebbsfleet, a patch of post-industrial land in the Thames estuary, and promises to speed up the redevelopment of several rotting 1960s and 1970s social housing estates inLondon.
报告中最重要的一份公告是政府计划延长“购房支持计划”，一项为新屋购房者提供的住房抵押贷款政府担保政策。奥斯本同时还希望在埃贝斯福利特市建造一个新城镇，该市位于泰晤士河口，是一小片后工业用地，奥斯本还承诺加速重新开发几个伦敦上世纪六七十年代烂尾的社会住宅小区。
By making it easier for housebuilders to shift their stock, Help to Buy has probably helped boost building slightly, especially in northern cities where construction had all but ceased. Extending the programme will boostBritain's housing stock by 120,000 by 2020, the Treasury claims, though it will also expose taxpayers to any future house-price crash. Mr Osborne also announced a new fund to support lending to small housebuilders—who have struggled to get financing in recent years—which ought to have a similar effect.
通过使住建商更容易卖出存量房，购房支持计划很有可能会对刺激楼市略有作用，尤其是在建造工程全部停止的北部城市而言。财政部表示，到2020年，延长购房支持计划预计能为英国新增12万套新房供给，虽然纳税人会有承担未来房价崩盘的风险。奥斯本还宣布新增一项政府资金用以支持小微住建商，这类住建商近年苦于不能获得融资，这项政策与前者有异曲同工之妙。
The new town is more adventurous. Ebbsfleet, where a high-speed rail link toLondonopened in 2007, has had plans for new homes for almost 20 years. Few have been built, mostly because the site is a partially flooded quarry with little in the way of shops, public transport or infrastructure. The government's new idea is to create a development corporation with control over planning and the ability to borrow to clean up and prepare the site. That was how post-war new towns such as Milton Keynes andStevenagewere built.
新建城镇得方案更为大胆。2007年，一条连接埃贝斯福利特市与伦敦的高铁线路开通了，该市新增住房的计划已有将近20年，但却几乎毫无所成，大部分原因是这个部分积水地区曾经是个采石场，几乎没有地方给超市、公共运输设施或者公共基础设施用以建设。政府新出台的政策旨在创建开发公司控制规划，以及贷款能力来清理该地做好准备。这就是战后新城------米尔顿凯恩斯和斯蒂夫尼奇建成之法。
A similar interventionism is visible in the plan to rebuild 1960s estates. Many of these, such as the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark and Robin Hood Gardens in Tower Hamlets, are crumbling. By increasing the density on the sites, and using the proceeds of selling the extra houses built, it ought to be possible to cover the cost of reconstruction. But councils have been short of money to do much themselves, and private developers extract high returns in exchange for putting up capital. With central-government money, those projects ought to move quicker and councils ought to get more for their land.
这个重建上世纪六十年代房屋的计划明显与干涉主义颇为相似。很多这样的住宅区诸如南部萨瑟克区的埃尔斯伯里地产以及东部陶尔哈姆莱茨区的罗宾伍德花园正面临拆除。通过增加拆除点的数量密度以及使用出售额外已建房屋的收入，政府应该可以收回重建的成本。但地方政府因资金短缺而力不从心，而私营开发商以收取高额回报作为注入资本的交换条件。有了中央政府划拨的资金，这些项目得以进行得更为迅速，并且地方政府可以从他们的用地中获利更多。
These are decent measures—but nowhere near enough. To accommodate population growth,Englandalone needs to increase its supply of homes to around 230,000 per year, more than twice the number built last year. The real restriction onBritain's construction sector is planning policy, which constrains building near existing infrastructure at the edge of cities. The chancellor has been unable to change that. Instead, he is in effect adopting a milder version of 1960s-style grand planning: using government money to boost construction on marginal, unpopular sites. It is an improvement, but only just.
这些措施还不错，但还远远不够。为适应人口增长，仅仅只是英格兰地区每年就需要增加约23万套房屋供应，是去年已建成数量的两倍。英国建筑业真正的限制是规划政策，其中包括了城市边缘已落成的公共基础设施附近的建筑。财政大臣奥斯本无权改变。相反，实际上他采取了一个更温和的上世纪六十年代的宏伟规划：用政府的钱刺激边缘、偏远地带的城市建设。这是一种进步，但不仅仅是进步。译者 周雨晴 校对 邵夏沁
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