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All That Is Solid: The Great Housing Disaster
Housing was at the heart of the financial collapse, and our economy is now precariously reliant on the housing market. In this groundbreaking new book, Danny Dorling argues that housing is the defining issue of our times. Tracing how we got to our current crisis and how housing has come to reflect class and wealth in Britain, All That Is Solid radically shows that the solution to our problems - rising homelessness, a generation priced out of home ownership - is not, as is widely assumed, building more homes. Inequality, he argues, is what we really need to overcome.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
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About the author
Danny Dorling
66 books96 followersDanny Dorling is a British social geographer researching inequality and human geography. He is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography of the School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford.
Danny Dorling has lived all his life in England. To try to counter his myopic world view, in 2006, Danny started working with a group of researchers on a project to remap the world (www.worldmapper.org).
He has published with many colleagues more than a dozen books on issues related to social inequalities in Britain and several hundred journal papers. Much of this work is available open access and will be added to this website soon.
His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education and poverty. Danny was employed as a play-worker in children’s summer play-schemes. He learnt the ethos of pre-school education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget this. He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers and a patron of Roadpeace, the national charity for road crash victims.
Danny Dorling has lived all his life in England. To try to counter his myopic world view, in 2006, Danny started working with a group of researchers on a project to remap the world (www.worldmapper.org).
He has published with many colleagues more than a dozen books on issues related to social inequalities in Britain and several hundred journal papers. Much of this work is available open access and will be added to this website soon.
His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education and poverty. Danny was employed as a play-worker in children’s summer play-schemes. He learnt the ethos of pre-school education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget this. He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers and a patron of Roadpeace, the national charity for road crash victims.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 30, 2016
Well, this is a deeply enraging book. I recommend looking at pictures of happy dogs in order to promote calm after finishing it. Housing is an especially vexed issue for me, as I used to work in local government in the time BC (Before Crisis & Before Coalition). I had access to a lot of housing data and worked on issues relating to new housing development, as well as having a wise colleague who taught me huge amounts about the operation of the housing system. Prior to the crisis, it was clear that there were major problems with housing in the UK. Apart from anything else, I was living in a slummy shared rental managed by an actively malign rental agency. (That said, my rent was 25% lower than it is 5 years later, despite now living in another slummy shared rental further out of the centre of the same city. At least my current rental agents are only passively malign.) When the crisis hit, there was massive concern in local government about the sudden cessation of new house building, sometimes quite literally in the middle of construction. It was clear that a new approach to housing policy was needed to respond to the crisis and the underlying problems which it exacerbated. Then the Coalition got in and every single housing policy they came up with did the opposite of what was needed. My colleagues and I used to read aloud press releases from the Department of Communities and Local Government, asking each other, “Don’t they realise what will happen?” If Eric Pickles et al did realise, they did not care about the homelessness, housing insecurity, and affordability crises they were encouraging. Moreover, Mr. Pickles’ department cut all funding for my colleagues and I, so we were made redundant en masse. I took refuge in postgraduate education and began teaching undergraduates about housing, not without a certain bitter tone. My PhD isn’t about housing, though, as three years of sustained intense anger would have given me ulcers.
This extensive preamble is to set the context for my reading this book and my lack of neutrality on its subject matter. 'All that is Solid' did not tell me a great deal that I didn’t already know and thus I found the initial chapters somewhat slow and meandering. Personally, I would have structured a book of this kind a bit differently, perhaps based on the housing tenures or the roles played by housing (shelter, real estate investment, etc). Nonetheless, Dorling is a powerful writer and marshals an impressive breadth of information. I wasn’t as impressed by ‘All that is Solid’ as Injustice: Why social inequality persists, an earlier book of his which I highly recommend. The main theme is the same, though. Dorling traces the current UK housing crisis to the growth of inequality since the 1980s. One of his key points, which I have not seen much discussion of elsewhere, is that there are considerably more bedrooms than there are people in the UK. Thus to speak of a housing shortage conceals the unequal distribution of not just housing but the space within it. He also discusses Britain’s appallingly feudal distribution of land ownership, which I also teach undergraduates about.
The book’s themes coalesced more effectively as it went on, culminating in a powerful ending. Dorling takes a pleasingly pragmatic approach to policy solutions. Rather than relying on small scale change (co-housing projects and the like), he advocates legal changes that would alter people’s rights to housing and the power balance between landlords & tenants. He sees speculative investment in housing as anathema, which should not be so radical a view given the disastrous chaos of the 2007/8 financial meltdown. Major reform of council tax, perhaps including the introduction of a land value tax, is also suggested. The current council tax system is appallingly regressive. Dorling also deplores the punitive and cruel cuts to benefits, such as the bedroom tax. The most upsetting parts of the book discuss how the Coalition has targeted the most vulnerable, removing their safety net against homelessness. Dorling connects this to increasing death rates amongst the elderly, a correlation I hadn’t come across before.
I highly recommend this book and on balance am glad that I read it, as Dorling had a constructive and interesting set of policy approaches to suggest that might improve the situation. Unfortunately, hell will freeze over before the Coalition would contemplate any of them. We must hope for a more humane and less ideologically blinkered government after the coming election. With housing, I find that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. From my academic and professional experience, I understand why my living situations since I left home have been increasingly expensive yet of consistently poor quality. I understand why I’ve lived with mouldy walls, malfunctioning white goods, overcrowding, astronomical energy bills due to absent insulation, arbitrary fees, insecure tenancies, tiny rooms, and worn Ikea 'furnishings'. Yet this understanding is the very opposite of consolation. I don’t aspire to own a home and rent from the bank rather than an absent landlord, as the only obvious advantage would be non-magnolia walls. Dorling makes abundantly clear that the current housing system works in the favour of a rich minority and disadvantages everybody else to a greater or lesser degree. Contemplating all this for any length of time inclines me to become a hermit and live in a yurt somewhere. Or perhaps move to Scotland, where many of the creative fees (contract fees, inventory fees, administrative fees, etc) levied by rental agents are now illegal.
Of course, I am one of the lucky ones. I can afford my rent, as it’s only about 40% of my income. Compared to many, I am well housed. Still, it’s terrible how much the housing situation has deteriorated in past few decades. For my generation, living somewhere with decent insulation, adequate space, and no mould problem is a major ambition. I am two weeks away from my thirtieth birthday and have never rented anywhere that combined those three basic attributes. Such luxury only exists at the most unaffordable end of the rental market. And I don’t even live in London, which takes the housing problems of other British urban areas to hyperbolic extremes.
Although I haven’t said much about the book, if you've waded through my rancor then I can safely recommend it to you. To conclude, here is a quote that sets the current housing crisis neatly in wider context:
This extensive preamble is to set the context for my reading this book and my lack of neutrality on its subject matter. 'All that is Solid' did not tell me a great deal that I didn’t already know and thus I found the initial chapters somewhat slow and meandering. Personally, I would have structured a book of this kind a bit differently, perhaps based on the housing tenures or the roles played by housing (shelter, real estate investment, etc). Nonetheless, Dorling is a powerful writer and marshals an impressive breadth of information. I wasn’t as impressed by ‘All that is Solid’ as Injustice: Why social inequality persists, an earlier book of his which I highly recommend. The main theme is the same, though. Dorling traces the current UK housing crisis to the growth of inequality since the 1980s. One of his key points, which I have not seen much discussion of elsewhere, is that there are considerably more bedrooms than there are people in the UK. Thus to speak of a housing shortage conceals the unequal distribution of not just housing but the space within it. He also discusses Britain’s appallingly feudal distribution of land ownership, which I also teach undergraduates about.
The book’s themes coalesced more effectively as it went on, culminating in a powerful ending. Dorling takes a pleasingly pragmatic approach to policy solutions. Rather than relying on small scale change (co-housing projects and the like), he advocates legal changes that would alter people’s rights to housing and the power balance between landlords & tenants. He sees speculative investment in housing as anathema, which should not be so radical a view given the disastrous chaos of the 2007/8 financial meltdown. Major reform of council tax, perhaps including the introduction of a land value tax, is also suggested. The current council tax system is appallingly regressive. Dorling also deplores the punitive and cruel cuts to benefits, such as the bedroom tax. The most upsetting parts of the book discuss how the Coalition has targeted the most vulnerable, removing their safety net against homelessness. Dorling connects this to increasing death rates amongst the elderly, a correlation I hadn’t come across before.
I highly recommend this book and on balance am glad that I read it, as Dorling had a constructive and interesting set of policy approaches to suggest that might improve the situation. Unfortunately, hell will freeze over before the Coalition would contemplate any of them. We must hope for a more humane and less ideologically blinkered government after the coming election. With housing, I find that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. From my academic and professional experience, I understand why my living situations since I left home have been increasingly expensive yet of consistently poor quality. I understand why I’ve lived with mouldy walls, malfunctioning white goods, overcrowding, astronomical energy bills due to absent insulation, arbitrary fees, insecure tenancies, tiny rooms, and worn Ikea 'furnishings'. Yet this understanding is the very opposite of consolation. I don’t aspire to own a home and rent from the bank rather than an absent landlord, as the only obvious advantage would be non-magnolia walls. Dorling makes abundantly clear that the current housing system works in the favour of a rich minority and disadvantages everybody else to a greater or lesser degree. Contemplating all this for any length of time inclines me to become a hermit and live in a yurt somewhere. Or perhaps move to Scotland, where many of the creative fees (contract fees, inventory fees, administrative fees, etc) levied by rental agents are now illegal.
Of course, I am one of the lucky ones. I can afford my rent, as it’s only about 40% of my income. Compared to many, I am well housed. Still, it’s terrible how much the housing situation has deteriorated in past few decades. For my generation, living somewhere with decent insulation, adequate space, and no mould problem is a major ambition. I am two weeks away from my thirtieth birthday and have never rented anywhere that combined those three basic attributes. Such luxury only exists at the most unaffordable end of the rental market. And I don’t even live in London, which takes the housing problems of other British urban areas to hyperbolic extremes.
Although I haven’t said much about the book, if you've waded through my rancor then I can safely recommend it to you. To conclude, here is a quote that sets the current housing crisis neatly in wider context:
What each generation spends most of its money on changes over time. Our grandparents spent far more on food than on housing; our parents often spent more on cars than on housing. We, however, spend more on housing than on anything else. Our children may - on average - spend more on education unless they can stop that particular bubble from forming, but that is a subject for a future book.
March 27, 2015
Whilst I totally am on side with the authors politics, the incredible depth of research is often poorly presented in rambling and repetitive chapters. I read another review that the delivery is akin to someone having a rant in a pub and at times it does come across a bit like that. Still, it's a very enlightening book and I'd recommend it for its factual content.
June 25, 2014
A Karl Marx & Freidrich Engels quote has inspired two book titles this year: Soviet-set novel All That is Solid Melts into Air by Darragh McKeon, and this exposé of the British housing crisis. The problem is not a dearth of housing, Dorling notes, but the inefficient distribution of that housing – usually due to wealth inequality. There are plenty of properties to go around, yet squatting and homelessness remain perpetual problems. In addition, Britain has some of Europe’s smallest new-build houses, with noticeably tiny rooms, and this can have a surprisingly major psychological effect on inhabitants. Nor does it help that council tax is heavily weighted against those in modest dwellings, and that the so-called “bedroom tax” penalizes those on welfare benefits if they are found to have a spare room.
“When rents are as high as they are in Britain today, most people who rent simply have to choose the least bad home they are offered.” That quote certainly struck a chord for me; for over six years now, my husband and I have been stuck in a vicious cycle of renting non-ideal properties that still end up costing nearly above our means. Ironically, “those who are most adversely affected by housing policy believe they have little power to alter politics. And usually they are right.” I’m not a citizen, so I can’t vote; my husband can and does vote, but his dissenting opinion has little bearing on local elections dominated by the Conservative Party.
“Housing should be about the long term, about provision, not profit.” (Amen!) Among the solutions Dorling suggests are the following: increased wages, rent control, incremental council tax bands all the way up to Z, the decriminalization of squatting, and second homes being taxed at a much higher rate. But all of these practical changes imply a much greater societal shift: a change of heart and of focus for a government that is currently (as far as we can tell) by and for the rich.
This is a very important book, one I hope will be influential among academics and lawmakers. Some of the details of economics and demographics passed me by, which is why I skimmed it rather than reading the whole thing (Owen Hatherley, reviewing the book in the Guardian, calls it an “avalanche of graphs, statistics and stories of housing misery”), but I wholeheartedly agree with the message and laud Dorling’s courage and clarity.
“When rents are as high as they are in Britain today, most people who rent simply have to choose the least bad home they are offered.” That quote certainly struck a chord for me; for over six years now, my husband and I have been stuck in a vicious cycle of renting non-ideal properties that still end up costing nearly above our means. Ironically, “those who are most adversely affected by housing policy believe they have little power to alter politics. And usually they are right.” I’m not a citizen, so I can’t vote; my husband can and does vote, but his dissenting opinion has little bearing on local elections dominated by the Conservative Party.
“Housing should be about the long term, about provision, not profit.” (Amen!) Among the solutions Dorling suggests are the following: increased wages, rent control, incremental council tax bands all the way up to Z, the decriminalization of squatting, and second homes being taxed at a much higher rate. But all of these practical changes imply a much greater societal shift: a change of heart and of focus for a government that is currently (as far as we can tell) by and for the rich.
This is a very important book, one I hope will be influential among academics and lawmakers. Some of the details of economics and demographics passed me by, which is why I skimmed it rather than reading the whole thing (Owen Hatherley, reviewing the book in the Guardian, calls it an “avalanche of graphs, statistics and stories of housing misery”), but I wholeheartedly agree with the message and laud Dorling’s courage and clarity.
May 1, 2023
This is a slog of a read, with a deluge of graphs, statistics and case studies, a lot of which, I'll be quite honest, passed me by. But in a nutshell, its premises can be boiled down to:
1. The housing crisis is the single biggest social issue we face, and has been for more than a generation. We have ever-increasing levels of homelessness, under-occupancy, skyrocketing rents, dilapidated and unsafe housing, and speculation.
2. Building more houses isn't a panacea because the problem, fundamentally, isn't a lack of housing stock but uneven distribution. You could build a million houses, but still end up with a lot of second homes, under-occupied homes and most of the population remaining badly housed.
3. There are practical, regulatory measures we could take now to alleviate the issue e.g. taxing second homes and empty properties to discourage hoarding and waste, reforming council tax bands so the wealthiest pay in proportion to the value of their property, introducing a proper land value tax, giving struggling mortgagers the 'right-to-sell' to a housing association so that they can become social tenants and remain in their homes rather than face eviction.
4. There are also more long-term things we could do, e.g. a massive programme of refurbishment of the existing housing stock to make it fit for use, now and long into the future.
5. Above all, housing policy needs to be treated as one part of a coordinated social and economic policy that tackles wealth and income inequality. We need a cultural paradigm shift away from our current warped view of housing as an investment vehicle to one that recognises it as a basic human need like food and water - "if people hoarded food because its value was bound to go up when others began to starve and would pay anything, we would stop their hoarding."
Fundamentally, this book is a moral argument about inequality with a lot in it that I agree with, and it has opened my eyes to the "we simply need to build more houses" myth. But my main gripe is that much of it felt repetitive to the point of tedium. Rather than building, step-by-step, to a conclusion, its arguments (outlined above) are all pretty much set out in chapter one and then hammered out again and again over 300 pages, albeit with added charts and data. Perhaps this works for an audience of academics and policymakers but, for me, a book half the length - or a long article - would've been more effective.
1. The housing crisis is the single biggest social issue we face, and has been for more than a generation. We have ever-increasing levels of homelessness, under-occupancy, skyrocketing rents, dilapidated and unsafe housing, and speculation.
2. Building more houses isn't a panacea because the problem, fundamentally, isn't a lack of housing stock but uneven distribution. You could build a million houses, but still end up with a lot of second homes, under-occupied homes and most of the population remaining badly housed.
3. There are practical, regulatory measures we could take now to alleviate the issue e.g. taxing second homes and empty properties to discourage hoarding and waste, reforming council tax bands so the wealthiest pay in proportion to the value of their property, introducing a proper land value tax, giving struggling mortgagers the 'right-to-sell' to a housing association so that they can become social tenants and remain in their homes rather than face eviction.
4. There are also more long-term things we could do, e.g. a massive programme of refurbishment of the existing housing stock to make it fit for use, now and long into the future.
5. Above all, housing policy needs to be treated as one part of a coordinated social and economic policy that tackles wealth and income inequality. We need a cultural paradigm shift away from our current warped view of housing as an investment vehicle to one that recognises it as a basic human need like food and water - "if people hoarded food because its value was bound to go up when others began to starve and would pay anything, we would stop their hoarding."
Fundamentally, this book is a moral argument about inequality with a lot in it that I agree with, and it has opened my eyes to the "we simply need to build more houses" myth. But my main gripe is that much of it felt repetitive to the point of tedium. Rather than building, step-by-step, to a conclusion, its arguments (outlined above) are all pretty much set out in chapter one and then hammered out again and again over 300 pages, albeit with added charts and data. Perhaps this works for an audience of academics and policymakers but, for me, a book half the length - or a long article - would've been more effective.
April 20, 2015
Very disappointed with this. Poor bordering on misleading use of evidence and charts. Was hoping to see a robust argument but came away with opinion on selective statistics.
February 2, 2022
"If you are reading this book” professor Dorling tells us “[y]ou are very unlikely to be homeless, or even to have been homeless”. Even if that claim is factually true, it is disappointing that this is Dorling’s horizon. The book's argument chimes with what we’d expect a person who makes that sort of statement to say.
It is a book that both cites the Observer’s Nick Cohen and carries his endorsement on the front cover. It is a confused, ‘vibes only’ sort of argument about the personal choices behind causes of the housing crisis, rather than a persuasive theoretical one. 'Over-consumption of housing', growing inequality, and a vague sense of 'greed' are the villains of the piece. Dorling relies on this standpoint (which is consistent with his earlier work) to convince himself that the structural causes of the housing crisis don’t matter very much. Instead of getting into the roots of profitability, land value and material want, he makes arguments that somehow cite Marx and a chair of the Federal Reserve to try to establish the same point.
It's particularly grating that Dorling uses a Marx quote for the title but doesn't really understand what 'use value' means.
The overall argument is really a moral one. The housing crisis is a question of personal choice, rather than the consequences of an expanding industry of financialised housing accumulation. People didn't use to be this greedy, but now they are. Let's all go back to a time when people were more moderate in their wealth accumulation. Prices rise because of investors' greed, but the author doesn't seem to be very curious about the mechanics of price: in other words, how these prices rises have become possible now, and whether anything fundamental (except for investors' appetites) has changed since before the 'Big Bang' of financial deregulation.
I will say, though, that the book does a fantastic and essential job of undermining the 'under-supply' myth, and takes down the facile arguments about migration. Dorling's research into the amount of housing in existence has been a crucial tool in the debate about housing since it was published.
It is a book that both cites the Observer’s Nick Cohen and carries his endorsement on the front cover. It is a confused, ‘vibes only’ sort of argument about the personal choices behind causes of the housing crisis, rather than a persuasive theoretical one. 'Over-consumption of housing', growing inequality, and a vague sense of 'greed' are the villains of the piece. Dorling relies on this standpoint (which is consistent with his earlier work) to convince himself that the structural causes of the housing crisis don’t matter very much. Instead of getting into the roots of profitability, land value and material want, he makes arguments that somehow cite Marx and a chair of the Federal Reserve to try to establish the same point.
It's particularly grating that Dorling uses a Marx quote for the title but doesn't really understand what 'use value' means.
The overall argument is really a moral one. The housing crisis is a question of personal choice, rather than the consequences of an expanding industry of financialised housing accumulation. People didn't use to be this greedy, but now they are. Let's all go back to a time when people were more moderate in their wealth accumulation. Prices rise because of investors' greed, but the author doesn't seem to be very curious about the mechanics of price: in other words, how these prices rises have become possible now, and whether anything fundamental (except for investors' appetites) has changed since before the 'Big Bang' of financial deregulation.
I will say, though, that the book does a fantastic and essential job of undermining the 'under-supply' myth, and takes down the facile arguments about migration. Dorling's research into the amount of housing in existence has been a crucial tool in the debate about housing since it was published.
March 19, 2025
Covers some issues not spoken about in mainstream political discussion on housing.
September 4, 2016
Interesting book that is enlightening and certainly gave me a different perspective. The incredible growth in house prices is incredible and concerning. The writer is anticipating a crash but 3 years on there is no sign except at the super high end of the London market!
I did get a little frustrated as the book went on. It is a little repetitive and one 'stat' about half way though the book sounded incredulous. For the first time whilst reading the book i checked the source and it was the Daily Mail! Seriously? This then made me question the book a lot more as this is not a credible source and it was ironic that a few pages later the author was slamming the Daily Mail for its criticism of a UN rapporteur (from memory).
I'm glad I read the book and it has definitely had an impact on me but the book could be about half the length and I'm not convinced by all the arguments.
I did get a little frustrated as the book went on. It is a little repetitive and one 'stat' about half way though the book sounded incredulous. For the first time whilst reading the book i checked the source and it was the Daily Mail! Seriously? This then made me question the book a lot more as this is not a credible source and it was ironic that a few pages later the author was slamming the Daily Mail for its criticism of a UN rapporteur (from memory).
I'm glad I read the book and it has definitely had an impact on me but the book could be about half the length and I'm not convinced by all the arguments.
September 24, 2021
A splurge of often irrelevant or inconsistent data, poorly structured across many pages. Very light on actual economic analysis or policy recommendations. Slightly tabloidy in places, with complex issues being generalised away as "greed" or "selfishness" with little engagement with the root causes of housing inequality, and far too much discussion of the politics of 2014/2015 which feels very distant and irrelevant today. On the plus side, there were some well phrased lines about the extent of housing inequality and a few interesting case studies about housing in Sheffield.
April 20, 2020
The main idea is rather simple: take more power from the people and push that power to the chosen ones, the bureaucrats like Dorling. Never mind that the current situation is precisely the result of a century of Dorlings making the choices for the people. Like in the Soviet Union, the ideal Dorlin society is the one without unemployment: everybody works and than people eat though their representatives.
April 18, 2019
Dorling exposes the toll that unaffordable housing is taking on our communities and national life. He convincingly challenges the myths that perpetuate the status quo. I would have liked to see an additional chapter documenting developments since it was published in 2014 and a bit more depth on the role that international money laundering via London's bricks and mortar plays in keeping the housing bubble inflated. Otherwise, I think he should be essential reading for every A level student and undergraduate in the land as it is they who will be paying the real price of the avaricious, dishonest behaviour of the present generation of property-owners and landlords.
March 26, 2020
Informative book which makes your blood boil. A book everyone in the UK should read. Could be more concise. Also screw rent controls just abolish landlords.
October 11, 2014
this was very interesting book it made me realise how little i knew about the realities of the soldiers when they landed on the beaches the personal stories of people and what a great loss of life there was i would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the second world war and the personal stories of people who lived through it
November 16, 2020
Overall OK. Most of the points are well made and hard to disagree with. Though I did flinch at times when I did strongly disagree with some of the correlations and causations (I can't remember which parts exactly).
April 16, 2016
Everybody in the uk should read this book.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews