With 13 months left until the general election, how can housing demonstrate its economic, social and political value?
Ruth Davison of the National Housing Federation was in no doubt speaking to the annual conference of the Housing Studies Association in York last week. 'It's time to stop researching and start broadcasting,' she told the assembled academics.
I'm not sure anyone in the audience was ready to go quite that far but her underlying point was well made. The evidence about the beneficial impact that housing can have across a vast range of fields is out there and the political parties seem at least for the moment prepared to listen. So why not shout about it?
The evidence and the politics both emerged in a debate I chaired at the conference on 'who is best placed to judge the value of housing – the state or the consumer'. It produced some expected and some very unexpected results.