We are pleased to announce that entries for the 2018 Breakthrough Prize are now open!

One of the greatest issues facing the United Kingdom at present is the cost and inaccessibility of housing for young people. Home ownership rates – even amongst middle income earners – have more than halved in the past 20 years, and as prices continue to rise there seems to be little political appetite for real reforms. Those efforts that have been made often bog down in local opposition to new housing projects and the unwillingness of governments of all political stripes to take on entrenched interests.

But how can we have a property-owning democracy without property owners? The Richard Koch Breakthrough Prize is looking for essays to help answer how we can find a new, market-based policy to alleviate the UK’s housing shortage, and to rejuvenate our property owning democracy, while retaining its popularity.

A tall order, but we know that the idea to unlock the housing crisis is out there.