Fire the over-priced policy analysts, number crunchers and economics whizzes, because I’ve solved the housing affordability crisis.

The solution is obvious: we need to ban home improvement shows.

The Block, Dream Home, My House Rules, and Location, Location, Location all need to be scrapped, and the television producers behind them closely monitored to make sure they don’t schedule another season of Grand Designs.

While we are at it, we should jail hosts Mark Richardson and Kevin McCloud, just to be on the safe side, because these are the people responsible for stoking the dream of home ownership to the point where someone paid $1.2 million for a pretty rough fixer-upper in Grey Lynn.

Should that fail, the government must urgently roll out inspectors at every hardware store across the nation to closely scrutinise purchases to ensure no one sneaks out a tin of paint to spruce up their house ahead of a possible sale.

Luckily for us, spying on New Zealanders was recently legalised, so the Government Communications Security Bureau can do its part by snooping on the public to find out who is planning to get a foothold on the property ladder, or even worse … buy an investment property.

All foreigners need to be stopped at the border and patted down for bundles of cash that will undoubtedly find their way onto the housing market.

At the same time, we need to deploy the army to round up all the estate agents. They are clearly complicit in the scheme to ramp up house prices (the clue is in the job title). Yes, shareholders in Trade Me will take a bath as property ad revenue drops off, but I am sure they will accept their losses stoically, knowing they have played a patriotic bit-part in solving the housing affordability crisis.

I know these measures may seem drastic and downright authoritarian, but certain sacrifices have to be made if we are to restore normalcy to the housing market.

The facts are clear. In the crunch between too many people chasing too few houses, people are the problem – irrespective of population growth, shrinking household size and a decades-long moribund new home construction rate.

That is why the solutions currently being put forward to tackle the crisis have focused on banning foreign buyers, limiting the ability to borrow, and a capital gains tax.

We must, at all costs, rein in the devil of demand. Because of course, we should never, ever, contemplate building more houses.

Really?

If you don’t think killing demand is the solution to the housing affordability crisis, please join us for the launch of Free to Build, our third housing report, on November 18.