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Hello, I'm Matthew Price.

This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.

Every day we ask one big question about one big story.

Today does it matter if we can't afford to live in cities?

There aren't enough homes and the homes that do exist cost too much to buy certainly

and in some cases they cost too much to rent especially in the big cities where lots of people want to live. Now Lucy Hancock

is today's producer. Hello. And you've done the interview today as well.

Yes. If you live in London you know the housing crisis is bad, if you live in Bristol you know it's bad,

if you live in Manchester you know it's bad.

We often think about the housing crisis in really narrow terms, but there's actually a much bigger

picture the guy I interviewed is called James Cook he was a BBC correspondent in

LA now he's based in Scotland he's just on a story for BBC Scotland's The Nine

about the global housing crisis.

When I got to California, I was completely

expensive it was particularly to rent there.

And the more I kind of thought about it and looked at it

and investigated it a bit, the more I became convinced that people think of housing as very much local news you know a very local story about one place

But the more I looked into it the more it became clear that this wasn't just the case in Los Angeles although it might be a

particularly extreme example but there is a global housing crisis and the way it struck me in

LA is incredibly visual and actually really painful. The homelessness in

Los Angeles is completely staggering. You go down to a place called Skid Row and there are tent cities stretching for block

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