Separating property and housing market

In The Spectator, the ever-brilliant Rory Sutherland uses a 19th-century Barbados example to make an excellent economic point:

If the all-party Parliamentary Housing Sub-Committee were to embark on a week-long fact-finding tour of Barbados, it would create a tabloid scandal. Yet it might be a good idea all the same. For among the palm trees they will find remnants of a fascinating housing experiment which began almost 200 years ago, yet which affords a useful lesson for housing policy today.