Rishi Sunak seems to have realised a trick for pushing more building without confronting Tory Nimbyism. Under plans unveiled today, he’s going to ease restrictions on building in urban areas, where prices are most pressured and where Tory votes are rarely found. Councils missing their housing targets will be restricted in when they can refuse permission, and it will become easier to convert existing buildings into housing.

It’s a canny dodge. The Conservatives understand that rising house prices are threatening their future, with fewer younger people getting on the housing ladder. At the same time, however, big steps to resolve the crisis would mean a fight with ageing homeowners who already back the party. These latest moves avoid this dilemma.

The proposals would mean building properties more easily in inner cities, which tend to be overwhelmingly Labour. There will be few Conservative MPs or councillors to worry about getting in the way. It also likely means more building of densely-packed flats, which is good for the housing targets, and for the sorts of urban professionals the party should hope to be winning over. None of this is bad, but it is hardly going to solve the housing crisis.

In terms of supply, there is only so much that ‘brownfield first’ building can do. It is already some of the easiest land to get permission to develop and is often being used by developers already. In London, Manchester, and other major cities derelict industrial land is usually the first to be transformed to housing anyway. There are only so many of these sites, and it’s unclear how much extra the new policy will free up.

At the same time, permission is not the only issue with brownfield buildings. Sites can be expensive to clear, especially if they have been contaminated by previous use. They are often awkward to access and design properties for, driving up the final prices. Supplying them with infrastructure can also be expensive. Equally, converting existing premises can be costly and the results are awkward to live in – many office-to-housing conversions sound more like JG Ballard’s High Rise than high-end housing.

There is also a demand issue. Inner-city apartments will only be part of the solution to the housing crisis. They work well for the young and urban but can easily be cramped for families. Parking is often an issue for those who work unsocial hours, have kids to cart around, or where public transport is insufficient. Others just simply want the choice of a wider range of properties – especially with a garden, or a space for a family to grow. Brownfield first will not satiate these needs, and it ignores how unaffordable property is in the suburbs and the countryside.

There’s nothing bad about liberating space in the cities. Planning restrictions everywhere are almost punitive in their extent. They make building much-needed housing a more lengthy and expensive process. Cities are no exception to this and these plans are perhaps the most Sunak can get away with while making the local impact a Labour problem. The Prime Minister is, at least, thinking about this and doing it astutely. But it misses the scale and the prevalence of the problem.

This remains, at best, a piecemeal solution. It doesn’t offer the pipeline of properties (by some estimates, as much as 4 million) needed to meaningfully correct the housing crisis, nor does it offer the variety of properties the market demands. It remains hung up on the idea of the ‘right homes, in the right places’ without reckoning that we need more homes of almost every type almost everywhere. It is clever, but it is also cautious.

For Sunak, this is calculated. It is a way of throwing those who believe in more housing something without risking his political base. The Nimbies of the Tory greenbelt will be untroubled by these measures. So too will the backbench MPs who are ready to block almost any proposal on their patch. It is perhaps the most he can get away with in the circumstances, but it is unlikely to be enough for the bigger aim of making home ownership affordable for younger generations.

The housing crisis is decades in the making, and tweaks will not untie it. Politically difficult decisions will have to be made which take on those who have benefitted most from rising prices – and that tends to mean Tory voters. This places Sunak and his strategists in a bind, balancing the party’s current electoral hopes against its long-term future. Today’s announcements show that the top of the party is starting to reckon with this, but much of it feels like too little, too late.