To be sick of hearing about 'the housing crisis'?

Many people don't want to buy flats because they are leasehold (you only own the flat for x number of years) and there's no control on service charge increases.
Many blocks of flats are blighted due to cladding issues or other faults in the building. Eg wooden balconies, lack of fire proofing.
It's not known as 'fleecehold' for nothing.

Immigration is just one factor. However we don't have a large enough working age population to sustain the country's needs and THAT is something that a large section of the demographic seems to be sticking their head in the sand about. Who do you think is wiping bums in nursing homes and cleaning floors right now? It's not British people. We physically don't have enough people in the UK for whole industries from facilities management to nursing to construction. That's one reason why the British economy isn't growing (thanks in part to Brexit for that). The drop in the birthrate, coupled with the fact we all live longer, means that's unlikely to change any day soon (other than that people will be expected, and will have to work for longer). And yes those people do need homes. Slamming the doors to the UK is a) impossible anyway and b) creates more problems than it solves.

The vast majority of newbuilds are not on green belt. There is a major building project happening in my area which is on a bit of wasteland which used to be a provincial airfield. There was little nature and whatever was there was inaccessible to the public. They are now building a development which includes a sizeable park with a pond. We have no parks of that size in the area. In fact, we have almost no greenery as the area is devoted to shopping mall and giant manufacturer's warehouses. The way I see it, the new development is a massive improvement to the area.

Don't build on green fields or at least anymore. When they built my house it was different, that was fine.

There is a demographic problem, the country , and most of western Europe is getting older it needs younger workers to pay for triple lock. The only way to do that is bring people from other countries , they naturally want to bring family. Reform don't want to acknowledge this , it's busy banging on about boats. The alternative is they say stopping people coming in will push taxes up. Hardly a vote winner.

So, you’re correct it’s a contributing factor and something that needs to be openly discussed.

so let’s discuss how we cater for the immigrants we need. Where should the houses go? How do we ensure we adequately support the required infrastructure? How should we pay for the new doctors, schools etc?

it’s a valid debate, but not the one I think the op wants to have. Unless I’m mistaken they just don’t want houses in their village, and the solution is stop immigration…

Well go on then what's the solution from the people who think cutting immigration is racist?

Keep building to try and keep with the numbers moving here at the expense of the countryside until there is none left

Or not build anything and let rent prices continue to sky rocket so more entire families have to live all in one room?

They have no actual good solutions just mocking "farage gammons" or whatever it is you call people who disagree

Immigration is extremely relevant to the housing crisis though. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous and extremely unhelpful if you're serious about actually tackling the problem. It's all part of a complex picture of what drives supply and demand, especially when it comes to social and affordable housing.

You can bury your head in the sand and try to shut down productive discussion all you like but it just doesn't change facts.

I find it really difficult to hear people in rural area/small towns complain about new builds - while I appreciate it is a shock to the system, it just can't compare to the level of poor quality new estates I see in my area.

Inappropriate brown field sites really close to the motorway underpass, sites previously flagged as unsuitable for housing because of poor air quality which mysteriously have since had planning approved, sites which have had structural issues because they were never really appropriate to hold on anyway.

And yet still these houses get snapped up - I doubt the OP would want to live in these homes but all the complaints and blocks means that they get built and someone else has to live with the crap environment.

Selling off a public asset- council housing - to massively benefit one generation then leaving a desperate situation for those coming afterwards.
we have huge new build housing estates near us. Traffic is now gridlocked there’s no amenities.
And the last government issued 1.2 million visas last year alone, around 700,000 net population increase. And that wasn’t a one off. How can we hope to build to manage that increase?

It's the same in citys/towns as well . In my area there are massive new build tower blocks. 15/20 floors heigh . The area is very over crowded. It's not what it used to be . It feels dark even in the day time because the tower blocks are causing shadows /blocking the light it feels horrible.

Yes doctors/hospital/schools struggle . But that doesn't change the fact people need homes . As far as I'm concerned the families/children living in vermin /damp /mouldy /sharing bathrooms/kitchen often several in one room . Deserve a home regardless of the struggles of hospital/gp/schools.

Reductio ad absurdum is always a sign of a great argument…

You don't think millions of people moving here has affected house prices/rent prices? You don't understand supply and demand and mock other people you consider stupid because they have different opinions?

Or you think the solution is to build infinity houses to keep up with the amount of people moving here until every piece of grass is concreted over?

This! I live in a social housing association flat on a new development. I hate it. The flat is more like a prison block. Huge windows which allow no privacy so feel like they are putting all the poor people on show as some kind of freak show. The giant windows also create masses of condensation and mould in the winter, and then make the flat unbearably hot in the summer. You can definitely smell and hear your neighbours. There are no communal gardens or grassy areas. No balconies. For the first three years I lived here there were no parks nearby. Shops an hour walk away. No bus service for three years. Myself and every neighbour I have spoken to are depressed living here. The developers aren’t thinking about where people want to live or the well-being of young families. They are doing as little as they can get away with. To add insult to injury my rent is three times that of my parents in law’s lovely three bedroom council house with a very large garden.

Yeah hence why they're 'sick' of hearing about the housing crisis. All the fault o' them bluddy forriners innit. AND they take our jobs/wine/women. All we have to do is get Nigel Farage into No 10 to slam shut the gates to Albion and everything will be cupcakes and unicorns.

I agree with some of your points OP. I just don't think you made them well. Just building one type of housing that is still unaffordable to many whilst not improving infrastructure and services isn't good enough.

They have converted disused shops, the old job centre and a few other buildings into apartments in our local town. They look lovely and are close to the hospital and loads of businesses. Still no extra dentists or GPs though.

Because we have a population of 60+ million and rising. Have you seen the projections for 10 years time?
There has to be a massive house building programme.

Set out very plainly

Ah, your last paragraph gives it away
its an anti immigration point you’re trying to make
got it

There is a severe lack of affordable housing. Like the OP our small villages are being flooded with expensive housing developments that are unaffordable for locals.
Because we are on a main train line we have had an influx of people coming north to take advantage of what they see as cheaper housing. That’s their choice but it has caused prices to rise to an unaffordable level.
There are very few rental properties and these are not affordable to young people and families.
I agree this needs to change but housing must be set at a cost taken from the national minimum wage for it to be affordable

There sort of isn't enough housing for rich people though. Not in the sense that they'll be left homeless, but as they are pushed out out of one area they then end up buying in a cheaper area and those people get pushed out. And so they then move to a cheaper areas and it continues down the ladder until everywhere is gentrified and the people at the bottom have nowhere.

In a way this has always been part of life. Areas ebb and flow. But it's all pushing in one direction at the moment because there's such a shortage. And it's the poorer people who get screwed over.

We need social housing. There is nowhere left for the poor people to live: who largely do a lot of essential jobs that keep the country running. We need decent key worker housing.

It helps in the sense that the people currently in a three bed move into them, freeing up their place for people currently in a one bed, which then frees up the one bed for a FTB.

And maybe those people in the one bed had a toddler. So everyone is better off all round through the larger house being built.

We absolutely need new social housing too, but the more expensive stuff does help, just through increasing supply. And of course you need some strategic oversight so we have the right balance of different sizes of property.