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

@Decisionsdecisions1 your post was simultaneously both patronising and also demonstrated a huge lack of understanding about rural communities and planning issues. You do not understand the other side of the coin.

it’s not just about our ‘cutesy village’. It’s the lack of infrastructure. My village is projected to have another 2000 homes built in the next 5 years. There is space, yes, green fields that were farms.

BUT there isn’t the space in local schools, doctors surgeries, dentists. The sewage system is not fit for purpose and already floods when it rains, so on the corner of my road those houses get sewage in their front gardens. This is going to become catastrophic when the 3 separate new developments are built just on the fields off our one road. Which is small, by the way, and 2 cars can’t pass at the same time, so god knows how they are going to cope with the extra congestion of hundreds of new vehicles. The way the sites are designed means there isn’t actually an access road, meaning large vehicles can get onto the development (so no ambulance/ fire access as there is no turning circle). All the wheelie bins have to be brought down to the road to be emptied on bin days, as the bin lorry can’t get up the road. but there isn’t space for them to be left safely, so it causes an obstruction.

The children can’t just ‘go to the next nearest primary school’ as it’s 5 miles away down country roads. There are no bus services. I already have to drive 45 minutes to my dentist, as there is nowhere closer locally.

Infrastructure does not immediately follow development. It takes years. Who’s going to replace the sewage system? No one.

in sure in your town you have your own issues. But don’t be so insulting about rural issues either.

I agree. More mobility in the housing market would be wonderful.

I agree we need flats. Nice clean, affordable flats that one person can afford to rent on their own. Flats with parks close by and trees to offset any possible gloom.

@GoldfinchFeather I'm sick of hearing that unprecedented levels of migration have absolutely nothing to do with this.

It’s simple math like at your dinner table.

You can only invite the number of guests for which you have chairs.

Invite and house thousands and thousands and you need to build them shelter.

Angie thinks we can employ loads of MEN to build the houses.

Build the houses in the countryside where there are no jobs.

Build them with no driveway, no parking because cars are bad even in countryside where there is no public transport.

Don’t build any schools nearby, and don’t provide public transport because they will ride bikes to school. Even the pregnant woman with 2 toddlers will walk or cycle the miles to school.

Labour, you can tell from the WhatsApp group hate people. Not sure why they are in politics other than for perks and to punish people with good jobs or aspirations.

They seem more communist in hatred of academia (unless it’s anti colonial or queer), hatred of investment, etc etc

And people don’t downsize because every time you move house you have to o poo at stamp duty. There’s a reason why stamp duty is derided by each and every tax expert of any political party as being an insanely stupid tax. Why on earth isn’t it binned????

The same is happening where I live. In fact villages and towns are being joined up by new housing . Agricultural land is being used. It's scary. We can't rely on other countries for food, especially with Climate Change. Other counties my not ,in the end be able to feed us, just themselves. In this area the new builds are sold immediately . Builders clearly choose areas that are popular. Not Governments. The Councils just see more Council tax and never say no!

You're sick of hearing about it because you have a house....
Unless people want to start using existing housing stock more efficiently (downsizing), then construction is the only solution. Don't moan if you're not doing anything to help the situation.

From this article - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41901297

Although this page from the Government makes it a bit clearer and is probably more accurate - it says '8.6% of land in England is of developed use, with 91.2% of non-developed use and the remaining 0.2% being vacant.', but developed use includes transport (so roads etc) and residential is just 1.2%.

Just thinking out loud here as I don’t know, but surely if it’s farmland somebody owns that in the first place? Developers can’t just come in and build, they would need to purchase that land from whatever farming family was in there in the first place and felt they can no longer sustain it.

It annoys me because the solution seems building all over the place but never managing to build homes that homeless people actually need and can afford and not enough infastructure .

Developers would pay to redevelop older buildings if they had an economic incentive to do so. If you made it more difficult and expensive to build shiny new builds on fields then the brown field sites would become more attractive to them. It's just basic economics!

People may generally prefer houses but they inevitably would rather have a flat than no home at all. I also think you completely underestimate that our changing demographics (less people having kids, more old people and people living alone) means that flats will actually be the ideal housing stock in the future for lots of households. It makes sense to use sites that already have lots of amenities in the centres of cities and towns for housing. The infrastructure is normally already there with good access to public transport links, shops etc. It is also a way of regenerating areas that are currently run down. Your alternative or building houses on green friend land would just lead to the towns and cities essentially being abandoned which is absolute madness!

We moved to a village 25 years a go .
Since then three huge new housing estates have been built on farmers land ..I mean utterly huge .so the once lovely village is now 3 times the size it was when we moved here ..they have built one extra primary school and one extra secondary school..and no ,zero extra shops ,no extra doctors,no cinema,no bowling, nothing to do ,nowhere to go ....but oh my god ,a million and one barbers....which makes me think the men here are obsessed with short hair ,or the barbers are a front for something else ..
Village totally ruined either way

Its certainly frustrating but its also very complex. You need a lot of capital as well as actual workers to build suitable housing for a range of needs. Realistically, Government needs to fund it - private providers exist to make a profit.

There is a housing crisis but it won't be addressed if they don't build the right type of housing. Loads of over-priced, badly-built 'executive' homes are not the answer - we need lots of affordable flats, it's the most economic use of space and money.

I'm also worried about the countryside being absolutely fucked and the UK becoming one massive Wimpey homes estate but I think there are ways of doing this sustainably. Whether Labour will achieve this is another thing altogether - I certainly hope so.

Around here it is farmland that is being built on, we don't have any empty waste lands but that doesn't seem to be stopping them

Sorry that people needing homes if bringing you down 🙄

2% is that true? If so that makes me feel a bit better about the volume of building

@insomniaclife a small percentage of houses on all new build estates have to have affordable housing. What it means is a few will be Housing association which is the ‘ new council’ and some will be available as shared ownership or as reduced housing for key workers, my friends DS has recently secured a key worker house. There was over 100 applications for 2 houses. It’s a 3 bed house and he is a single male keyworker so I have no idea what the rationale is for choosing.

Less than 2% of England is built on, so we're not into 'the entire country looks like a carpark' territory just yet. And there IS a crisis, whether or not you believe it. And the ways to solving it are varied and nuanced and some of it involves building a lot more houses - yes, councils absolutely could do change of use on city centre buildings and create what would inevitably be more flats, but who is developing them and paying for it? And, more to the point, who is buying or renting them? Lots of flats are not the solution you think they are - they only suit a particular type of person/family and the majority of FTBs don't want to buy flats given the horrors of leasehold and insane service charges and the cladding scandal and the fact that flats don't tend to increase in value as much as houses do. Councils also don't tend to want social housing blocks of flats in city centres - they want (and the people they're trying to house want) houses.

It’s not just housing that’s the issue, it’s the knock on effect of having exorbitant housing that’s the issue!

None of my young professional friends are having kids as they don’t feel grown up enough as they can’t afford a house.

people living with their parents still struggle to form meaningful relationships.

If you do have a house you spend every waking moment earning to pay for that house. If you rent, ditto. Can’t work time or have a sahp. Too expensive. Our kids suffer from having stressed, absent parents.

Its dire for everyone’s mental health, the stress about how to fulfil your basic need of having a roof over you head, or stressing about how your kids will ever manage to do it.

You want me to pay more tax??? Can’t afford it. I spent too much on housing. And so the public services suffer.

No one buys UK shares cause all of our money is tied up in housing.

Generational inequality and the resentment this brings.

The need for a bank of mum and dad, and the resentment of those that don’t have this leg up.

All of these problems could be addressed simply by reducing the cost of housing in this country. I hope my children leave to find a better standard of living. The UK is dire.

Rent controls have been proven to be ineffective by countless studies. Lots of places that have tried to introduce them have seen unintended and adverse consequences so I would be extremely reluctant about advocating them as a potential solution. We need to be realistic and focus on what could actually work in the long term.

Yanbu!

So many second and third homes and Air BnB properties. It's absolute craziness to just build over more countryside when this situation exists. Other European countries are starting to address the problem, I have no idea why we can't.

Empty flats bought as investments in London.

Empty flats above shops (I see literally thousands of them from the top deck of the bus as I travel around London, I'm sure it's the same in many cities).

Also relationship breakdowns mean more families living in two households. I'm not sure what the solution is to this but it partly answers the question why so many new small unit homes are needed.

We can't afford to have a rising population. Why do we just shrug and try to accommodate it? we are a hugely overcrowded island as it is.

Most developments respect that nature needs to be preserved and will build parks and lakes to house local wildlife and attract new. Most land in UK is not used for farming in the first place.

The development I’m on was used to dig stuff up from the ground and once that was done the land was abandoned for decades and just left.