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

Whilst working in a school the number of families who were relocated out of the area and away from family, friends, school and job was distressing. First caused by the bedroom tax, and by private landlords upping the rent by disgusting amounts or evicting tenants. I knew families who were living in their cars or in one case riding night buses as temporary accommodation meant they would be split up.

I’m happy to be corrected, I just remember his speeches on it selling it as giving freedom to people in receipt of benefits. Which it obviously did, it just meant being a landlord became more attractive (especially with interest only mortgages) which fueled the buy to let market. It also helped keep their waiting lists down.

because they should have been building social housing. Not starting this shit show. Where millions of pounds go into landlords pockets. Private landlords shouldn’t need to pickup the shortfall.
believe me I am thinking of the kids. Private rentals aren’t secure or stable. It’s shit renting with kids

We are nowhere close to "replacement rate" with birth rates so it absolutely is not a case of people having more than one baby per adult. We have the opposite problem. As does almost every country on Earth, outside sub-Saharan Africa.

Interestingly there is no record of any country or civilisation in history having managed to reverse population decline once it sets in because the effect is exponential. That is why competent Governments are extremely worried about this and doing everything they can to reverse it before it is too late and there is population collapse.

What's wrong with that? Benefits do not help with mortgages and council waiting lists are like ten years in most areas so where do you expect someone broke with kids to live? I mean fair enough if you think fuck the adult but what about the kids?

@twinmum2007 that's not the case. Our birth rate is falling. It's now at its lowest since 1977. The lowest before that was 1940.

The population growth is due to extended life expectancies plus immigration. The extended life expectancies are actually masking how significant impact of the falling birthrate is, which will create further huge problems with a growing proportion of elderly people compared to working-age population.

Currently much of this gap is being plugged with immigration but that isn't a long-term solution because birth rates are dropping off a cliff in every country outside sub-Saharan Africa, so options for immigrants will be very limited in future decades. This is why many developed countries are implementing family-friendly policies to encourage people to have more children (free childcare, tax breaks, additional tax allowances if you have children, etc). The UK is doing nothing about this (just as it does with every long-term and entirely foreseeable issue like NHS, pension and social care funding models, water security, food security, environmental change protection measures e.g. flood defences) so it will not be a pretty picture in a few decades' time.

In terms of current housing the pressures are due to necessary immigration due to bad planning, poor education and resulting skills shortages; plus people living longer, plus many more people living alone than in previous generations; plus terrible policies penalising landlords with a tax regime so punitive that many have left the market so there are fewer properties available to rent; plus less strict laws on foreign property ownership than most comparable countries; plus very high taxes on property purchases compared to other countries therefore bad distribution of housing type to household size; plus terrible quality of new build houses due to poor regulation so few people wish to buy them.

Ramp up building on brownfield sites extensively...Building in greenbelt or rural areas only when there is proven exceptional need. Forward-thinking approach to planning, not just plonking hundreds of thousands of new homes without prior consideration to infrastructure and amenities. Really, before any big new build, that should be the first step.

This is exactly what the Government intends to do with its reform of planning laws/restrictions, encouraging brownfield and greybelt development over green belt greenfield sites.
And our population growth isn't just about immigration, illegal or otherwise (and illegal is a fraction of the legal migration numbers) it's about general population growth. If 2 people meet and have 2 babies, then those babies go on to meet 2 other people and have 2 babies each....

@BourbonsAreOverated definitely not Tony Blair - we got a small amount of housing benefit in London back in 1996

I’m no Tory fan, however. Wasn’t it Tony Blair who introduced using housing benefit in private rentals.
whilst thatchers right to buy started it, that policy continued the issues we see now.
sticking plasters that fix short term issues, but create great floods in the long run

edited to add. No successive government built the number of social housing we needed. Regardless of colour.

If you voted tory, it's your fault anyway.
They have ruined the country, not immigrants. People are just too stupid and hateful to see it.
The housing crisis is all down to government policies over the years. But you are right about building new houses. I'd compulsory purchase buildings that have been empty for over a certain period and refit and rent them to the homeless and hotel people.

ive Written to government. I’ve written to my mp. I’ve helped shelter with campaigns.
there is no political will as it feels a first world problem. You’ve a roof over your head, what are you moaning about

and that’s true.
but, with that unstable roof comes a lot of mental health issues especially for the kids. That’s before you look at th long term where there isn’t a paid up house to retire in, there isn’t a home to sell for care fees and those children will not inherit anything either.

In some ways the OP is right. I live in the SW and there are houses going up all over the place, BUT even the 'affordable' homes aren't on local wages. The only people who can afford them are moving down from elsewhere and since many are elderly that puts a strain on local services. Wages down here do not compare with the SE and what might seem reasonable in some areas isn't here. If the government want to solve what really is a housing crisis they need to do whatever it takes to provide social housing, whether that's newbuilds, conversions or compulsory purchase of empty properties. I mention the last because of the huge unfinished developments (due to the bankruptcy of get rich quick builders) in my area.

It's more a matter of sustainability and not relying on foreign countries for our essentials. If that costs us more, then so be it.

With climate change and Worldwide population increase, food and water WILL become in higher demand, and that means the countries with the resources (i.e. suitable farmland etc) WILL be able to charge more AND choose who they sell their scarce commodities to.

Food "may" be cheap today because of cheap imports from developing countries, but as demand increases or supply decreases, the price WILL rise.

As developing countries grow richer and/or their populations increase, they will have a greater demand of food and will be willing to pay and compete against other countries for it!

If the UK has built on too much farmable land, then it's buggered isn't it? We'd be at the mercy of foreign governments, at the mercy of wars, supply chain disruption (look at the impact of the Evergreen blockage of the Suez canal on the supply chain!), pandemics, etc. Of course, it's impossible for the UK to produce all our own food, it never has and never will, but we need to maintain the ability to produce a fair amount of it to at least provide basic nourishment even if that's literally bread, milk, potatoes, meat, and the usual crops we can produce in the UK. Maybe not at the levels needed for thousands of calories a day, but at least to facilitate some kind of "rationing" of enough food to stop us dying from hunger.

Or do you want us to end up like some African countries where hundreds of starving people gather round an aid lorry begging for a bag of rice??

We have a continuous history of government of any major party, who could pull levers to influence this, being of the landowning or landlord class themselves. Politicians whatever their background aren’t going to alienate the votes of those who are in those classes. Or the party funding. They just don’t really relate to those who rent. Until they think it will politically penalise their parties to not help renters, it will not change. So they need to hear from renters and groups who represent renters in far greater numbers.

Theres a big cultural gap and a lot of cultural change needed in the UK. More renters need to unite and lobby politically because they are going to be in the ascendant based on their age and number and we (regardless of rent or ownership) all need to look at campaigning charities like Shelter and Generation Rent and support them.

It needs to become socially acceptable for people to be a good landlord. It doesn’t help to just demonise all landlords. Letting agencies need to be regulated massively and bad practice cracked down on.

I think you will find that one of the reasons renting is more expensive is that landlords are pulling out.
that explains the last few years, (as well as increased mortgage costs for landlords being passed on which pushes the overall rental up)
but it doesn’t explain the years before when every Tom dick and Harry became a landlord because interest rates were so low.

If you have spent so much in rent, could you not have got a deposit from somewhere?

we are lucky enough to have what most would see as a decent deposit, it’s the loan to wage borrowing amount that’s the problem. So our “deposit” would have to make up the shortfall. So actually our deposit would go from the 20k or so you’d need to being 100,000’s

A lot of good points have been made, but literally no-one has pointed out that our population rises every year. Demand for housing exceeds supply and it is impossible to build our way out of this.

UK deaths and births have equalised. UK population growth is now coming entirely from net immigration. Migration is fine, people should be able to leave this country to live elsewhere and others should be able to come here to live. But until arrivals equal departures, together with equal numbers of births and death, our population will never stabilise and we will never be able to house everyone satisfactorily.

@BourbonsAreOverated I think you will find that one of the reasons renting is more expensive is that landlords are pulling out. There’s fewer private rental properties, especially owned by small scale landlords. The driver of this is inability to get the property back if you need it. Plus the mortgage hikes and Covid rent arrears. It’s not an entirely attractive business proposition.

People always did stay in family homes. When I was younger no one downsized unless they needed the money. Most people we knew didn’t as getting a bungalow was impossible. They are still at a huge premium around here so there’s money to be found, not saved! My friends are looking - 3 bed semi to a 2 bed bungalow and they need £100,000 plus. So it’s inevitable they don’t move.

If you have spent so much in rent, could you not have got a deposit from somewhere? I know a 2 bed in my nearest large town is £1300 a month plus now so you live in a very expensive area. A few years ago it was £850 so I see the issue.

I can see renting into 50s as a single person is an issue but so many younger people expect to buy on their own and it’s not possible for many.

I was going to say, are there that many people on single incomes trying to buy? Then I remembered i was listening to a radio 4 thing about how families and relationships have changed. More single families and more (happily) single women in their 40’s/50’s+
shouldn’t they be able to have a secure home too?

it’s all gone wrong somehow as people are in the wrong homes.people who should be in secure social housing are renting privately. Which means more landlords. Landlords are buying up starter homes and flats, as returns are better. Which pushes the price up and further out of reach.
Older people not wanting to downsize as smaller homes don’t offer the savings they once did or aren’t attractive enough. Or maybe want to hang on to it for their renting children.

like many renters, we rent and are basically still renting the starter homes (despite moving) because we’ve never “moved up” as rents just increase. We’ve rented for nearly 20 years now, yet have never got the bigger home you would if you owned. Weve spent over £350,000 on rent.

Not opposed to building in urban areas but even proposals to convert former industrial sites and car parks etc draw NIMBY opposition.

As for the people who say "we worked hard to afford a nice home away from other people and now it's our right to preserve that even if it means other people not having homes" - words fail me.

So why are we building huge swathes of houses for sale? No social housing is being built or bought in my area yet five thousand homes are being built all private they keep saying it's because of the homeless but how are they going to afford a £400,000 home? Double the price of my house just across the road from me less square footage less garden no parking oversubscribed schools oversubscribed Dr's and no park because it's next to a nature reserve and that counts as a park for regulation purposes

of course it would, this shouldn’t be allowed. I’m so sorry.

This was the point I was trying to make. If you look at 1930’s and 40’s developments. You had a mixture of homes, maisonettes, semis, terraced and detached, bungalows. Decent gardens and driveways. Shops and places of work. As well as schools, doctors and hospitals.
they were places people wanted to move to, they were places you could live out your life and downsize / upsize as needed. Whilst we don’t have the land to do that scale of development again, we can certainly take note of some of the principals.

A big factory was demolished a few years ago in our town. About 250 houses are now being built on it. Mixture of 2 and 3 bed houses with 2 very small blocks of apartments. That seems ideal, not thousands of houses so the entire feel of a place changes, I’m in a town of about 25,000 and it’s using a brownfield site.

The trouble is, most homes that are being built are not forever homes. They are cramped with hardly any outdoor space so we are creating a system where people are needing to move more often. It's a vicious cycle but better quality homes with more space, will actually mean there are less people desperate to move all the time. Greedy building developers creating overpacked housing estates when far nicer areas could be developed in keeping with their surroundings.