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

I don't dispute there is a housing crisis, but it's not one that will simply be solved by relying on the private sector to build lots of expensive houses - that's not going to help people stuck in mouldy temporary accommodation.
George Monbiot's recent summary of the whole mess is very good, as is this one-page summary from JustSpace, an alliance of 80 community groups and grassroots campaigns in London.

This is so important. People get social housing at times in their lives when they are struggling, and as a country it's right that we support people at their most vunerable.

However, because it so hard to get, some people hang onto it once they are back on their feet, and then it's not available to those in highest need. We made the mistake of 'right to buy' which reduced housing stock, but maybe we need to get rid of 'lifetime tenancies' in social housing?

My mum grew up in a council house, with 4 bedrooms as she had 5 siblings. My Grandma lived in that house until she died at 96, all the children moved out by the time she was about 45, she lived in a 4 bed house on her own (my grandad died young). She was never asked to move, which I'm glad about on a personal level, but on a society level, that house should be used by a family, and once children are grown and moved out, should be passed onto another family.
She was offered the option to buy it for about 40k, when it's market value was at least 400k, and she declined, saying it needed to go to another family in need.

Our birthrate in the uk is 1.4 far below replacement rate. I am 32 years old and my peers are all professionals- lawyers (including one on 6 figures and on her way to earning 180k) , software developers, civil servants (we work in financial services), academics. I had a gender reveal party yesterday and everyone was excited about something so naff because it was the first baby in my peer group.

Most of my peers own their home and we live in London, I even know someone whose home was gifted (also a solicitor). We are all in our 30s, i am actually one of the younger ones and probably the lowest earning (my dh also earns below average for our peers group at 75k). They are not having kids because they lack money. Ironically they don't have kids or marry cos there is too much to lose and there is less time to date. Dh and I are lower earners but we married in early 20s and bought our london flat in our 20s (plus our lower earnings meant we had lower expectations re housing, just having a mortgage on 2 bed flat was enough) hence we could start trying earlier and therefore could conceive. Took us 9 years to get pregnant. We are having one child due to our fertility and health problems (gestational diabetes)

So given the middle and professional classes aren't producing, we need the poor to produce as many kids as they can so I hopefully still have a pension. I think the rich will have more children as they are status symbols but there aren't too many of them.

I'd go the other way and say we need more social housing. Provide plentiful well built secure housing for people and they can put their energy into making their lives better. Arse falls out of the rental market which makes it more affordable too. I just think the right to buy is an issue - if there's enough social housing you don't need it.

In our village 'locals' sold their old, cold, damp and drafty sea front cottages to 'óutsiders' wearing rose tinted glasses about living next to the sea, aand all the constant maintenance and hard work it involved. The rose tinted outsiders though these houses were worth a fortune, and the locals were only too happy that the outsiders bid up the value among themselves.

The locals move to the near by town, where all the jobs are and where prices were normal for the area, but there were many many new cars and holidays at the same time. Old cold money pits were swapped for cost efficient new builds, close to the amenities that the village never had. In the end the old Victorian primary school had to close, but with outsiders buying it for a small fortune, the council built a brand new school in the new town, with all brand new classrooms, sports facilities etc. The same happened to the doctors. All those who used to drive to an old doctors in the next village now walk to a brand new health centre in town.

The outsiders soon found out what it's like in these old houses and set about renovating them. The local builder has never had it so good and now employs more trades than ever before.

The old shop got replaced by a posh boutique for the outsiders and the pub became a 1* restaurant. The old village really busy in summer, but there no shortage of summer jobs for the DDs and their friends. Out of season it's nice to go to those places. Places that never existed before the outsiders came. Don't tell anyone, but they all have 'locals' discounts out of season.

Overall everyone seems to be a winner, but if you listened to one of two 'hard of thinking' types, this is now how it's all reported/seen, I saw crisis? What crisis?

I live in a small village when they built the new builds it brought in new life. I am a fan of housing.

That's as maybe. But we have had a housing crisis in Scotland for more than a decade. We don't have unprecedented levels of migration.

Here I know two farmers who sold off good arable land to developers for well over a million. That money was reinvested in the farm BTW.

We can't rely on other countries for food, especially with Climate Change.

You're happy to pay higher grocery prices so that UK farming is more profitable? That's why farmers are selling land.

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

If farmland is being built on, it's because farmers no longer need the land and sell it off to ensure they can keep their farms running.

I’m going to really put my neck out and say the problem is social housing and the expectation that the council
should house you. , everyone should aim to and try to own their own home. And if that means starting in a cheaper area or smaller house then so be it. And people shouldn’t be banging out 3/4/5 + kids if they don’t own their own home. Shouldn’t be relying on the govt to subsidise them.

Our village is the same. We are on the sixth major development in 5 years and the village would have doubled in size IF they were selling them. But they’re not because they’re not affordable housing and I think that’s the key. Yes there’s definitely a housing crisis. No the people who need homes can’t anywhere near afford any of the ones near me and probably don’t want to or can’t practically live in rural North Hertfordshire either. These developments have nothing to do with providing housing to those who so desperately need it and everything to do with lining the pockets of property developers. We have lost ancient agricultural land that will never come back into the bargain.

You mean lifetime lease?

They don't own the house, just the right to live in it until death or care home etc...(so 20 years approx.) then it reverts back to the company to be 'sold' again.

Also, can anyone answer why in England, old people can buy discounted housing? I live in Scotland where that isn’t the case but my sister was so frustrated when she wanted to buy but noticing that if you were a pensioner you could buy the same property for 50 - 100k less! I don’t get it 🤷🏻‍♀️.

You’re not being unreasonable. There’s a huge amount of new houses being built near me BUT it is in an area of deprivation where they need affordable rentable homes not a thousand 4 and 5 bed private homes. Funnily enough, the homes for sale that sell fast are ex-local authority semi-detached or terraced properties because that’s what most people can afford not the fancy new builds.

Me and my Children have just come out of 9 months emergency accommodation and are now in Temporary Accommodation for goodness knows how long. We had to re-home our cats. We had to get rid of a large chunk of our personal possessions and a lifetime of memories and watch the rest go into storage with no idea when we'd see it all again. No idea where in the country we would be put and what kind of conditions we'd be in, maybe one room in a filthy hostel full of crack heads miles away from our area. Saying goodbye to the lovely home we took our babies home to and decorated their nursery. The beautiful gardens where I watched my roses grow every year. Our lovely neighbours and the local children my children played outside with. How I wish this was all ""supposed". I'm really sorry you are so sick of it all, must be fucking dreadful for you. Let me know how you cope when telling your children we have to leave this home and we don't know where we are going next.

I agree op and near me we are gridlocked all the time even going to the local woods or pleasure actives are now over run and it's not fun.

I wouldn't mind if new hospitals and roads were put in but they arnt

Government can subsidize housing because they own 95% of land and mostly when they sell it its on a lease so they can reclaim it and build more housing for the next generations. The properties singaporeans buy are not an investment generally, you can only buy a government flat if you are married or above 35, you can't buy a government flat if you own private property even if its overseas (i cant buy as i own a london flat), you often can't sell in the first 5 years. Even if you buy private property, your second property has 20% stamp duty.

Government can do the forced savings thing because most singaporeans pay no tax. So instead of paying tax, they contribute to their pensions (20% plus 16% from employer which can be used for healthcare and housing). It is a small wealthy city where the government owns most land and many companies and lots of assets and it only had 3 million citizens to look after as 40% are foreigners. They can charge 100k for a certificate to own a car because 90% of the population lives within 0.5 miles of a metro station (and there are enough rich people there who can pay the prices) and if we had cheap cars like in uk, the traffic jams would be horrific and no one would be going anywhere..

It's very different here. I wish we had more council housing too but our set up is very different. Hence the government needs to provide pensions and healthcare because even if they didn't provide these things, we would never be able to have low tax cos we aren't a city state with absurdly high land values. And hence no money to build government housing so we rely on private sector who vyild what people want.

If we intend to wait for the boomers to die off, we will need to use existing housing stock more sensibly. Nobody ever seems keen to downsize though because they can't have exactly what they want. Far easier to tell everyone younger that they mustn't have what they want.

Where I live, a huge amount of the homeless that would be suitable for first time buyers and young families are being rented out as student lets and air B&Bs, so people are moving to more rural areas because those are the only places with normal houses.

Meanwhile, brownfield sites are left empty while the companies that own them sit and watch the value rise and eventually sell to developers who build either luxury student flats or aparthotels.

The planning departments need to issue change of use to allow repurposing of buildings! Developers cannot just move in. There are residential development zones and work zones! There needs to be change in zoning for creative use of buildings. Angela needs to tell them to get on with it!

My thoughts too!! Now that the baby boomers are dying off the population will reduce naturally so much of the throwaway housing being built now will be next to useless in the future.
Maybe Rachel from Accounts should be looking to tax landlords to help with costs. I'm well aware that some landlords are accidental as in they have inherited property but there are plenty of landlords who use the equity they have in various properties to purchase yet another house and charge massive rents to profit from their tenants. Our neighbours have had year on year rises for five years now to the point that they are considering moving onto a caravan site - where does it end? If they move, would someone be able to afford the rent without recourse to claiming housing benefit to help with costs - so money just goes round in circles with the taxpayer ultimately picking up the bill.
That said there is still a shortage of housing which needs to be addressed maybe the developers could change direction and buy up defunct hotels and office buildings and develop these into housing accommodation.

"I'm alright jack, but stuff the rest of you."

I do laugh at my ex-town.
for past 20 years have been striving to be a “CITY”
Lot of building homes with more employers and shops leaving the area.
Any apartments or conversions in “town” - are retiree flats many restrictions. Clearly town planners want town to look a certain way - no kids or families. No need for school. Skateboards banned as scare old people but drunk mobility scooters are ok.

Jobs: elderly need carers. Not much other jobs outside of building trade to build the houses for no-jobs people…. Or WFH. Thats the dream - a plastic new build for WFH. No driveway. No transport links.

Many empty shops - I wonder why landlords don’t drop rents low enough to get a tenant then thinking must be more valuable to keep it empty for some tax reason. Town now looks dirty, forlorn and depressing. Who would want to buy in the dead end town???

That's interesting, I wasn't aware of that.

However, the first people that jump to mind are the many young people living with their parents and doing very little of anything. Even students get almost 4 months off in summer which would enable them to do this if they wanted to. It certainly wasn't how I wanted to spend my summers (I worked but not outdoors), but then, I'm not the one objecting to bringing immigrants over to do it.