build homes on vacant public land?

[MsGreying]

Where does Andy Burnham want to build houses?

Vacant public land.
What is that?
Parks? Cemeteries? Allotment sites?

There's an article on the telegraph about his Manchester loan scheme turned out and how little affordable housing was built

There are lots of brownfield sites which could be developed.

Houses do need to be built. The current housing situation in the UK is completely untenable.

The last one here is going to be built on.

Well obviously not cemeteries, that's where people are buried The Telegraph is scrapping the barrel with this scaremongering.

He means brownfield sites that are in public ownership. There are thousands of them - old barracks, closed schools, unused NHS sites, old markets, unused car parks, empty offices.

There was a school merger in our area as roll numbers dropped, the site was turned into housing.

What's wrong with this idea? I thought regeneration was a good thing? I thought we wanted more housing?

Do you prefer things to just fall into disrepair rather than build new homes?

What do you mean 'the last one here'?

It's not the last one in the whole of the UK.

@MsGreying What’s frequently overlooked is the cost of cleaning up Brownfield sites. In areas of high cost housing, it’s worth it. In areas of low cost housing it’s more problematic as it leads to higher build costs. You never find the brownfield sites are where people want to live either. Also, these are not public land sites. They could be if CPOs were used but that costs money too. As for other public land, it’s meant to be for all of us. Why should people lose this asset?

There could be a lot more homes built if pp was given more quickly. Housing associations have to borrow money to build and that’s not cheap either. Burnham didn’t build in Manchester, house builders did. He will need to do a lot more to remove prohibitive costs and find land. If it was easy, it would have been done.

There are loads of brownfield sites where I live. At the end of my street there is the site of a school that was knocked down, it’s just been an overgrown rubble pile for years.

@SweepSqueaks So why has the council not sold it? Does your councillor know? Might provide a few homes.

I imagine there is some dodgy deal going on. Yes, everyone knows, it’s a big site.

@SweepSqueaksThey just need to sell it. This type of sale happens everywhere and they need to maximise the sale price. Of course it might be owned by someone else - an educational trust or the church? Councils don’t always own the land schools were built on.

Woild be better to bring the hundreds of thousands of long-term empty homes back into use www.actiononemptyhomes.org/facts-and-figures

@ButlerianJihadNow No it would not. The state acquiring legitimately purchased possessions and redistribution is communism. It’s not what a civilised state should do and it would immediately drive away investors in the uk. We need growth from business, not even more business and movers and shakers leaving. Lose your property - what next? Your art? Your business interests? Taking property is a step too far.

Actually it would be perfectly legal. There are laws on the statute books that allow for it. Would it be worse than people dying on the streets for lack of housing, as currently happens?

Locally the biggest area that could be redeveloped is the high street. So many empty shops that either become charity shops or fake shops. If the three quarters of the high street became housing and only real shops existed it would massively help