Concerned about Labour’s plans to build more houses

[Dongdingdong]

First of all - I’m in broad support of Labour’s manifesto and am very happy to hear that they want to build hundreds of thousands of council houses if they win the election.

BUT I’m concerned about WHERE these homes will be built. I don’t want to see wildlife destroyed and swathes of green land concreted over and covered in ugly roads and houses.

If Corbyn commits to building these homes on brownfield sites within towns, cities and industrial sites then I will 100% support that and then some.

But they shouldn’t be built at the expense of the environment.

AIBU?

Don’t be worries, be happy families will have houses

More actual humans = more actual houses. Where do you expect everyone to live as we live longer and have more kids? YABU. Would you advocate for dog shelters? If yes then people need shelter too. #priorities

And where do you think your house was built? Upon land that animals didn't need anymore? Get a grip!

It’s going to be further urbanization of a small island. UK is already a concrete jungle

Maybe they can build on some golf courses that no fucker needs

My house is small and doesn't take up huge amounts of space. Building huge, oversized houses on former farm land is not environmentally friendly or sustainable. Building small houses which suit the needs of the family - 3 bedrooms is sufficient for families with 1 or 2 children. They don't need, and shouldn't have, big 5 bedroomed houses.

I definitely agree with not building yet more enormous 5 bed homes with a foot between them so they can be called detached. There is a whole street of them in my town for about £650k and they have been finished and unsold since January 2018. If they'd built a third more 3 beds on the same land they'd be fully sold and occupied.

Do you live in a house?? What's so special about you that you're allowed a house and other people aren't? There would have once been fields and wildlife where your house sits.

It's all well and good saying build on brownfield but it's very costly to remediate and generally located in employment zones. People want to live in residential areas with access to existing services. Particularly those who have little money.

More housing saturating the market means house prices go down overall and people can actually afford suitable homes.

It's disgusting that children are homeless, living in hostels and b&b's with their whole family in one room and vulnerable people are literally dying of cold on the streets.

To be quite honest, people's lives are more important than loosing a relatively insignificant percentage of land.

I fucking hate Corbyn but I fully agree we need more affordable homes.

Go and stand outside right now for 10 minutes without your coat, then walk back in to your warm home, perhaps you'll get some sense of how it would feel to not have one and not begrudge others.

More housing saturating the market means house prices go down overall and people can actually afford suitable homes.

But that doesn't apply when the market is saturated with huge houses that people can't afford. They need to be normal, 3 bedroomed houses that are being built.

Ugh. A lot of Greenfield land is no more special than the brownfield sites nobody minds being built on

To be quite honest, people's lives are more important than loosing a relatively insignificant percentage of land.

The survival of the planet is more important than the lives of people. Secondly the life of any creature is just as important as any human.

we need to build houses where they are needed and in some cases new towns with all the necessary infrastructure whole rural areas are depopulating as no jobs the whole thing needs to be integrated so they are businesses shops schools medical centres playing fields, wooded areas, nurseries bungalows for the elderly, care facitiies, a cemetery, allotments, transport links community buildings which can act as a site for yoga, chess, badminton clubs sometimes; churches or mosques or other place of worship some days and as a theatre other days and a scout hall etc so people can truly be born live and die without being shifted huge distances for basic needs
we don't need loads of executive homes ( we may need a few 4 bed houses) we need a mixture of one and 2 bed flats, 2-3 bed homes with gardens, suitable bungalows for the elderly

Even if immigration was causing a space shortage in the UK (which it absolutely isnt - only circa 6% of England is built on) that would free space up in another area ...

Yes, but that's already built over. They also need homes here, so that won't free up any green spaces.

Also, immigrants come and go, so demand isn't constant.

Homelessness figures here

www.homeless.org.uk/facts/homelessness-in-numbers/rough-sleeping/rough-sleeping-explore-data

5 000 rough sleepers in England, according to that, so not exactly the need of hundreds of thousands of homes needed. That's tiny fraction of the empty flats in every London borough.

Building of housing is not for people, it's because it creates jobs and keeps the unions happy.

If we keep building we will increase air pollutions and will accelerate global warming and we will add to the thousands of empty flats everywhere.

We need realistic figures, not a knee jerk reaction.

The problem is there's only so much space to build houses (much land tends not to be suitable). And that land which isn't suitable for housing is usually also unsuitable for farming.

We can't carry on building over our food source ad infinitum. And nor can we expect that other countries will produce our food for us indefinitely (environmentally unstable for them and us).

There is already too much built on floodplains - just look at the devastation in the north recently.

Sensible house building on brownfield sites is a must. But once you lose greenfield farming land and vital ecosystems you won't be able to return them to their natural state for decades or centuries. We need to think very carefully before continuing to consume this finite resource.

Developers don’t want to build on brownfield sites. It costs more and the resulting homes are less desirable and sell for less. They want to build on nice pristine green fields and make the maximum profit.

The national planning framework already says that brownfield sites should be prioritised. It makes no difference - developers still propose to build on green fields, and it’s difficult for the council to refuse because they are forced to accept pretty much any housing that contributes towards their required quota. If they say no then some inspector from London gets called in to overrule them on appeal.

YABU, I understand your point but there are far, far too many homeless people in this country. They need prioritising

YABU I'm afraid. I'm shocked to see the amount of homeless people in our town in recent years, something drastic needs to be done.

I take it you haven't seen Pritti Patels proposal intending to make even more people homeless, and then they are expected to disappear, like they did in ireland. This new law will mean the homeless being moved on all the time too. The problem is they've had years of convincing everyone that those at the bottom or marginalised deserve to be The undeserving poor.

www.travellerstimes.org.uk/news/2019/11/gypsies-and-travellers-react-inhumane-government-crackdown-unauthorised-camps

YANBU

@ChardonnaysDistantCousin you do realise that rough sleepers only make up a tiny percentage of homeless people in the UK?

Do you have any clue how many families are currently living in bed and breakfasts or temporary accommodation? Or how many people are sofa surfing?

i dont believe they can build that many houses, so dont worry.

The survival of the planet is more important than the lives of people.

Are you actually serious?? People are living in disgusting conditions, dying of hypothermia, and you think leaving them with out homes is the way to save the bloody planet? The people already exist, the homes don't. I take it you personally are carbon neutral though, right?

Secondly the life of any creature is just as important as any human.

That's utterly ridiculous. I'm fairly certain you'd put the life of your family over an ant?

Do you have any clue how many families are currently living in bed and breakfasts or temporary accommodation? Or how many people are sofa surfing?

OK, how many? Do you have realistic numbers?

Are you actually serious?? People are living in disgusting conditions, dying of hypothermia, and you think leaving them with out homes is the way to save the bloody planet?

If you had any comprehension of the natural world whatsoever you'd know that it's entirely normal for animal populations - of which humans are but one - to end up suffering the consequences of their own over expansion.

Did you never study basic food chain examples? Or hear anything about the decline of bee populations that mean we're all royally fucked?

It's seriously disturbing how much shrugging off of human population growth there is in this thread, like the rest of the planet just has to budge up to make home for more unremarkable members of this species. I count me and mine in that. It's a personal tragedy to me if I or my loved ones suffer for it, but certainly not a planetary one.

In our area, the Labour MP now candidate is supporting a plan to build 2000 homes on greenfield. In an area with terrible traffic problems already.