Younger people should be rewarded for lockdown via affordable housing

[Ordree]

As others have noted, young people (not just those in frontline roles) are making enormous sacrifices to protect others, mostly but not exclusively from much older age groups. They will be bequeathed a damaged planet, a ruined economy and they will have done further damage to their mental health by staying indoors for months on end. They are the ones paying older people's pensions when they won't have anything like the same financial security to look forward to themselves. Yes I know older people paid their elders pensions during their working lives, bit never has there been such an imbalance. As the economy is likely to be ruined short to medium term anyway, would it not be reasonable to start the biggest givernment-funded housebuilding programme ever, allow younger people who have just bought to write off negative equity losses against tax, and essentially redress some of the appalling imbalance between generations and classes?

It’s not the person who is made redundant, it’s the position. A hospital can’t make a nurse redundant and then hire another nurse to do the same job.

If a company have stopped making widgets they can make all the widget makers redundant. Because the widget maker job doesnt exist .

Or if they only need 5 and not 50 widget makers ( because of reduced demand ) they can make 45 of them redundant. They can’t just choose which 45 randomly, they need to have criteria and go through a process.

I’m not buying redundancy either. Not when there are 40k nursing vacancies and experienced nurses are highly prized.

a woman in 1970s Britain and the general unfairness between males and females and rich and poor

This is why I don’t feel aggrieved to be in this generation and don’t feel there’s any unfairness. Much better time for women.

Each generation makes sacrifices not just the young OP

I know a nurse who was made redundant as well. It was about five years ago. Her husband was also made redundant around the same time (not a hcp). It was a tough time for them. She managed to get another nursing job quite quickly, it took him longer. She's not a nurse anymore and does something else now.

^I'm going to assume by middle aged you mean the standard definition of someone between 45-60? If so, the MAJORITY of the people working in the NHS are YOUNG (

@ Allergictoironing

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age

What @Allergictoironing said.

Young to me is under 25.

So half of people at their peak earning power (40-50) can be classed as young (ONS study ). This study by the Office of National Statistics also puts earnings for people in their 30s above those of people in their 60s.

In fact for women, their peak earning power was in their 30s up until this year's figures.

Young as defined by the ONS findings on wealth distribution is as attached. 25-34. It certainly isn’t under 25. The government uses the ons.

No, 40-50 isn’t young. They are, as you would expect, at peak earning power and peak tax paying too!

Women have babies and then might choose to work part time so earnings reduce. You would expect to see reduced earnings for them.

The link to ONS comes up as statistica which is software analysis owned by Dell.

Sorry Bubbles, I was looking at the Statistica at the same time. ONS link here

Now I’ve dealt with the insults I will offer a solution for consideration.

There are 4 main costs in the construction of housing. Materials+labour+services(including fees)+land. Without analysing any of the first 3 in detail (VAT, bulk purchase, design, size etc),

the final element, land is often 45% of the market value of the finished property. In £ terms that 0.15 acre plot could cost £67,500. Farmland of the same size costs £1,350.

I won’t reference any of these figures and obviously there are many variables I’m not taking into account. So let's move on.

This mismatch in value is one of the reasons some people get very wealthy and others can’t afford housing.

Now the gestapo in the planning office in every local authority just thrive on what they believe is right or wrong when it comes to seeking permission to construct a house. Quite correct, within reason. However you then end up with a City such as Sheffield that has 35 square miles (that’s big by the way) in the ‘Green belt’. The result is; you want a roof over your head? Tough, we don’t want you building in a pretty area.

Now, I sort of get that. In a way. However, if you were to automatically allow one more house to be built at the end of every road/street/lane on both sides it would not make a great difference to the overall aesthetics of a city. A small village with 40 houses and one road passing through would suddenly become a village with 44 houses.

Legislate for this. Allow the land to be sold at half value saving the house builder £33,750, allow the farmer (owner) to pocket £16,875 (£15,525 profit) and £16,875 to the government coffers for good causes.

Oh, but then I forgot about market forces. And many other factors.

And of course I didn’t take into account Colonel Burger-Smythe (Retd) at number 17 (he’s on the parish council you know).

Well he says there’s always been 40 houses in his village for the last 918 years (he's a stickler for dates) and over his dead body will there every be allowed to be 44. Old Jerry didn’t manage to spoil his village and he’s not going to allow it to happen now.

You would not get housing estates these days on Land that wasn’t in the local plan and designated for building. The farmer isn’t selling this land for agricultural land prices. They were not born yesterday.

I think I said above that the planning authorities delay house building. There are very difficult councillors but not at parish level mainly because they are against anything. Others at Planning authority level though won’t agree to designs and layouts even when a site is in a plan. And as for drainage! Everyone in the world (not literally) goes out and blocks up ditches to “prove” an area floods. So many reasons homes are not built.

Sheffield has cheap housing though. Come and look at the SE around where I am and see what the constraints are. New building has been pushed much further away from London. Train prices go up and commuting takes people away from their families for much longer. In the meantime the shopping areas have empty shops. They cannot take much housing development but we need to be creative about where we can build.

Good points @BurgerOnTheOrientExpress

Sadly it's a certain group who seem to protest against any and all housebuilding in their areas even though they benefited from cheap housing themselves thanks to the post-war housebuilding boom

It’s not the person who is made redundant, it’s the position. A hospital can’t make a nurse redundant and then hire another nurse to do the same job

They can if they say the job needs a degree and they change the job description and job title.

It’s then demonstrably a different job if the JD has changed. It is then presumably a job at grad level. However it’s surely possible to take the redundancy and then get another job? There is hardly a shortage of vacancies.

It appears @Ordree that younger people aren't making as many sacrifices as you suggest, given that they are the ones flouting the lockdown rules

Re house building, I find almost everyone is on board with the idea of affordable housing but nobody wants building in their area. So it’s ok, but not on “my” doorstep.

Yet developers sell their houses with ease and no delay so there is no issue in demand. IMO people are quite short sighted and selfish when it comes to building, resistant to change aswell. Generally speaking new estates are quite attractive and well presented (though that’s an entirely subjective view) so do not make an area look less desirable.

Lots of arguments re the local infrastructure, the money from 106 agreements flows into the local community-after an initial period and then there’s the extra council tax etc. Extra demand does eventually equal extra provision. People forget that the new residents come from somewhere else, so it’s not really extra demand just distributing existing demand around.

BubblesBuddy
Yes friend got another job using her nursing qualification but it wasn’t with the NHS and it wasn’t doing what she had specialised in and loved.

She has had a couple of jobs since the redundancy. But as she says they are just jobs. Her work is no longer enjoyable. It is something to be endured till she retires or drops dead

Even after all these years she is quite low about how she was treated and quite cynical when she sees stuff about there being a nursing shortage.

Isnt it the 'young ones' that are still meeting on parks, having BBQs and socially drinking and having parties ignoring safety guidelines about staying home and keep your distance..

So no, I cant agree we should be offering you cheap housing, writing off equity or any other freebies.. Young people shouldn't have any exclusive rights that anyone else doesn't deserve.

@isitsummertimeyet Yes, it's part of a young people conspiracy to spread the virus as much as possible so the older generation will die off and we can all pick up multiple cheap probate properties