To wonder why so many people are hypocrites when it comes to housing?

[WestminsterCrabby]

Got into quite a heated row discussion last night with some relatives. 🍷

They are Fuming (capital F intended) about all the new housing estates popping up in their leafy village. Apparently its ruined the views, ruined their dog walks yaddah yaddah.

These are couples in their late 50s early 60s whose children are long gone but still live in their large 4 bed detached homes. When I pointed out that perhaps so many new homes wouldnt need to be built (or smaller ones that took up less space) if people only took up the amount of space they needed rather than felt entitled to, they thought I was being very very unreasonable. I disagree!

I appreciate that people living in houses bigger than there needs is not the cause of the housing shortage HOWEVER surely you cant complain about other people needing to be housed while you yourself have 2 bedrooms per person?!?

Drives me mad and it's not the first time I've had conversations like this with people in a similar circumstances.

It makes me sad to see the countryside being converted over as well but people have got to live somewhere.

Aibu here?

It should be made a stipulation that 15% of every new development needs to be a bungalow (like they stipulate with social housing)

@pixie5121 - I mentioned my own situation purely as an example of what I think is a pretty normal problem with downsizing - I am not expecting sympathy for my personal circumstances - but I was hoping to elicit some understanding and empathy for why many people, especially elderly people with a lifetime of stuff and the attached memories, might find downsizing a major challenge.

And I am sorry my dead mother-in-law’s piano seems to have rubbed you up the wrong way - it matters to her sons and to me because she worked hard to earn it, when her father refused to let her study music and become a professional musician - and when she did manage to buy it, he charged her rent to have it in the house. She kept the piano for decades, until we lost her to bastard cancer, so forgive me for not just lobbing it in the skip/charity shop.

I do not expect sympathy from you - I wasn’t asking for it - it would be nice not to be your punching bag.

The social housing thing doesnt work anyway, they use excuses or get out clauses not to provide it

But as others have said, the price of bungalows would likely mean that its not worth people 'downsizing' to a bungalow anyway

People on here are talking about a number of different issues. You might downsize in price or you might downsize in size or number of bedrooms, or you might be lucky and obtain both.

You dont need to be elderly to have 'stuff'. I love 'stuff'.

My OH goes on (and on and on) about all my shoes, Ive got nearly 150 pairs. He says I dont need them all

How dare he!!

We live in a 4/5 bedroom house ,currently 3 adults but DD is using one bed as a bedroom cum storage room as her flat is tiny and they can't fit all their stuff. We still don't have enough room to put DS,DDiL and his 3 children up as well as DD and her family. We don't live in the sort of area that has cheap hotels

How would it helped if I bought a smaller, cheaper home? Would you buy my big expensive one?

We have a number of new developments going up near us, and none of them have given any thought to traffic, or to access to services such as schools, doctors, dentists, local,shops, community centres etc. We probably have 200 new homes in our village, but no extra provision of vital services for all these new families. Most of them do not even have a corner shop within walking distance - the residents are going to have to get in their cars every time they run out of milk.

Why do council planners allow so many developments to go ahead that have no thought for the needs of the people are actually going to live in them? The developers’ motive is obvious - profit - pack as many houses as possible onto a site, and don’t spend any money on stuff that won’t bring us profit (a community centre or surgery, for example) - but surely it is the council’s job to rein in the profiteering of the developers, and ensure that new houses and their residents get the services they need - and that existing communities can cope with their new residents.

@bellac but bungalows (because they're rare) hold they're price so you may downsize and it'll cost you the same price as your large house but easier and cheaper for older person to clean, heat and get around?

This is crazy though, I cant imagine how difficult it is for you in terms of you being evicted but how on earth is it connected in any way to others with bigger houses filled with stuff?

It wouldnt enable you to buy something.

Yes possibly but thats about moving so that its easier on someone if they have mobility problems. I dont see what connection that has to the housing problem we have.
You might say well it frees up a bigger house but the issue is affordability, not actual availability.

I think there are probably very few areas in the UK now where the house prices are a 3 or 4x multiple of the average wage of the area. Which is really what it needs to be in order to be affordable.

As an aside the other thing I cant stand about bungalows is that the bedrooms are often at the front but where they are not at the front, they sometimes have a conservatory off a bedroom out into the garden. Plus they dont tend to have 2 reception rooms. So you end up with 1 bedroom, 1 box room, one kitchen diner and a living room. Too small for me to b ehonest.

True @bellac11

People wanting all downsizings to happen maybe you want to kill single disabled? No housing especially social housing where I am cos downsizers get priority highest priority. People in wheelchairs trapped in higher floor flats if lifts break and other disabled homeless cos of downsizing.

Message to young people that comes out of that is have lots of children or be homeless or bad slum. Know circumstances happen but often having more than one or two children is choice but disability not choice.

Families should have good housing but downsizing bad unless more 1 bed ones build too.

OP think you partly right hypocrites some of the people but think maybe also cos what's being built too expensive for lots of people. So not helping people who need housing. London here very very bad housing situation with extreme homelessness but new housing built all too expensive. Lots on sale for long time over a year some of it still not bought. Help to buy cos too expensive for most people needing housing here.

I know couples where both are in professional jobs, living in one-bed flats with young children, because they can't quite afford to upsize

And if they were HA tenants living in an HA flat im willing to bet your post would have been of a totally different tone.

@nosafeguardingadults slightly dramatic and not what anyone had remotely suggested.
Housing needs to be fit for purpose and for all.
I applaud those is council properties though that recognise the need to downsize to free up bigger properties. No one in social housing should be rattling round a property they don't need when the demand is so huge.

The whole situation is crazy. 60 million spare bedrooms while other families are not housed properly? Why are people/ companies/ Russian oligarchs allowed to keep hold of so much empty property when other people desperately need it? The entire system seems so broken here. DH and I have accepted we will most likely never be able to buy any property for our small family to live in. We're finally in a better position now that ds is in school and childcare costs have lessened, and after a recent promotion, but we haven't been able to save enough, fast enough, compared with the increases in property prices. There are new builds nearby, with the issues highlighted by other posters and meanwhile we've lived in dread of the next rent increase or eviction, and the stressful effects that has. And we're so much luckier than many. I wish there was a simple answer.

Agreed @moimichme . The issue isn't lack of housing, it's that so much of UK housing stock is owned by people who have bought it as an investment. In London, it's seen as a 'safe as houses' way for (mostly) foreign investors to store their money and it's a major reason why property prices in London are so ridiculously inflated. I was reading about a block of flats being built in Battersea a year or two ago, apparently 80% had been bought up by investors before they were finished, mostly Chinese and Russians. No doubt the flat have been standing empty ever since, rather than housing the Londoners who need them.

And then you have the second homes issue, which has the same impact and prices locals out of homes. We have plenty of property in the UK to house everyone who needs it, but much of it is standing empty, owned by people who have no interest in actually living in it.

“Town I live in has an estate of 600 new properties going up on the edge of town. It's a mixture of everything from 5 bed detached to 2 bed social housing flats, but the roads are so narrow that it's like running a slalom to drive through - no-one uses their garages to park cars because the garages aren't big enough (and many of the properties don't have garages anyway). The houses are far too close together so there's already been neighbour disputes. There has been no allowance for the numbers of children who will be attending local schools (the estate is aimed at families - imagine the number of additional children), no increase in GP provision, the road onto the estate is causing traffic problems on the main road.”

This is the problem in my large (so large it should be a town - 3 primary schools) village.

I want more houses - we need more stock to deal with demand, but they haven’t put any provision in place to deal with all the extra people.

the reception/year one class’ have waiting lists yet my daughters year (3) there is only 19 children and there’s spaces at the other two schools in her year so that helps demonstrate the massive explosion.

the other issue I have is they don’t build the roads wide enough as everyone is supposed to have off road car parking but they don’t properly reflect the amount of vehicles one house has. Even a two bed with two adults likely to have a house each which then lives the narrow roads with cars on pavements.

last issue I have is we desperately need bungalows here too but it’s all the 4/5 bed executive homes with very little smaller houses or even 3 beds.

I don’t feel like a hypocrite for asking for suitable facilities and suitable homes to be built but I do know what you mean.

I'm sorry, but I won't be told where I can live based on having/not having anybody living with me.

Perhaps you would like all of the single childless people rounded up and put us in one bedroom high rise flats.

Bloody Cheek.

Their children that they have decided to have need to live somewhere once they leave home and as there is a housing shortage, new houses need to be built in the countryside, they only have them selves like many others who complain to blame, as their kids are the ones needing the houses

I don't understand your post @jimmyjammy001. Not many DC could afford to buy our house in their mid 20s. They start in a one bed flat of two bed starter home. Ours are lucky because they have help; but the vast majority have to start as small as we did 40 years ago and compromise vis a vis location.