Local Persons restriction seem a bit racist? Or am I overthinking?

[dartmoorgirl12]

We're house hunting on Dartmoor (clue's in the name!) at the moment, and we've seen a house with a Local Persons restriction on it. You have to live or work in the local or neighbouring parish for the previous five years. We actually qualify, but it got me thinking... Isn't it a bit weird that the "protected" group here are extremely likely to be white/broadly Christian. It just seems really exclusive for 2023. I do understand the idea that local communities should be protected, and that there is absolutely toxic housing pressure in Dartmoor at the moment. But ironically I live down here now because we got royally outpriced in the bit of London I grew up in. And there def doesn't seem to be any move to have Local Persons protections on various parts of London, which have been rapidly gentrified in recent times. I just thought it was interesting. Why is it that this group of white people get protected in this way?

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But people who work locally don’t have salaries that match the new house prices and therefore are completely out priced.

Diversity in a community is really important but not at the expense of people being unable to live where they’ve grown up - if that’s what they want to do - and not at the expense of local industries failing because no one with the skills to do those jobs can afford to live in the area anymore.

Yes this is a problem local authorities have been facing.

My area had a few homes available for shared ownership but purchase was restricted to people who had an association with the area. I think this might be common practice with local authorities.

@GettingStuffed The South Hams, just south of Dartmoor, have brought in a principal residence thing in certain areas (Salcombe?). It's eminently doable.

Yes this is a common requirement to join many local housing registers

They have this everywhere. It’s not racist at all.

Stop looking for things to be offended by.

I don’t like it, even though I can’t see any racism there and I can understand why it seems important in some areas.

But if it’s matters in some areas then why doesn’t it matter in others? I couldn’t afford to live where I grew up and my children won’t be able to afford to live where they grew up. This is normal for many many families, and I don’t see what is so special about Dartmoor or the people that live there that they think they have a right to keep their area exclusive.

If this becomes common practice in all areas then it would very quickly become about prejudice and excluding others and our whole country would become a very different place.

@MelchiorsMistress It’s common practice in a lot of areas.

@MelchiorsMistress Interesting point. Someone else on the thread said it was important for local industries to keep going, but absolutely every single person I've met down here who's involved in traditional jobs (hedge laying and shepherding spring to mind) actually moved here fairly recently, in part because none of the locals were interested in the jobs!

Great bit of virtue signalling OP. You win today’s prize 🏆 I’m loving the thought of Dartmoor being overrun by huge gangs of Christians by the way. I knew Dartmoor ponies ran wild in the area, but I’ll be sure to look out for the herds of Christians next time I’m down there 😂

I live in North Devon with my kids. We are currently in temporary accomodation as the landlord is selling the property. I think having a restriction on who can live in a property is a good thing. There is a real housing crisis in Devon and Cornwall.

It might be easy to introduce a primary home restriction, but how do they monitor that on an ongoing basis, forever more, multiplied by thousands of course. A criteria that needs to be met up front (like five years in the area) needs to be checked just the once.

It’s not just the enormous second homes problem it’s trying to address, it’s about the problem where significant numbers of people move out of London to nice, scenic places and drive up housing prices (both to buy and rent) such that they’re wildly unaffordable for the people who live in the area.

Displacement is a big issue in many areas.

Local people sell those homes to second home owners.

Local authorities can put restrictions on primary residence, whack up taxes on second home ownership, tax AirBNBs more aggressively as businesses, reserve some shared ownership homes for essential local occupations. Where they choose not to use these its not uncommon to find the local families doing nicely from the industry in dominant positions in local politics, and yet people still vote for them.

Local industries can employ people moving in as much as people moving out. Nobody has automatic right to live where they grew up - never have done.

That's why I said "broadly Christian", @HeartBrokenWifeI thought most people would be able to understand the point. Clearly not!

I think it's an interesting point.

I doubt it's aim is to avoid diversity, but that is the effect whenever "incomers" are discouraged.

It would be interesting to see someone challenge it on race grounds.

It's nothing to do with racism. My nephew works in the utilities sector and has been travelling down to Devon and Cornwall mon-Fri from the North West for months. They have load of vacancies for well paid employment but can't recruit because nobody can actually afford to live there!!
They need affordable housing for local residents

Completely bizarrely, Dartmoor also has restrictions to ensure that certain homes can only be used as holiday homes (which is absolutely batshit, but a different issue.) They certainly do police that. It's much easier to police whether a house is being used as an Airbnb (is it on Airbnb y/n) than it is to check up on someone quietly living in a holiday home.

But very often that is why people have moved out of London and the South East. I live in a not nice part (ie "cheap") of SE. An ex council flat here is now about £300k, an ex council terrace about £450k. Rent one a 2 bed house about £1200 pm.

There are some big salaries locally, but still lots of people working for minimum wage or in relatively low income jobs. How do you afford to live here on an average salary? Our DC can't afford to live where they grew up either.

And also, @Figmentof if you had a system for someone reporting that the house next door has different residents every week, and then the home owner got whacked with a fine, I think you'd find the system would start to self-police quite quickly.

Maybe in social housing, but you don’t see houses listed for sale on Rightmove with a note saying that the vendors will only sell to people who meet their chosen list of criteria, because that would be seen as prejudice.

In reality people can sell their houses to whoever they want of course, but if they advertised it saying that they would only sell to certain people they would rightly be accused of discrimination.

Perhaps a bit racist of the OP not to acknowledge the non-white population of the West Country.

Nothing to do with racism. Everything to do with preventing wealthy outsiders buying holiday homes so that locals can't afford to live where they work - usually in low paid service jobs.

I think that's what I mean, @Mugparrot By trying to protect one group with - say - a 20% discount on the house price, you're discriminating against another group. It just seems very odd.

Who do you think would buy these homes OP?

Richer white people probably.