House building is out of control

[Caterpillarsleftfoot]

Every where I turn at the moment the countryside is being turned into housing developments. If we carry on like this our habitats and green spaces will be decimated. Not to mention the flood risks. Also our beautiful rural way of life that we associate England with will be lost.

There is no way we need this many new developments. The latest one I saw is on the edge of a beautiful historical town in the countryside in a neighbouring county.

We need flats for council properties to save space and fewer air BnB properties.

Air B&B's ought to be banned as well- houses for local people, not holiday makers.

What if local people are the ones renting out the Air BnBs to holiday makers? It's far from black and white.

@Tulipsroses that's a somewhat simplistic view to say that ALL new housing needs to be built on fields in rural areas. There are many ways to build and create rural housing that don't involve using agricultural or food-producing land. The issue is that volume developers don't like to build on much other than previously unused land and will find any excuse not to use brownfield sites owing to the cost of clearing and making safe land previously used for any sort of industrial use.

I work in the rural, affordable and community housing sector. The biggest issue for even the most dynamic and determined communities in creating the housing that's REALLY needed in their area is the cost of land - especially in the south of England. There are loads of truly innovative and inspiring home creation projects occurring but unless ways to scale up the volume of the housing they create can be found, we're stuck at the mercy of either volume developers including some affordable ('affordable' meaning 80% of market value) housing or local authorities partnering with housing associations to create social housing. Neither of these scenarios are happening on the scale they need to, either.

I watched a presentation the other day by a community group who are building sustainable homes on a small scale through partnership with local authorities, housing associations and communities by parceling off land on existing social housing plots (as well as unused, derelict former council-owned garage sites) - utilising land which can be found as 'microsites' right in the middle of existing populated areas. The stories they told of how these projects are bringing communities together to solve their own housing needs is a real eye-opener to the power of grassroots action - instead of waiting for successive governments and legislation to take effect and provide the homes that are so desperately needed right NOW. The housing they're creating is protected in perpetuity from sale on the open market (all of the homes being offered for secure tenancies through the local authority allocations process and managed by an existing housing association with input and collaboration with the tenants).

When I look at other countries - including countries such as Chile which has among the largest number of housing cooperatives globally - it makes me SO frustrated that the UK is stuck in a downward spiral of housing inequality. I've friends who've had to move constantly from one expensive and inadequate private rental to another who so desperately want a secure, good-quality home of their own (whether that's a secure tenancy or another tenure such as part rent/part but) but feel trapped and hopeless.

Innovative use of land, materials and design, in the hands of a determined, dynamic community working in partnership with their local authority and other stakeholders such as housing associations, architects and ethical, socially responsible financiers is the solution to the housing crisis, in my view and not this dream of simply leaving the building of 300,000 houses a year to housing developers who build only for profit and not for the needs of those communities.

I agree with @Flickersy and @DrinkFeckArseBrick

Also - follow the money. Look at the house builders in the FTSE, what their profits are, what they pay their CEOs. Then look at the planning laws around insulation, solar panels, heat pumps, electric vehicle charging points, cycling infrastructure etc. Then look at donations to the Tory party. There are your answers.

My proposals would be similar to others -

Ban 2nd homes and Air BnB. No one needs more than one house to live in.

Redevelop brownfield. It’s expensive. So what, the developers can afford it. They’ll still make a profit, just a little less profit.

Look at zoning. Some areas can be redeveloped as residential/ mixed.

Make the green designs compulsory. There is a housing estate in South Wales that is a power station - generates all its own power from ground pumps and solar. Look it up on the Fully Charged YouTube channel. It can be done easily for new build (one of the advantages of new build in fact).

And enforce the law! The ones that allow planning as long as there is social housing, and the ones saying local authorities can take over derelict properties and bring them back into use.

If you want to get really radical about it, you could solve the foreign ownership problem, or the problem of differential wealth that blights some areas, by charging an out-of-area premium, like Jersey does - eg it costs 50% more, there are two prices. It wouldn’t do away with the problem totally (the very rich can afford it) but it would help in some places for young people to buy a first home (thinking St Ives, Snowdonia, etc).

There, fixed it. Now what? 🤣

What a load of depressing responses.

Where do you think your DC are going to live? You do realise we have a housing shortage?

I’m a millennial. I earn an average income but have been priced out of the city I’ve lived in for 17 years. I am now having to move to a smaller place in a different city because I can’t keep up with the current interest rates and my enormous service charge. The only thing I can afford is a 35% share of a small one bed flat.

The cheapest one beds in my current city are >£250k. I do nothing for fun because I can’t afford to. I don’t even have a Netflix subscription ffs. I doubt I’ll ever be able to buy on the open market or afford more than a one bed.

The current situation has allowed the cost of housing to go up and up and up. Wages have not. So fucking ignorant, entitled and privileged.

@Shrammed i agree with immigration that fills a need, jobs within the nhs and other jobs etc but let’s not all pretend that every immigrant coming here is coming to fill a job and therein lies the problem.

as for the comment about being ageist or whatever I am not but as another poster pointed out people are living and being kept alive long past the point of natural expiration. I work in the NHS and see it every single day people kept alive with no quality of life

Well it has to be fixed at some point - we should clean up after ourselves (collective we, as a species). So we're going to spend the money anyway, since it should be unconscionable to leave a space as a "toxic waste dump", why not use it for housing once that's done?

YABU

There is a massive housing shortage and your hyperbole about a disappearing countryside is ridiculous. As at April 2022: 8.7% of land in England is of developed use, with 91.1% beig countryside/farmland/greenbelt etc. You could increase the built-up surface area by 50% and there would still be plenty of green land.

Meanwhile there are 123,000 children who are homeless in temporary accommodation or shelters because not enough houses have been built. Calm down your NIMBYism and unbunch yourself. The building is fine and needs to happen ASAP, and more too.

Or we could repurpose all the derelict buildings and disused shops? Second homes? Why such a rush to build new when there are lots of perfectly good buildings already built?

I live in a City. There is a massive amount of building converting old properties into apartments. The density of housing is soaring and will have an impact on services.

They should get a proper job, then - Air B&B's are like a plague.
Renting a shepherd's hut on your land is one thing - keeping cottages/houses empty for large swathes of time is just greedy and selfish.

What's wrong with living in a flat?

@Pinkdelight3 and @Giggorata - home for older people are in very short supply in the county where I live. Developers just don't build either bungalows with gardens or manageable, easily-adaptable apartments at scale. The project I work for is currently undertaking a piece of work looking at various cohousing models for older people - where individuals have their own apartments and/or smaller dwellings such as bungalows but there are also resources to be shared such as a common house for meeting and eating, shared gardening and DiY workshops and laundry facilties, pooled vehicles etc.

These forms of housing are designed to alleviate isolation and loneliness, create an intentional community, as well as making the best use of resources so that you don't need every dwelling to have its own washing machine, tumble dryer, or set of DiY or gardening tools, lawnmower, jetwash, greenhouse, car, etc etc.

I saw one particular development where each floor of the 3-story apartment block had a big cupboard on the landing with every sort of home cleaning item imaginable, as well as a store of cleaning consumables and once a month all the tenants paid into a communal pot to keep supplies topped up and replace or service/repair any appliances that needed attention. It had become a real source of collaboration and pride to the tenants that they were sharing such resources, and thinking more about how to be more sustainable and environmentally-aware in the process. Such a seemingly small thing really did go a long way towards bringing people together and creating a sense of community and teamwork.

It isn't about immigration. It's about the Tory government giving people the Right to Buy in the 80's with no means of more housing stock. Then AGAIN recently, wanting Housing Association residents to be able to buy but not setting out a plan of how Housing Associations may recover in the long run either.

Such ill thought out ideas imo.

agree with immigration that fills a need, jobs within the nhs and other jobs etc but let’s not all pretend that every immigrant coming here is coming to fill a job and therein lies the problem.

I'm not pretending anything.

I'm pointing out we already have worker shortages in some areas - and with an ever aging population with more dependents and less workers that's likely going to spread to other sectors.

I'm also pointing out the USA and Australia - both place with much more land than UK also have rental and housing crisis at minute as do many European countries.

Housing is a basic human right OP, just in case you’ve forgotten.

One answer is to build on golf courses. They are only used by a very small elite group of people and have no benefit to wildlife or the housing stock.
I live in London and am surrounded by fenced off golf courses...

Yes, in many urban areas developers build them and often sell to overseas investors who may not care if they're rented out or not. They rely on the capital gain to give them a profit in a few years. You can tell from how many lights are on at night that these estates usually don't have full occupancy.
We live in an area with a vast number of new flats being build, mostly fairly expensive with a very few "affordable" properties which may be built at the end of the project if the developers can't wriggle out of their commitment. There is just one block of social housing so far although there is supposed to be more later. I'll believe it when I see it.
I agree with the OP and don't believe that we need the type of expensive developments that are being built, but it is the profit on these that is used to encourage the developers to build the "affordable" and social housing in these projects. Very few homes are built by local authorities now, they come as part of the bargain whe planning permission is granted for these huge, relatively expensive, estates.

Last two cities I've lived in this has been the case - I thought this one was slow doing it TBH.

I did have cause to look at local school capacity rates here- all the primaries are already over capacity as are most of the secondaries - and Dr and dentist are getting rarer not more.

This sort of thing is just plain stupid. Solar is a huge source of renewable energy that we need to take full advantage of in this climate crisis. The fact that planning permission for solar farms can be denied because idiots like you don't like how they look is beyond ridiculous.

I think that is a brilliant idea.

Ridiculous people have been living longer since for ever. This is just contempt for boomers and older people who have paid their taxes and planned for their life. Housing needs can be met by building more but we would never catch up if a flood of people are coming here every year.

I agree, I'm retired and live with my DH in a flat because that is what we need. Many houses in the social housing stock are occupied by one or two people who could easily be living in a flat, freeing up a house for a larger family who should then be asked to move on when they no longer need it.

This!

We need sensible, thoughtful development. I’d add we also need to convert empty properties to homes again, there are plenty of those but no incentives.

I think most of those who are making decisions are not sensible or competent, unfortunately. And they are reacting to voters who just want housing now. Without thinking of how, where, the quality, the infrastructure, schools/health/policing etc.

No good plan!

It's always nice when people who live in large houses in quaint villages decide other people can live in converted shops and offices. Are YOU happy to do that?

I think what OP means is SHE doesn't need them and they spoil her view from the window of her charming detached period house. She is entitled to a home for her family in a rural area; everyone else can just cram into inner city flats, or ideally just stop breeding and die.