To be sick of hearing about 'the housing crisis'?

[GoldfinchFeather]

This is related to the thread about Angela Rayner wanting to build 1.5 million new homes. Is anyone else sick to the back teeth of hearing about the supposed housing crisis in this country?

I live in a semi-rural area, and the amount of house building around here over the last few years has been crazy. Hundreds of houses appearing on pretty much any vacant piece of land, turning what was once a small village into something that feels closer to a town in size. Roads getting busier and busier, and and all the while nothing has been done to provide any new facilities like doctors or schools.

I understand people's frustration of not being able to buy a home. But surely just concreting over more and more of the countryside is completely unsustainable?

If the housing crisis is really so bad, why isn't the Government taking more of an innovative approach? How many town centres/high streets have empty shops that could be converted to residential use? Or properties that have stood empty for years and haven't been brought back to market? Surely just through that, there would be an enormous surplus of homes available, and less need to concrete over more and more of the countryside?

It's not a "supposed" crisis, and it's not really about people being unable to buy homes either, it's that in most urban areas there is a huge wait list for any sort of suitable social housing due to everything being sold off to tenants since Thatcher, and thousands upon thousands of people who are technically homeless and living in B&B's, hotels, and privately owned hovels leased to Local Authorities as a result.

I live in the SW, there is a massive shortage of rental properties ( and those that are available dictate tenants must have a salary out of reach to many normal people )
’Affordable’ 2 beds are being sold for £300k+ WTF!🤬
IMO it’s the type of housing that’s being built thats causing the problem - we need proper council houses and a strict limit on second homes and holiday lets.

Agree with PP- it’s not really about people being unable to buy homes, there’s 100+ houses for sale in my area right now according to Rightmove, but the wait for a council house is years long, there isn’t enough social housing.

It is about people unable to buy homes in some parts of the country though - SE and London being crazy expensive.

I think the term ‘housing crisis’ describes several different issues - it’s not a single problem with a single solution.

At least near me, the city schools/doctors are the ones that are the most stretched and oversubscribed. Repurposing a few old shops will not solve that problem.

Completely agree. Gov need to be innovative with existing stock intead of sticking up a load of premium rate newbuilds on greenspace.

YANBU.

Look mum, a NIMBY !

They need to push through NIMBYism and build houses where they stand a fighting chance of developing infrastructure to support them, not on random sites where it's easy to push them through.

I live next to a small village with a mainline train station, that has managed to resist all attempts at expansion, whereas poorer villages to the north of my local city - that has no train station or real public transport - has seen loads of growth.

You would have to be totally heartless to not feel for those young children that are living their lives in hotel rooms and b&b’s, sometimes for years, whilst there are no cooking facilities or anywhere to just relax and have their own space. I know I couldn’t have coped as a mum to young children in those circumstances.

I live in a town that has converted many offices into flats and yet still the waiting list for social housing is huge. Our local Travelodge is full of people on the housing list.

Yes, it is, but that's not the entirety of what is being discussed with regard to the term "housing crisis" in the UK, which is what the OP implied.

Where I am is exactly the same. Not only a years-long wait for Social Housing, but property is totally unaffordable for people who aren't already on the ladder or inherit either property or money, but also, there is no affordable property for rent because everything has been bought up by speculative landlords to stick on the BTL market because of the rise of AirBNB and the boom in domestic tourism since Brexit.

Sure, there are people struggling to find somewhere to buy, but if you can afford to buy then you have the means already to pay rent. It's the people without the means to buy and who can't afford private rent who are ending up "homeless" for years on end because there is literally nowhere to house them beyond temporary places like BnB's and Hotels.

Housing crisis

It's children dying from their living conditions - I shouldn't have to go further

It's people pushed into poverty because rents and house prices are at such a high level relative to income - because of the shortage / unfair sharing of houses

It's high nursery costs - the biggest cost for most nurseries isn't staff but the building - that can be ten times the staff costs

It's high care costs for the same reason and that is pushed into ever higher council taxes to pay someone to get rich on the building

It's higher taxes to pay for housing of people on low incomes from new mums to pensioners

And all that money disappears to a relatively small Group of banks and wealthy landlords - anyone getting a renter to pay of a mortgae for them is sitting on wealth

And sitting on wealth doesn't help the uk - it won't trickle down anywhere

So you might be sick of it and you might not like the building of new homes but tough

Although we may need far less if we could stop people hoarding homes - one family one home

Totally agree. So many town centres are dying and in desperate need of regeneration. Why on earth wouldn't you encourage developers to invest their money into turning these commercial buildings into flats/houses instead of encouraging them to build estates on green belt land? Once more people live in town centres then the shops and restaurants will become more viable again.

There are certainly an awful lot of new builds around, the issue , as stated by others, seems more to do with affordable housing and rental accommodation. Perhaps if they found a new way to help people buy it might ease the problem. I’m sure our part of the country isn’t unique in that the cost of buying is often less than renting, but people struggle to find the significant initial deposits needed to do so

What will you do without high streets, though? And are you willing to pay more council tax, because the businesses will be, so switching to residential rates will mean even more of a council tax deficit?

I’m with you that the solution isn’t necessarily endlessly building more - and the shortage of rental properties isn’t going to be helped by building more, really, because the changes to housing law over the past five years in terms of rights/taxes/etc have meant it’s not worth it for most landlords. They’re better for tenants; but there has to be a balance, or everyone sells up.

Countryside houses aren’t exactly the cheapest, either… and while there’s a shortage of houses, house prices won’t go down.

For a while, I thought the changes to housing law were intended to “force” a change of opinion, and make it so that we stopped expecting to own a house - Britain is quite an anomaly, in terms of being very small but still expecting everyone to buy - but building more houses doesn’t fit that at all.

We've had three “new” connecting housing estates built in the last five years. They’re all too far away to be able to walk into town, the roads aren’t coping, the promised schools and shops haven’t been built, the hospital has declared its first ever state of emergency as there’s just too many people. And over half of it is completely unsold. It’s clearly not enough to just have housing, it has to be both desirable and affordable, and I’m not convinced many of the new estates being planned are either.

At some point in time op, the land your house is on was also countryside.

What do you mean by "supposed housing crisis"? I am glad to hear that you have a home in a semi-rural area. Personally, I lived in shared housing until my late 30th precisely because there are multiple housing crises including - rents too high for a single person to have a separate accommodation in areas with a healthy job market, lack of affordable houses to buy, shared ownership properties are like hen's teeth in many areas, social housing waiting lists out of proportion, property prices are overinflated, old housing stock is falling apart and expensive to run, mortgage rates are through the roof. Which of these crises seem "supposed" to you?
I am also pretty certain that the government already looked at the dormant stock being brought back to the market.

I can see how from a cutesy village perspective the 'housing crisis' can be so completely misunderstood.

Families are routinely being evicted from rental properties because landlords are free to increase rents to 'market' rate. As a consequence we now have more children living in poverty - Save the Children estimate an average of 9 children in a class of 30 will be living in poverty. Many of those living in inadequate temporary housing. The need for social housing is in part driven by the private rental market being prioritised for investors.
Making property a less attractive 'investment', rent controls etc would be a start.

It's blinkered to treat this as a London/South East issue (and wholly unfair to the millions around the country who are also impacted).

Take a train into a city, walk around, see how people are actually living. Then go home and be grateful.

I must admit to being stupid. There are so many new build estates going up in my semi urban part of SE but I don't understand how building 100s of "executive" and "family" homes all pricey af help to release properties for social housing or homeless/badly housed people?

It's your choice to be sick of it or not. It doesn't change the fact that this country's economy has been destroyed by the lack of affordable housing.

Let me guess: you've paid off your mortgage?

Only 11 per cent of Britain is built on.

And local residents keep blocking higher density proposals. So you're going to get sprawl.

It is frustrating that we are concreting over the countryside yet so many people have second or third homes. And so many London flats sit empty for huge chunks of the year.

And also yes it's grim that it's easier and cheaper to build over the countryside than to redevelop urban areas. A lot of the housing going up in the countryside near us has no transport links at all. So they are housing people in social housing miles from employment and with no transport to get there other than private cars

It’s okay for me to live where I live, but no one else.

OP, there is a housing crisis. As an example:

I was homeless 18 months ago. The council had a legal duty to house me within 56 days but there was nothing in my area or even neighbouring areas. They were going to house me 100 miles away which would have meant I would have had to give up my job. Every time I went to a viewing, there were another dozen people looking at it too and I was always turned down because I am on a low income (not my fault - I am ill). I had a massive stroke of luck - a landlord took pity on me - and I did manage to find a private property after about 50 days.

It's because the last gov refused to put public money into social home building so tried to rely on the market to produce new housing.

And this is what you get. Because they want a major profit and land banking benefits them