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?

Very good points.

We don't have an absolute 'need' for immigrants to do these jobs though, it is a choice.

It is a choice to keep the factory open that's paying below minimum wage to employees and undoubtedly dodging other regulations and taxes. It's a choice to allow immigrants to come here to pick the fruit.

There are a hundred ways you could tackle the scenarios above and only some involve immigrants. For example, you could reform the welfare system to encourage our own population (especially the young) to work more. We have a productivity crisis in general and it's madness to allow this to get worse and just happily use migrants to fill the gaps in the workforce.

This is going off topic but my original point is migration is a huge issue when it comes to the housing crisis and could be part of the solution. It isn't racist to suggest this and there are many economic models that could be adapted that would reduce our dependency on immigrant labour. Whether they're the best models is another question but that's why debate is important! Pretending that we have an absolute need for huge levels of immigration and anyone suggesting otherwise is xenophobic/racist/stupid is ridiculous and stupid in itself.

From a private renter south east who holidays in Cornwall (camping or farm never air b&b!) any south west renter has my absolute sympathy.
It must be so much worse for you, why would landlords rent to a family for £1000 a month when they could rent to holiday makers for £1000+ a week for 9 months the of the year.

The two town centres close to me have empty shops, and empty buildings above them. They are already built, just convert them. But that won’t give builders and the government profit.

There’s a static caravan park near me that’s £1000+ a month. It’s full of families. this time of year it must be incredibly hard. It’s one thing choosing that life, it’s another if it’s the only way you can house yourself and stay in work

Yes the greenbelt surrounding the cities also helps improve the air quality in the cities and therefore the health of those living in them. Being near green space makes such a difference to air quality.

All the rural and semi rural parts of the country like Cornwall and Devon that are currently being artificially supported right now as ‘retirement areas’ by final salary pensions are going to be absolutely strapped economically in the near future, when that generation has died.
Right now those relatively wealthy retirees are spending their money in the local shops, small businesses.

When they’re gone, I worry that the ‘retirees’ that follow will be on a tiny income and will need a part time job to stay afloat on comparatively totally pathetic pensions. Meaning they/we won’t have spare cash to support the local economy. So this should be factored in to where homes are built. Most of them need to be built near transport and jobs. There isn’t going to be as large a section of the population who can not farm, or do other work, who but can afford to live right out in the country, for example.

As well as helps with flash flooding

But if they have to be heavily reduced isn't that just the market setting the price, and a great example of why increased supply does provide more affordable housing than insisting we already have enough and other people should just go live in old office spaces could ever do?

This, we've had new houses built near us - I wasn't against the new houses in themselves, though the cost of them is ridiculous, nothing affordable about £500,000 houses.

But there was no thought on the impact on local schools, GP surgeries, or road infrastructure (traffic was already a complete nightmare out on the main road, and they're talking about building even more houses nearby) - or building over what was largely playing fields above an area that has flooding issues - fine for the new houses, but where does the water run off to?

I'd be fine with the new houses if all these issues had been addressed. And if they were, actually affordable.

Bristol? I lived there for years. It's extremely wealthy in parts with house prices off the scale. Ditto rents. Big financial services employment sector and a university town. It may be run down in places like every big city, but so is London. Swindon is part of the silicon valley. I worked in industry there.

Big private sector businesses are very mobile. They can be incentivised to move. Look at Dublin Docklands. They brought in a 10% tax rate for financial services in 1987 and the banks piled in, bringing work and regeneration.

I absolutely stand by the fact government needs to invest to provide work elsewhere other than the south east. This thread is about the housing crisis, and the reason prices are so much higher in the south east and developers are desperate to build here is because that's where the work is. If there was more work at better pay elsewhere in the country people would move. The south east is a horrible place to live, it's over crowded, insane pressure to get a doctor, dentist, school place and even parking. There has to be change.

Ok, hands up - who wants to live in a flat above an empty shop?

"The UK" is not full up, and immigration is not at anything like "unsustainable" levels in the "UK".

This is an England problem, which means that whatever the perceived solution to England's perceived problem is will dominate the discourse, and ultimately be blanket applied to the entirety of the UK regardless of whether it's wholly at odds with what is actually required in places other than England or not.

If there is any doubt about this, just look at the fact that every single Ward in Scotland voted to remain within the EU, but a blanket approach was applied across the UK regardless, then Scotland was told that it was impossible to make any small exceptions or concessions for any singular part of the UK, before NI was then granted the very concessions Scotland was told were impossible.

The problem is not a lack of space, and it's not "too many people", it's that despite an inward flux of economically active people, successive governments have squandered that financial boon, and mismanaged the UK economy in favour of chasing votes by maintaining an unrealistic standard of service v Taxation by ramping up borrowing and cutting spending.

The UK's problems are entirely rooted in an ideological aversion to spending, and the public's totally unrealistic demands given what they are willing to stump up for.

We should be building on golf courses, not countryside. They’re a complete waste of space.

I think the reality for the entire country is either immigration to fill skills gaps, or making it near on impossible for older people to retire. Their labour will be needed and the government won't be able to afford their pensions anyway. Or a combination of both, most likely.

There is also the issue that the price of housing has been artifically inflated due to decades of policies that have housing as an asset, preferential treatment.

Again hands up who would support policies that decrease the value of their house?

This, we need to think long term. Concreting the countryside to house yet more people isn't the way forward.
Where I live we have loads of derelict empty Victorian factories- they are huge, you could fit hundreds of flats in them! Or they could be demolished and use that land to build on.
There are also places with literally empty streets full of little terraced houses, do those up instead of building new! It seems that people only like recycling when it comes to their rubbish, they want shiny brand new homes though.
This country is already screwed, we cannot feed the population as it is with the land/farmers we have. In the event of a disaster and food chains being cut off hundreds of thousands of people will starve to death. Think about that next time you see open fields being built on for 'executive housing '.

I imagine that wont happen because the golfers are the same people that don't believe there's a housing crisis.

Not really, they still provide some space for nature, far more than a housing estate will.

Go somewhere like Vienna, where it’s as expensive as London - but not to rent. They have enough housing stock in social housing that it naturally keeps the rental cost down

a housing crisis keeps housing costs high

by building housing stock and including social housing it reduces rent costs, reducing the cost of living

you presumably living in a house

ive seen near on 12000 homes built in the last 6/7 years in the surrounding fields. It’s what happens

The housing crisis isn't "supposed", it is very real. And it isn't unsustainable to build more houses.

The problem with building more houses though is that they're being build to sell, not to rent. So it fuels the issue of high rents, as landlords are buying up either the new builds, or the smaller houses that become vacant when people move up the ladder into the new houses.

What actually needs to happen is building a lot of low cost housing for social housing markets and councils. That is the only thing that's going to alleviate the pressure in the rental market, and the bottleneck of temporary housing.

As for where they build it, I don't especially care. Town and city centres are more expensive to buy and rent property in, so I don't think repurposing vacant shops is a viable solution either. Infrastructure around new housing developments has to be built into the proposal and fines levied where it is not delivered.

I lived above a kebab shop once . Had mice and millions on red ants . Which probably meant they were in the shop as well .

They did this in York, converted the old Rowntree factory into flats with lots of shared ownership units. It looks great, such a nice change from demolition. Very expensive though. https://www.thecocoa-works.com

There are also quite a few asylum conversions near me.

@Youagain2025 Indeed. I lived above a closed shop. The landlord then let it to a chicken shop. We got cockroaches.

How about football pitches? Also a waste of space.