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?

@JenniferBooth
Campaign has meticulously documented, a succession of promises to Heygate residents were broken to arrive at a situation where 1,214 council homes were demolished, to be replaced with 2,704 new homes, of which only 82 (3%) are for social rent.

Why did the council allow all the promises to be broken?

I live in East Anglia, on the edge of the Fens, in a fairly poor area.

There are very few private rentals coming up, a large amount of council stock but you need to have basically no prospects in life of ever being able to afford private rent to access it.

A few years ago a room as a lodger would be £400 a month, now people would have to pay £600 for a room. Tiny houses are about £1300 a month to rent and they are like gold dust. Flats £900-£1000 and they tend to be old and damp.

It's an absolute disgrace. My son lost his job last year and universal credit left him £300 a month short of being able to pay his rent for a cheap mouldy 2 room flat, because the local housing allowance is unrealistic - there is such a shortage that there is nothing available that matches the local housing allowance. Possibly there might have been something right out in the Fens, but then without a car how would he get back into work?

If he hadn't had me financially supporting him he would have been evicted, street homeless - as a young man he would have had no housing help - and then unable to rent again for years due to having rent arrears.

If there was a lot more housing prices would fall to a reasonable level and people would stand a chance of making progress in life.

@justasking111 we have this type of environment as I mentioned earlier in the thread near us but it comes at a price - and no rentals on these developments .!! They do resell quite well though at the right price.

Here's two both within 10 miles of us -

https://rangefordvillages.co.uk/villages/wadswick-green/?utmsource=gmb&utmmmedium=organic&utmcampaign=wadswick-green

https://www.retirementvillages.co.uk/our-villages/avonpark/?utmsource=local&utmmmedium=organic&utmcampaign=gmb

Living in a cul de sac of 10 homes. I've just calculated that we have 17 spare bedrooms. Only two properties are fully occupied. Four of them are occupied by single people. One occupied by a family of six. The other five are couples. I've never thought just how much space we take up.

Oh my stars those are fabulous. Not cheap but if you're in the south east and have a family sized home affordable I would think.

I live in a similar area to the OP. The part I don't understand is why everything built here is 4/5 bedroom homes at £700K +. This is not addressing the housing crisis. Just lining developers pockets.

The land owners are the ones making serious profit. Developers do well but not as nearly as much as those that own the land.
Land owner auctions off a parcel of land. All the developers will know how many houses they can get on it. The only way to win the bid is cram in more houses. Land supply is very constricted in this country the planning act is from another era.
You could cut house prices and have nice spaced out houses just need the land to be released. Obviously will have the you are concreting over the countryside comments.

A big part of the problem is developers getting planning permission then not building.

It really annoyed me that the government had a golden opportunity to spread and lower housing costs around the country by incentivising employers to encourage home working where possible. instead they listened to corporate office owners and pret and concentrated everyone back into big cities not all of whom need to work there. Keeping rents higher.

There are also many retirement properties in multi flat complexes lying empty. They are notoriously unpopular to buy, when they should be much sought-after on paper given our rapidly ageing population.

One problem is that the service charges are crippling, but I also think older people don't necessarily like living exclusively with other old folk. There's a feeling of being in God's Waiting Room - it's almost like a care home setting.

Why not keep the buildings but make them more of a mixed community? Maybe some of the flats could be lower cost social type housing for carers? Or key workers with young families? You see great social results when young children and old people mix in care homes. I've seen something like this on a documentary from, I think, the Netherlands.

If you accept house developers are the only companies that build houses, they need to make a profit. I’m sick of hearing that they should not. Why do we think business should not make money? No builders = no homes.

The type of house agreed on a development site is down to planning permission. Up thread we say families don’t want small houses, so we complain about larger ones. The truth is, no developer builds a house that won’t sell and they are not charities. If anyone has ever been to a public inquiry on proposed developments, you would be amazed what local residents say about the mix of housing offered! In affluent areas its executive houses with no social housing at all if there has to be any housing built in the first place. That also includes proposals for unsightly brownfield sites based on traffic generated! We don’t want housing near us.

It’s up to planning what is agreed and what type of house is required for social housing based on need. Smaller developments are not required to have social housing. There are some developments that are totally social housing. We actually need to scale up building to meet the government’s targets but we can never do that if development companies are stopped from making a profit due to them not being allowed to “line their pockets”. Building is a business and land for the next development must be acquired and the huge costs of our prolonged planning process costs way too much. It’s 10 years sometimes. If we do want homes, we have to remove some barriers to building.

All local authorities have growth plans. They know where housing is proposed and they plan schools. Obviously the NHS knows too. Now LAs are having to find sponsors for schools, the speed of opening is not just down to the LA. Lack of control can mean lack of action.

After a break up me and my 2 children (one of them his) were evicted from our family home because it belonged to my ex. There’s no way even with benefit assistance and me working that we could afford to private rent a 3 bedroom house, we were put in a hovel of a hotel for emergency accommodation and have since been moved to a 2 bed flat so me and my 6 yr daughter have to share a room and a bed.

we have been informed it could be 3-4 yrs wait before we can get a 3 bed property, so no it’s not a “supposed” crisis

Our family were in temporary accommodation for 5 ish years. Normally it's much longer with my council so I was lucky in a way .

With council children of the opisite sex can stars till their 10 . But even after that it can take years with bidding . Children of the same sex can share till 16/18/21 depending on your council policy.

Its a con. Someone buys it at 70 they only own it till they die then it passes back to the seller. Their children cannot inherit from it.

@justasking111 indeed- I tried to persuade my FIL to go for one but nope he wanted 3 beds and a garage and a small garden so has bought a bungalow instead - but I posted to show they are about but 'at a price' and if it's a couple of course you both have to be on the same page . If you can pay £400k or so upwards and can afford £10k a year service charge then they can offer a fab life style provided you don't mind being surrounded by other over 60s a lot of the time . I see the Avonpark bus dropping them off here in Bath regularly too . People always seem to look happy .

Short sighted comment.
It takes years, decades even to save enough for a deposit. Fertility starts to decline in your late thirties for most women. So who would be having children? Not many people.

You already see certain people using "low birth rates" to justify more immigration. Do you want your grandchild to be the only English child in their school? I'll be called a racist for even saying this but take it from someone who went to a school that was 90% Muslim mostly Pakistani and saw my brother get beat up regularly no you do not want that.

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

Said by someone with a secure home presumably?

My friend works in lettings. Currently getting over 100 applicants per property. That's just for (very expensive) private rentals. That is a housing crisis.

@Scottsy200 Im assuming you were not married. If you were, you would have had a share of the house. Women need to wise up.

What we also have is couples separating and requiring 2 homes and then are not happy about what the state offers. Surely being housed is better than a hotel B&B?

I'd like to see more housing built for and owned by local authorities who then become professional landlords rather than social landlords. It would reduce the stigma and do much to make rents more affordable and housing stock maintained to decent standards. The flow of rent and housing benefit would be back into LA coffers and we'd see more community cohesion either more secure tenancies.

It was doable after WWII when we were even worse off financially.

Completely agree with this. It becomes circular money doesn’t it.
this is going to become an increasing issue when generation rent retire / too sick to work. Imagine how big that benefit bill will be. McCarthy Glenn have already foreseen this as an issue with their ramped up building for rent. Local governments need to be doing the same. Or all our tax money will be going off shore

Just noting that you are not living in temporary accommodation without access to cooking facilities, and no space for personal possessions.

You are commenting from a place of comfort where you obviously have no empathy for people who are living an incredibly difficult life!

I'm sick of hearing it too.

The fertility rate and size of the established British population is falling. The "housing shortage" is caused by population increase due to high net immigration. That's a simple fact. Britain is full.

Yes, sick of hearing about it because it’s been going on for centuries. Watching old YouTube videos of slum landlords in London especially. It’s never ending

There absolutely IS a housing crisis, OP
But like you I'm not convinced it's one of supply, more like one of AFFORDABILITY, and therefore it won't necessarily be fixed by building more.
Think about the many government policies over the years that have brought us to this place - land falling outside of IHT so land prices going sky high, tax breaks for landlords, right-to-buy, restrictions on Councils re-investing council house sale receipts in building, no restrictions on overseas buyers of UK properties....and so on.
We need imaginative solutions in the round.

@MellersSmellers 100% agree -