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?

Nobody in my building has been able to sell in the past two years because everyone is put off by the service charge and random leaks that no one will take responsibility for. I tried to sell mine but the only feedback I got was 'lovely flat but... the service charge'. So I've ended up effectively trapped and have no choice but to pay whatever bill is thrown at me. Some people have had to take second jobs. I don't even have it that bad compared to some leaseholders I've met, such as those whose flats are unmortgageable (like the cladding scandal blocks), and people who've received £15-20k bills for things like a new roof on a modern building because it wasn't done properly in the first place.

I will never buy another flat. Which will mean relocating hundreds of miles away because I can't afford a house in this region, but I'd rather that than find myself in this situation again.

It's such a shame because it can work really well, and does seem to in some parts of Europe.

@ Kindofembarrasing

Your comment is truly shocking! How do you define English exactly? Most children in schools are born in England and are English.

Do you know how many generations it actually takes to not be considered BAME?

Three of my daughters grandparents are White British, my husband and I are English, our daughters are English yet my daughters count as BAME (One grandmother born in the Caribbean) so I struggle to understand your comment!

Being English doesn’t depend on your religion, or your skin colour. It’s your nationality, and throughout history England has been a place that people have emigrated to and from. If you do an ancestry DNA test you will find that your ancestors moved around and that not all of your genetics are from the area you live in now!

In the last 100 years immigration allowed the creation of the NHS by providing staff, built our motorways, rebuilt this country after WW2, Bought with them food, celebrations and for many of us families to join!

I therefore find your comments at best ill informed. and at worst racist!

I take exception to the idea that unless you are white and go to an Anglican Church you are not English!

The comments made remind me of the abuse friends at school received for being Catholic and Irish from kids at a nearby state school. They were of course English as their parents were born here as were they! I hoped such horrible behaviour was a thing of the past left behind in the 80s but it seems that some people just want to pass on the pain to another generation!

Finally immigrants saved me and my daughters life when I needed an emergency C section on a bank holiday, Both the lead surgeon and anaesthetist chose to come to the UK and work for the NHS and save lives….

Is it affordable housing being built near you?

YABU
My town centre is dead. But I would rather the rent/business rates were lowered to attract small businesses back into the town, so people visit. Turning empty units into dwellings just means less people coming into town centres and visiting what few shops are actually left.

If you are sick of hearing about the housing crisis, then I guess you are happy in your own secure accommodation? I remember trying to find somewhere to rent.... I liked the first place I viewed, and the other people that wanted to see the place were told it was now let. That was over 15 years ago.
Nowadays, trying to rent a place is like trying to get a job. My DP was served a Sec21, and it still took him a few months after to get a place. He viewed and expressed interest in so many places. Each time, there were about 30 other people also wanting to view. And his rent is almost half of his take home pay.

Corporate investors are buying up family homes in the USA as well as here. The rental sector benefits being recognised. I've just watched a podcast which was an eye opener. Pension funds have bought a lot as well. I started googling. It's alarming.

Totally agree. We have 3 rental properties but don't charge stupid rents - everything you see in the estate agent windows these days are for rent at £1000pm or more!! There should be a cap - greedy landlords would sell and make houses available and the rest would charge reasonable rents. It shouldn't be cheaper to buy than to rent!

And yes to the town centres and abandoned business premises etc. The problem is that you can get the VAT back on a new build, whereas you don't if you convert an existing building. No builder can make much money on a conversion. How the various recent governments haven't noticed this is beyond me.....

The trouble is, most homes that are being built are not forever homes. They are cramped with hardly any outdoor space so we are creating a system where people are needing to move more often. It's a vicious cycle but better quality homes with more space, will actually mean there are less people desperate to move all the time. Greedy building developers creating overpacked housing estates when far nicer areas could be developed in keeping with their surroundings.

A big factory was demolished a few years ago in our town. About 250 houses are now being built on it. Mixture of 2 and 3 bed houses with 2 very small blocks of apartments. That seems ideal, not thousands of houses so the entire feel of a place changes, I’m in a town of about 25,000 and it’s using a brownfield site.

This was the point I was trying to make. If you look at 1930’s and 40’s developments. You had a mixture of homes, maisonettes, semis, terraced and detached, bungalows. Decent gardens and driveways. Shops and places of work. As well as schools, doctors and hospitals.
they were places people wanted to move to, they were places you could live out your life and downsize / upsize as needed. Whilst we don’t have the land to do that scale of development again, we can certainly take note of some of the principals.

of course it would, this shouldn’t be allowed. I’m so sorry.

So why are we building huge swathes of houses for sale? No social housing is being built or bought in my area yet five thousand homes are being built all private they keep saying it's because of the homeless but how are they going to afford a £400,000 home? Double the price of my house just across the road from me less square footage less garden no parking oversubscribed schools oversubscribed Dr's and no park because it's next to a nature reserve and that counts as a park for regulation purposes

Not opposed to building in urban areas but even proposals to convert former industrial sites and car parks etc draw NIMBY opposition.

As for the people who say "we worked hard to afford a nice home away from other people and now it's our right to preserve that even if it means other people not having homes" - words fail me.

I was going to say, are there that many people on single incomes trying to buy? Then I remembered i was listening to a radio 4 thing about how families and relationships have changed. More single families and more (happily) single women in their 40’s/50’s+
shouldn’t they be able to have a secure home too?

it’s all gone wrong somehow as people are in the wrong homes.people who should be in secure social housing are renting privately. Which means more landlords. Landlords are buying up starter homes and flats, as returns are better. Which pushes the price up and further out of reach.
Older people not wanting to downsize as smaller homes don’t offer the savings they once did or aren’t attractive enough. Or maybe want to hang on to it for their renting children.

like many renters, we rent and are basically still renting the starter homes (despite moving) because we’ve never “moved up” as rents just increase. We’ve rented for nearly 20 years now, yet have never got the bigger home you would if you owned. Weve spent over £350,000 on rent.

@BourbonsAreOverated I think you will find that one of the reasons renting is more expensive is that landlords are pulling out. There’s fewer private rental properties, especially owned by small scale landlords. The driver of this is inability to get the property back if you need it. Plus the mortgage hikes and Covid rent arrears. It’s not an entirely attractive business proposition.

People always did stay in family homes. When I was younger no one downsized unless they needed the money. Most people we knew didn’t as getting a bungalow was impossible. They are still at a huge premium around here so there’s money to be found, not saved! My friends are looking - 3 bed semi to a 2 bed bungalow and they need £100,000 plus. So it’s inevitable they don’t move.

If you have spent so much in rent, could you not have got a deposit from somewhere? I know a 2 bed in my nearest large town is £1300 a month plus now so you live in a very expensive area. A few years ago it was £850 so I see the issue.

I can see renting into 50s as a single person is an issue but so many younger people expect to buy on their own and it’s not possible for many.

A lot of good points have been made, but literally no-one has pointed out that our population rises every year. Demand for housing exceeds supply and it is impossible to build our way out of this.

UK deaths and births have equalised. UK population growth is now coming entirely from net immigration. Migration is fine, people should be able to leave this country to live elsewhere and others should be able to come here to live. But until arrivals equal departures, together with equal numbers of births and death, our population will never stabilise and we will never be able to house everyone satisfactorily.

If you have spent so much in rent, could you not have got a deposit from somewhere?

we are lucky enough to have what most would see as a decent deposit, it’s the loan to wage borrowing amount that’s the problem. So our “deposit” would have to make up the shortfall. So actually our deposit would go from the 20k or so you’d need to being 100,000’s

I think you will find that one of the reasons renting is more expensive is that landlords are pulling out.
that explains the last few years, (as well as increased mortgage costs for landlords being passed on which pushes the overall rental up)
but it doesn’t explain the years before when every Tom dick and Harry became a landlord because interest rates were so low.

We have a continuous history of government of any major party, who could pull levers to influence this, being of the landowning or landlord class themselves. Politicians whatever their background aren’t going to alienate the votes of those who are in those classes. Or the party funding. They just don’t really relate to those who rent. Until they think it will politically penalise their parties to not help renters, it will not change. So they need to hear from renters and groups who represent renters in far greater numbers.

Theres a big cultural gap and a lot of cultural change needed in the UK. More renters need to unite and lobby politically because they are going to be in the ascendant based on their age and number and we (regardless of rent or ownership) all need to look at campaigning charities like Shelter and Generation Rent and support them.

It needs to become socially acceptable for people to be a good landlord. It doesn’t help to just demonise all landlords. Letting agencies need to be regulated massively and bad practice cracked down on.

It's more a matter of sustainability and not relying on foreign countries for our essentials. If that costs us more, then so be it.

With climate change and Worldwide population increase, food and water WILL become in higher demand, and that means the countries with the resources (i.e. suitable farmland etc) WILL be able to charge more AND choose who they sell their scarce commodities to.

Food "may" be cheap today because of cheap imports from developing countries, but as demand increases or supply decreases, the price WILL rise.

As developing countries grow richer and/or their populations increase, they will have a greater demand of food and will be willing to pay and compete against other countries for it!

If the UK has built on too much farmable land, then it's buggered isn't it? We'd be at the mercy of foreign governments, at the mercy of wars, supply chain disruption (look at the impact of the Evergreen blockage of the Suez canal on the supply chain!), pandemics, etc. Of course, it's impossible for the UK to produce all our own food, it never has and never will, but we need to maintain the ability to produce a fair amount of it to at least provide basic nourishment even if that's literally bread, milk, potatoes, meat, and the usual crops we can produce in the UK. Maybe not at the levels needed for thousands of calories a day, but at least to facilitate some kind of "rationing" of enough food to stop us dying from hunger.

Or do you want us to end up like some African countries where hundreds of starving people gather round an aid lorry begging for a bag of rice??

In some ways the OP is right. I live in the SW and there are houses going up all over the place, BUT even the 'affordable' homes aren't on local wages. The only people who can afford them are moving down from elsewhere and since many are elderly that puts a strain on local services. Wages down here do not compare with the SE and what might seem reasonable in some areas isn't here. If the government want to solve what really is a housing crisis they need to do whatever it takes to provide social housing, whether that's newbuilds, conversions or compulsory purchase of empty properties. I mention the last because of the huge unfinished developments (due to the bankruptcy of get rich quick builders) in my area.

ive Written to government. I’ve written to my mp. I’ve helped shelter with campaigns.
there is no political will as it feels a first world problem. You’ve a roof over your head, what are you moaning about

and that’s true.
but, with that unstable roof comes a lot of mental health issues especially for the kids. That’s before you look at th long term where there isn’t a paid up house to retire in, there isn’t a home to sell for care fees and those children will not inherit anything either.

If you voted tory, it's your fault anyway.
They have ruined the country, not immigrants. People are just too stupid and hateful to see it.
The housing crisis is all down to government policies over the years. But you are right about building new houses. I'd compulsory purchase buildings that have been empty for over a certain period and refit and rent them to the homeless and hotel people.

I’m no Tory fan, however. Wasn’t it Tony Blair who introduced using housing benefit in private rentals.
whilst thatchers right to buy started it, that policy continued the issues we see now.
sticking plasters that fix short term issues, but create great floods in the long run

edited to add. No successive government built the number of social housing we needed. Regardless of colour.

@BourbonsAreOverated definitely not Tony Blair - we got a small amount of housing benefit in London back in 1996

Ramp up building on brownfield sites extensively...Building in greenbelt or rural areas only when there is proven exceptional need. Forward-thinking approach to planning, not just plonking hundreds of thousands of new homes without prior consideration to infrastructure and amenities. Really, before any big new build, that should be the first step.

This is exactly what the Government intends to do with its reform of planning laws/restrictions, encouraging brownfield and greybelt development over green belt greenfield sites.
And our population growth isn't just about immigration, illegal or otherwise (and illegal is a fraction of the legal migration numbers) it's about general population growth. If 2 people meet and have 2 babies, then those babies go on to meet 2 other people and have 2 babies each....