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?

I totally agree with the OP.
There is a population crisis foremost!
Poor quality housing is being thrown up and advertised as sustainable and affordable which is an absolute laugh. Affordable to whom? I have watched a beautiful green space being devasted with horrible new builds which are basically brick fronted sheds, while a local factory remains empty and could have been renovated to many decent flats/apartments.
There is so much city wide brown space that goes unused while nature is being devastated with concrete.
Follow the money. If you think "they" care one jot about normal people think again.

Yes I know. My point is that they should pay the SAME taxes! I.e. Same level of taxes from wages should result in the same level of taxes from pensions etc. It's grossly unfair to charge workers higher taxes on the same income, i.e. national insurance, which is just another tax.

No, it is a housing crisis, but family breakdown is a contributing factor, along with inflation, high rents and taxes meaning hard to save a deposit, wage stagnation due to limited economic growth and probably lots of other things

Ah so your issue is that pensioners don't pay national insurance . You accept that they pay the same rate of income tax.

I never said anything else. I didn't even mention income tax. NIC is just a tax, but unfairly only on workers.

Well I've just calculated my income as a working person and am still under the NI threshold. As I was when I job shared so worked half a week.

The government did look at this for the retired but decided not to alter the system

The issue is that council estates are no longer built as they’re believed to be ‘sink estates’.

It’s a catch 22, can’t build too many social housing without peppering them in new housing estates but then that means not enough social housing to go around.

Also means the criteria to get social housing doesn’t include the average working class family.

We don't have sink estates because so many are now privately owned which means our council tend to move on the worst to certain roads in town. There's always problems there.

A colleague bought a brand new house on a new estate in a cul de sac. She soon discovered the social housing one opposite was drug dealer central. Day and night characters rolled up to buy. She had a baby and was afraid to leave the house at times. As were the neighbours.

Eventually after many police Etc visits they were relocated. But there were no other issues on the estate with social housing occupants.

So I think mixed housing works better.

@taxguru I totally agree - I know it's a bit boring that I mention the differences when we lived in Denmark but they are indeed a very different way of looking at it - and there was no NI as such - although you do pay into a kind of insurance scheme for sickness/unemployment .

I totally agree about NI - why should my son at 26 be paying in whereas a retired person receiving just as much pays zero NI -?

But do you have 17 spare rooms? Some might be studies/ offices for those who wfh? Just because they don’t use the bedrooms as bedrooms it doesn’t mean it’s not used. I have 4 bedrooms. 3 are bedrooms, one is duel purpose as my office and spare bed if the in laws come to stay. We would struggle in a smaller property but potentially could be penalised for having a ‘spare’ room.

There's also offices. I counted our home as a three bedroom but we have a big office library too.