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?

And people don’t downsize because every time you move house you have to o poo at stamp duty. There’s a reason why stamp duty is derided by each and every tax expert of any political party as being an insanely stupid tax. Why on earth isn’t it binned????

It’s simple math like at your dinner table.

You can only invite the number of guests for which you have chairs.

Invite and house thousands and thousands and you need to build them shelter.

Angie thinks we can employ loads of MEN to build the houses.

Build the houses in the countryside where there are no jobs.

Build them with no driveway, no parking because cars are bad even in countryside where there is no public transport.

Don’t build any schools nearby, and don’t provide public transport because they will ride bikes to school. Even the pregnant woman with 2 toddlers will walk or cycle the miles to school.

Labour, you can tell from the WhatsApp group hate people. Not sure why they are in politics other than for perks and to punish people with good jobs or aspirations.

They seem more communist in hatred of academia (unless it’s anti colonial or queer), hatred of investment, etc etc

@GoldfinchFeather I'm sick of hearing that unprecedented levels of migration have absolutely nothing to do with this.

I agree we need flats. Nice clean, affordable flats that one person can afford to rent on their own. Flats with parks close by and trees to offset any possible gloom.

I agree. More mobility in the housing market would be wonderful.

@Decisionsdecisions1 your post was simultaneously both patronising and also demonstrated a huge lack of understanding about rural communities and planning issues. You do not understand the other side of the coin.

it’s not just about our ‘cutesy village’. It’s the lack of infrastructure. My village is projected to have another 2000 homes built in the next 5 years. There is space, yes, green fields that were farms.

BUT there isn’t the space in local schools, doctors surgeries, dentists. The sewage system is not fit for purpose and already floods when it rains, so on the corner of my road those houses get sewage in their front gardens. This is going to become catastrophic when the 3 separate new developments are built just on the fields off our one road. Which is small, by the way, and 2 cars can’t pass at the same time, so god knows how they are going to cope with the extra congestion of hundreds of new vehicles. The way the sites are designed means there isn’t actually an access road, meaning large vehicles can get onto the development (so no ambulance/ fire access as there is no turning circle). All the wheelie bins have to be brought down to the road to be emptied on bin days, as the bin lorry can’t get up the road. but there isn’t space for them to be left safely, so it causes an obstruction.

The children can’t just ‘go to the next nearest primary school’ as it’s 5 miles away down country roads. There are no bus services. I already have to drive 45 minutes to my dentist, as there is nowhere closer locally.

Infrastructure does not immediately follow development. It takes years. Who’s going to replace the sewage system? No one.

in sure in your town you have your own issues. But don’t be so insulting about rural issues either.

Right to buy sold off the council
housing stock. This is the main issue. There are loads of houses to buy, but no social care housing stock which is the real issue. The government are also crippling landlords , so there are few rentals now as well.

Long post to say "not in my backyard".

@Duckinahat personally I'm more pro a sales tax on moving of 2% of value. That's for everyone

Hence those that have never bought before or dont have anything to sell don't hit this tax at all

I wish the government would fund a huge research project into soundproofing buildings. There are some beautiful flats near us that an acquaintance moved into. He loved the flat but could hear absolutely everything his neighbours did and they could hear him so he moved out to a house.

Humans are social creatures but people don't want to hear and smell their neighbours when they are in the privacy of their own homes, hence why many people don't like the idea of living in a flat.

The issue is that the remaining land will become increasingly less available for food production. Water is diverted from the houses to agricultural land, coupled with climate change means that a considerable percentage of the non-developed land is or will be considered flood plane.

It's not the "only " solution, though, is it?

Like I said in my first post, there are plenty of innovative ways to tackle this problem if there was the wherewithal to do it. Brown field sites are another resource that could be used much more. A CPRE report from a few years ago found that there would be space for over a million homes on these sites. https://www.cpre.org.uk/resources/state-of-brownfield-report-2022

Yet still it seems to be greenbelt that seems to come under the most strain! During a time when we're all supposed to be doing our bit to look after the environment, how does building at such a rate on land that is often habitat for wildlife help with that? But sure, let's all go buy electric cars...

Plus maybe if the Government did more to get a grip on the out of control population increase in this country, we wouldn't need so many houses building anyway. Just a thought.

This is really interesting,what your saying.i was recently driving round one of the new build sites near me ,and there was huge houses with gardens and front drives ,really nice streets all nicely planned.then I turn a corner and I felt shocked to see what were clearly social housing,two rows of two up two down houses no side access all in a row, 15 on one side and 15 facing ,and in the middle just tarmac with numbers for parking.
No grass ,so that's where the children will play amongst the parked cars .all the doors identical and no car charging access like every other house ..and these 30 or so identical houses were surrounded by huge individual houses ..it was shocking and sad the lack of thought gone in to the social housing

The UK is the most densely populated country in Europe apart from Belgium and The Netherlands. It feels overcrowded. It doesn't matter what % of the land is built on if we are too densely populated. Our closest neighbour France has a very similar sized population to us. France is 551,000 square km, UK is 244,000 square km.

I agree. I think if they built flats with people living in mind (better insulation, sound proof) they would be a long-term option lucrative option.
I like flat living, I find it much more practical on one floor, shared gardens i can enjoy and don't need to worry about gardening. There are a lot of positives. But they are seen as negatively and not sought after therefore not much thought or investment goes into building them to be realistic accommodation and they prefer to focus on houses which isn't cost-effective, affordable to many people and take up a lot of space.

Flats if built with thought could be a great option for families on a tight budget. (Bills would be cheaper, in one flat I lived in never had to put heating on, as my flat was toasty from the other properties heating 😂)

Such a lazy, brainless insult.

But the issue with stamp duty is that it reduces the number of moves people are prepared to make, makes them less likely to move for work, and less likely to have a house that meets their needs, and any tax on house moves still has the same issues.

People should not be financially penalised for choosing / needing to move house. They should be incentivised to do so instead.

Yes they buy the land, I've no idea of the background as to why the farmers are selling though. Doesn't change the impact on the deer that live there though

I think it’s easy to complain that there is no housing crisis if you have secure housing. Stunning lack of empathy from the NIMBY op 🙄

Do you think there isn’t a housing crisis?

What’s your own housing situation?

To echo some of the posters - I am from the EU and when I first moved to the UK many years ago, I was really surprised at the British obsession of living in a house with a garden (even if the garden is the size of a stamp).

There is just not enough land to build on, realistically. There should be more flat developments for different budgets etc, inside the cities, rather than expanding into the countryside.

Clearly doesn't affect you

Meanwhile some if us are stuck in overpriced rental properties with landlords who don't even do the legal bare minimum to make their houses that we pay over the odds for to make like them safe but we don't have any chance of moving because the next landlord down the road wants us to earn a frankly ridiculous amount for another subpar property.

Did I say it was the "only" solution?
Why don't you move onto a brownfield site or a flat then? It's always someone else's responsibility. Someone else who should sacrifice the pleasant house in a nice location... We should all be doing our bit, you can't just demand that other people shouldn't want the same things you already have. It won't work.

The population is increasing faster since the turn of the century, with the biggest increase due to immigration. The government need to be stricter with immigrants, like they are in NZ and Australia

They have build a shitload of homes near me. Can we afford one? Can we fuck! Not without an absolutely hefty deposit which we can't save because our rent is so high. We earn decent money too.