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?

Developers who promise the earth to get planning then renege on their commitments are a blight on the earth. When I lived in the SE promises were made by a developer to get PP to build supermarket, to build a new primary school well away from their 'proposed car park' so children would not be breathing fumes when in the playground. Planning granted, supermarkets built - BUT (what a surprise) no new school was built. Moved to SW, big famous hotel demolished, mixed housing development proposed, planning granted, but no affordable housing in sight. Ah! that comes in the second phase...... Will that be when hell freezes over then

Exactly this.

People who have lived in the same village/small towns are seeing the place changed completely, and usually for the worse. Just plonking hundreds or thousands more houses to meet some arbitrary quota without doing anything about services or thinking about the practicalities of large numbers of people living in an area that was previously supporting a much smaller number.

More traffic, more crime and anti social behaviour, more pollution, you name it...all while feeling like we're being packed in like sardines. Of course, to people who have lived in big towns and cities all their life, this probably sounds like a first world problem.

But I don't think the damage that it's causing should be underestimated for a second. It really doesn't surprise me that Reform is polling so highly - when people see such large influxes of people to these areas and their way of life changing so completely, while the Government does nothing to try and control numbers, of course people are going to start listening to what the likes of Reform say.

There isn’t enough affordable housing or social housing. The more mortgage rates go up the more rentals cost leaving many people homeless. That is why there is a housing crisis. The new builds are often targeted at people with money with a small amount of shared ownership etc. I think social housing should be income related but once your in you get to stay and for many they have been able to buy those houses. At a fraction of a cost of a standard home plus the rent on social housing is minimal compared to private rentals.

It is real rent is very high at the moment as is a mortgage. Know quite a few entire families mum dad and the kids all living in one room.
Cutting the ridiculously high immigration numbers should of been the solution years ago they can't just keep tearing up the countryside while also letting hundreds of thousands move here each year until every patch of grass has been concreted over. But youll be called racist for pointing that out.

Many people can’t or don’t want to buy a house though, so there always will be a need for rental properties and these should be provided.

Is this a joke? There is plenty of housing for rich people.

If you're cleaning the hospital and doing the opening shift at Gregg's, and your children deemed to make no input to the 'surrounding economy', read bars and cafes; you can no longer afford a home.

I know well paid parents, no debts, living in HMOs with their child, because all they can afford is a room.

I've worked the duty shift in the local authority homeless team, where 2 working parents arrive with suitcases because they can't find any affordable family home that's not been turned in to an HMO.

This is in a city. Maybe rurally it's different, but people live where the work is. (Wo)Man gotta eat.

This is now becoming evident in birth rates, leaving our inner city school shrinking year by year because nobody nearby can afford both housing and kids.

Christ alive, there is indeed a housing crisis.

It helps in the sense that the people currently in a three bed move into them, freeing up their place for people currently in a one bed, which then frees up the one bed for a FTB.

And maybe those people in the one bed had a toddler. So everyone is better off all round through the larger house being built.

We absolutely need new social housing too, but the more expensive stuff does help, just through increasing supply. And of course you need some strategic oversight so we have the right balance of different sizes of property.

We need social housing. There is nowhere left for the poor people to live: who largely do a lot of essential jobs that keep the country running. We need decent key worker housing.

There sort of isn't enough housing for rich people though. Not in the sense that they'll be left homeless, but as they are pushed out out of one area they then end up buying in a cheaper area and those people get pushed out. And so they then move to a cheaper areas and it continues down the ladder until everywhere is gentrified and the people at the bottom have nowhere.

In a way this has always been part of life. Areas ebb and flow. But it's all pushing in one direction at the moment because there's such a shortage. And it's the poorer people who get screwed over.

There is a severe lack of affordable housing. Like the OP our small villages are being flooded with expensive housing developments that are unaffordable for locals.
Because we are on a main train line we have had an influx of people coming north to take advantage of what they see as cheaper housing. That’s their choice but it has caused prices to rise to an unaffordable level.
There are very few rental properties and these are not affordable to young people and families.
I agree this needs to change but housing must be set at a cost taken from the national minimum wage for it to be affordable

Ah, your last paragraph gives it away
its an anti immigration point you’re trying to make
got it

Set out very plainly

Because we have a population of 60+ million and rising. Have you seen the projections for 10 years time?
There has to be a massive house building programme.

I agree with some of your points OP. I just don't think you made them well. Just building one type of housing that is still unaffordable to many whilst not improving infrastructure and services isn't good enough.

They have converted disused shops, the old job centre and a few other buildings into apartments in our local town. They look lovely and are close to the hospital and loads of businesses. Still no extra dentists or GPs though.

Yeah hence why they're 'sick' of hearing about the housing crisis. All the fault o' them bluddy forriners innit. AND they take our jobs/wine/women. All we have to do is get Nigel Farage into No 10 to slam shut the gates to Albion and everything will be cupcakes and unicorns.

This! I live in a social housing association flat on a new development. I hate it. The flat is more like a prison block. Huge windows which allow no privacy so feel like they are putting all the poor people on show as some kind of freak show. The giant windows also create masses of condensation and mould in the winter, and then make the flat unbearably hot in the summer. You can definitely smell and hear your neighbours. There are no communal gardens or grassy areas. No balconies. For the first three years I lived here there were no parks nearby. Shops an hour walk away. No bus service for three years. Myself and every neighbour I have spoken to are depressed living here. The developers aren’t thinking about where people want to live or the well-being of young families. They are doing as little as they can get away with. To add insult to injury my rent is three times that of my parents in law’s lovely three bedroom council house with a very large garden.

You don't think millions of people moving here has affected house prices/rent prices? You don't understand supply and demand and mock other people you consider stupid because they have different opinions?

Or you think the solution is to build infinity houses to keep up with the amount of people moving here until every piece of grass is concreted over?

Reductio ad absurdum is always a sign of a great argument…

It's the same in citys/towns as well . In my area there are massive new build tower blocks. 15/20 floors heigh . The area is very over crowded. It's not what it used to be . It feels dark even in the day time because the tower blocks are causing shadows /blocking the light it feels horrible.

Yes doctors/hospital/schools struggle . But that doesn't change the fact people need homes . As far as I'm concerned the families/children living in vermin /damp /mouldy /sharing bathrooms/kitchen often several in one room . Deserve a home regardless of the struggles of hospital/gp/schools.

Selling off a public asset- council housing - to massively benefit one generation then leaving a desperate situation for those coming afterwards.
we have huge new build housing estates near us. Traffic is now gridlocked there’s no amenities.
And the last government issued 1.2 million visas last year alone, around 700,000 net population increase. And that wasn’t a one off. How can we hope to build to manage that increase?

I find it really difficult to hear people in rural area/small towns complain about new builds - while I appreciate it is a shock to the system, it just can't compare to the level of poor quality new estates I see in my area.

Inappropriate brown field sites really close to the motorway underpass, sites previously flagged as unsuitable for housing because of poor air quality which mysteriously have since had planning approved, sites which have had structural issues because they were never really appropriate to hold on anyway.

And yet still these houses get snapped up - I doubt the OP would want to live in these homes but all the complaints and blocks means that they get built and someone else has to live with the crap environment.

Yes, this is a big problem - but nobody wants to point out the fact that we cannot practically accommodate such a large number of people, as we only have finite space and resources?

Immigration is extremely relevant to the housing crisis though. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous and extremely unhelpful if you're serious about actually tackling the problem. It's all part of a complex picture of what drives supply and demand, especially when it comes to social and affordable housing.

You can bury your head in the sand and try to shut down productive discussion all you like but it just doesn't change facts.

Well go on then what's the solution from the people who think cutting immigration is racist?

Keep building to try and keep with the numbers moving here at the expense of the countryside until there is none left

Or not build anything and let rent prices continue to sky rocket so more entire families have to live all in one room?

They have no actual good solutions just mocking "farage gammons" or whatever it is you call people who disagree

Well, it's a huge part of the problem, isn't it? Can you answer why having greater control over numbers of people wishing to live here would be a bad thing when the country cannot practically accommodate everyone?