To wonder where the left has gone?

[KenAdams]

Ironically, this is somewhat of a rant.

Is everyone too scared to stand up to the constant hate filled rants for fear of being called "woke"?

Is the constant inference that VAWG is only perpetrated by brown men not worth standing up to?

Is the rhetoric that all of our problems are caused only by small boats and not legal migration or billionaires not problematic? For the record, I believe it is a problem, but not the only problem and not even the biggest problem. I believe the system is the problem.

The increasingly hostile movement against anyone that is non white is making people fearful of going about their every day lives and people seem to just want to sit on the sidelines and refuse to call it out.

Where is everyone?

I feel like this post might turn into a gaslighting shit show, but fuck it, I've had enough.

The migrants aren’t the issue here and don’t impact the housing market.

the problem is a lack of house building which has been a growing problem for 50 years. It well predates migration.

Can someone explain to
me why, in the 60s, my grandparents who were a factory worker and a cleaner could afford to rent a (small) terraced family house.

Because in the 1960s there was plentiful social housing and private rental was the last resort.

Why on earth do you think several million more people needing homes doesn’t impact the housing market?

Why do you think migrants require several million new homes?

I’ll tell you why think migrants don’t significantly impact the housing shortage- 20 years of working in housing policy.

its well known that the housing shortage started by not replacing right to buy housing post thatchers sell off and housing building hasn’t been at an appropriate rate ever since.

Why do you think you need to replace the houses sold off? People still live in them.

UK population 1972 56.1 million.
UK population 2000 58.8 million
Growth in 28 years 2.7 million

UK population 2000 58.8 million
UK population 2020 66.7 million
Growth in 20 years 7.9 million

UK population 2020 66.7 million
UK population 2024 69.5 million
Growth in 4 years 2.8 million

Since 2000 there have been 900,000 more births than deaths

The population of Birmingham in about 1.1 million people. How do you think we would build more than 2.5 Birmingham's in 4 years?

Do you think supply and demand is a right wing conspiracy theory.

How can you possibly think that rapid population growth will not impact the cost of housing?

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/land-use-in-england-2022/land-use-statistics-england-2022

8.7% of land in England is of developed use, with 91.1% of non-developed use and the remaining 0.2% being vacant.
The top 3 land use groups were ‘Agriculture’ (63.1%), ‘Forestry, open land and water’ (20.1%), and ‘Residential gardens’ (4.9%).
6.8% of land within the Green Belt is of developed use.
6.1% of land within Flood Zone 3 is of developed use (not accounting for flood defences).
5.0% of land within areas at high to medium risk of flooding from rivers and the sea is of developed use (after accounting for flood defences).

Vacant land is 0.2%. How much farmland would you like to build on?

Houses don’t last forever.

we have a bigger population and far more single occupation households now.

houses sold under RTB were supposed to be replaced as social housing stock. The availability of social housing is, as another poster said, a factor in the rising cost of rents and house prices

I’m more sure if you’re being serious, but population growth is obviously not the same as migration.

people have bee researching and making policy on housing far longer than you’ve been fleetingly interested in this, believe me.

I included the figure for births in excess of deaths, 900,000. Where have the other nearly 10 million people since 2000 come from?

I use population growth because I'm more concerned with the problems caused by the sheer number of extra people than their origins.

I've been interested for quite some time, it's not a passing interest but perhaps you can explain why I should care what people who have been making housing policy for years think? They've done a really bad job so I'm not sure why you are using them in your appeal to authority.

From memory, from around 2000, local authority housing (also housing commandeered by the local authority) began to bypass the established housing waiting list. Some was refugee housing - including in flatblocks which residents were moved out of for rebuilding but they never were rebuilt - but I think a lot of it was out-of-area people passed from other authorities under various statutory duty agreements. In the last 2 years, it has been the explosion of hotel places for asylum seekers of course - several of the budget hotels visiting trade contractors used to use have now moved to exclusively housing asylum seekers, I can only assume it's more profitable. Some of the guys in the hotels are hooking up with county dealers and black market traders who so far hadn't done much business here, so the atmosphere in those streets isn't great.

Housing policy takes place all over the place- nations housing federation, housing associations, house builders etc all have policy and lobbying but won’t be ultimate decision makers

some housing policy in the last 20
years has been positive, of course, but has not solved the housing shortage.

blaming immigration is lazy and allows you to ignore the impacts of planning, lack of subsidy and investment and systemic problems which contribute to the housing shortage.

It’s laughable that you think any “sort” of individual is to blame, although of course that’s what we do now isn’t? Ignore the impacts of late stage capitalism and blame a person. You may as well blame single person households.

So you think the problem is people bought the social housing, let it fall into decay and now need a second house alongside their decayed one?

well obviously not, because only a stupid person would consider such a thought.

It’s laughable that you think any “sort” of individual is to blame, although of course that’s what we do now isn’t? Ignore the impacts of late stage capitalism and blame a person. You may as well blame single person households.

Is this what's known as a non sequitur? It seems completely unrelated to anything I posted. I'm talking about numbers, not individuals but because you have no logical arguments you have to resort to implying I'm motivated by hate and bigotry. That tactic is so tired it needs a holiday.

If we had a housing shortage and ineffective housing policy before mass immigration then mass immigration was only ever going to make things worse. Supply and demand is not theoretical. Your only answer is to build more houses but you can't explain how we would build them at the rate they are needed or where the land to put them on would come from.

Obviously not. People bought the social housing at a discount, sold it on at a profit and a lot of it is now in the private rental sector.

I think they do. Immigration is the key factor in population growth and a bigger population leads to a mismatch between supply and demand. However, there are other factors that have greatly exacerbated the situation, such as lack of creation of SH and the rise of the private rental sector, planning laws, land hoarding, the hoarding of empty properties by the wealthy. So while we can't deny immigration has led to more people needing housing, ineffective strategies by successive governments to manage this has turned a challenge into a crisis.

So? They are still lived in.

“Your only answer is to build more houses but you can't explain how we would build them at the rate they are needed or where the land to put them on would come from.”

i didn’t give you any answer

there are many people who have excellent ideas about how to increase house building, I don’t need to come up with an explanation that suits you on some chat forum. Spend some time looking into it. Read some blogs or articles by the Nat fed.

That’s not true.

houses don’t last forever. People see houses that were built in 1910 and don’t realise for every one still standing, many have been demolished or destroyed.

the life of a house for accounting (useful life) purposes is generally 100 years. Many types of houses have shorter lives than this ie pre fabs.

an individual owner will rarely demolish and rebuild but an institutional owner (housing association / council/ asset management) will make financial decisions to get the most value out of the assets.

Excellent ideas are a good start but we need action rather than berating when we point out that we have more people than we can house and that pressure is making housing unaffordable for very many people.

Of course you are not obliged to come up with answers but you made a rather bold claim that immigration does not impact the housing market so at the very least you should be able to explain how the principle of supply and demand does not apply to housing.

At vastly inflated rents. It’s a major factor in rents being unaffordable.

What do you think HAS been done in the last 20 years?

you’ve assumed nothing- that not true, and you should check before making such bold assumptions

If they were unaffordable to all they would be left empty and the prices come down. Quite clearly it is nonsense that the housing crisis is because social housing was sold off. It is because there are more people wanting homes and the existing housing stock is not enough regardless of whether it is privately owned or not. There may need to be more social housing but that is because there is more need for more housing generally due to population growth which is largely down to immigration.

If they were unaffordable to all they would be left empty and the prices come down.

Utter nonsense. You do know how much taxpayers subsidise private landlords via housing benefit?

They are lived in by people who can afford the inflated rent of the private landlord, but no use to people needing affordable homes. The housing crisis isn't just about there being insufficient lumps of bricks and mortar for everyone, it's about people being able to afford to buy or rent homes. There is much land sitting in developers banks that could be built on tomorrow if there was a market that could afford the homes.