To think housing in this country is fundamentally broken?

[BrokenHousingLogic]

Whether you rent privately, rent socially or own, it feels like the system isn’t really working for anyone.

• Rents are high and insecure
• Buying is out of reach for many
• Social housing is under strain
• Landlords and tenants feel pitted against each other
• Local authorities seem overwhelmed

It often feels like people are arguing with each other instead of addressing the fact that the whole structure is failing.

AIBU to think this goes beyond individual choices and points to a system-wide problem?

This is the report from Bracknell Forest council on their housing waiting lists. The single people on the waiting list far outnumbers other households. Look at the numbers wanting bigger homes and not getting them. In general, housing families should be a priority but they are far more difficult to house.

Im addition the biggest pressure on housing is in London and the SE. Land costs more and less of it is available. We do however still see strong housing demand in London.

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As there has been growth in single person/single parent households, there has also been growth in the number of young people continuing to live in their parental home. Instead of moving out after uni or once established in a job, many are choosing to return, or continue to live with parents. That decreases the number of housing units needed.

Indeed.

However, there are many factors causing opposite effects.

The main one is the growth in population. Some of this is net immigration, but it's mostly because people live longer. Elderly people living in their own homes means we need more houses. Family size is smaller, so in the whole population, there are more family units, so more housing is required. Moving away for work means that it is not easy to return to the family home for whatever reason, eg the breakup of a relationship, and similarly if an elderly person's family has moved away, they can't simply moving in with them.

It's not blame, but it IS fact and reality. Allowing mortgages to be higher multiples of joint incomes has pushed up housing costs due to demand pull inflation. Same happened when Brown flooded the economy with cash due to his stupidly generous tax credits - which led to demand pull inflation. None of that is "blaming" feminism, but it's the consequence of it. We wouldn't want it any other way, but it's a very unfortunate side effect of the empowerment of women.

On the other hand, we've had an increase in the number of young going to Uni thanks to Blair's stupid 50% target that has caused high demand for accommodation in Uni cities and meant highest ever numbers of youngsters leaving their home to go to Uni. Along with the centralisation of jobs out of the regions and into London and a handful of other big cities, many graduates never return to live at home and therefore continue to need their own accommodation in the city where they've found graduate jobs! Swings and roundabouts.

I’m with you on these factors. I’m very aware, as an older person, that there is a great shortage of suitable accommodation to downsize into. We would like to downsize, but at the moment there are no options where we are. None of the older people I know, 75+, my age group, would contemplate moving in with their children. Several have already downsized into flats.

We don't have any incentive to downsize. We have 5 bedrooms now, but would still want three. The price differential is not much, and with stamp duty and other moving costs, it wouldn't be worth it.

@Seymour5 It’s not decreasing waiting lists for one person units in Bracknell Forest. Other SE areas would not be much different. London probably worse.

Government info shows that we do indeed have many single people living with their parents. The cost and availability of homes for them is high. In the meantime they contribute to household costs in their parents home. I think many of us did this decades ago too, but not for as long. We had friends with bank of mum and dad coughing up a flat deposit in the 70s. It’s not a new thing but far more common now.

@taxguru Just to correct you: the university sector was expanded by the Conservatives in 1992. This converted polys, colleges of HE and colleges of Education and Colleges of Art into universities. Blair never got 50% of young people going to university - it’s around 37%. However the big expansion in numbers was caused by Cameron lifting the numbers cap at unis in 2013. It’s that decision, not Blair’s urging, that affected housing in university cities. We perhaps need a model where more students stay local for university but we seem wedded to new halls of residence and moving away from home and complaining about the cost.

Yeah apart from other countries in Western Europe have coped perfectly well with housing.
Outside of capital cities (some areas) and tourist hotspots' most of Europe has far cheaper housing than the UK and still has Feminism.

I assume you re a man.

The 37% of students going to Uni is on par with most other developed economies.

The difference is the type of 'courses but who has been in power for the last 14 years where some degrees have increasingly become worthless.

I can certainly get on board with this idea.

There’s a town near me with an increasing number of empty shop units where the council are proposing to allow blocks of flats instead, but there is constant opposition from locals to every planning application. It’s as if they think they can take the town centre back to the 1970s without actually bothering to shop in it themselves.

Some councils have a blanket "no" to such applications as their local plan continues to designate such areas for retail and hospitality and they claim they can't allow planning permissions contrary to their local plan. Utter madness when everyone knows that High St retail will never return to how it used to be pre supermarkets and out of town retail parks.

@taxguruThey can revise the plan! They don’t bother of course. JL wanted to develop stores into housing 18 months ago. Not sure how this is progressing. Stuck in the local authority quagmire probably.

They are turning empty office blocks into flats around here, as well as building flats on every postage stamp of vacant land.

The office block thing makes sense. There is not much demand for office space nowadays.

@CraftyGin In that case, the planning authority has altered its employment zone into a residential zone. It’s possible of course but they are so slow. Many over large high streets could do with a reduction.

Someone with a house that had a shop front had to battle for years for it to be a private house again near us, despite that end of the high street being mixed use. Often Victorian owners just made their home a shop but it’s now set in planning policy with dreadfully slow revision. Fortunately a couple of other shops have more easily reverted to houses but it takes too long. We need a core high street but not extending into mixed sections for dogmatic reasons.

I popped down a rabbit hole and looked at the planning permission for this particular development. The original planning permission was granted in 2021 with loads of conditions. It looks like the development is almost ready.

The development was proposed and approved under permitted development which was put into law in 2015.

It only ceased to be used as offices around the time the pandemic, ie it didn't survive the working from home culture.

Sounds a good idea. Office space is no longer in high demand, just as retail premises aren't either. Far better to repurpose into something we need rather than allow them to decay and become derelict for years/decades.

Permitted development for offices and shops was strengthened in 2021 but has been slow to produce anything. I was talking about a historic case I knew of to be fair. So yes planning authority had to approve the scheme but it’s assumed it can happen. Many planning authorities drag their feet though. There are also restrictions on size of dwelling and all sorts of arguments ensue about road use and environment. Nothing is a quick fix.

Gosh this is exactly the same as where I am. The council has started to ignore these opposition groups.

IN our village, we've a large pub/restaurant/hotel that's been closed for years and slowly deteriorating. There've been a few planning applications for change of use into flats, a children's home, etc., but the local opposition (inc parish council) is strong so nothing gets passed. Meanwhile it gets more derelict by the year. The locals keep saying it's such a shame it closed etc but it wouldn't have closed if they'd have actually used it. The fact that it closed due to being uneconomically viable and that no one wants to buy it to use as a pub/restaurant for over a decade means it'll never re-open as one, especially now with the increases in business rates, employers nic etc. Locals need to wake up and smell the coffee and stop harking back to how things used to be. One nutter even highlighted Jeremy Clarkson's new pub as justification to leave it empty for the long term whilst waiting for someone similar to come along and do the same (as if!!).

@taxguru Clarkson’s pub was formerly a restaurant. It was not closed for years or run down. He just bought it.