If you live in a leafy village, has new affordable housing negatively changed your area

[Yesimanimby]

Almost 1,000 new homes are being built in fields surrounding our semi-rural, leafy village. The new homes will become part of the village, doubling the size it is now.

Atm we have hardly any affordable or social housing here, nor flats. The new development will be 30% affordable housing with blocks of flats in a prominent position at the village entrance.

I appreciate there's a housing shortage and new homes, especially affordable and social housing, are needed.

Up until now it's been quiet (sleepy) here and with a very low crime rate. Public transport links are terrible and will remain poor.

We won't be directly backing onto the new homes but everything is within easy walking distance.

DH and I are debating whether to move as it's very likely to change the nature of the place we've enjoyed for many years.

If you've had a big development like this on your doorstep - either newly-built or older, what has been the impact?
Pros and cons, although I'm probably more interested in the downsides as that will tip the balance on whether to sell up.

Oh yeah - a lot more antisocial activity.

Dog shit, vandalism, setting fire to the woods ect.

yeah but they're effectively changing a village into the suburbs, which just means houses for miles and no extra amenities or services. it's the worst of both worlds.

I live in a city now but grew up in a suburban village and it was awful. Everything is concrete but it's all pointless.

It hasn't been bad in our village. The homes were unaffordable already, the population was aging, the pub closed and the school was undersubscribed and in danger of closing even though it's very good.

The new development has brought young families into the village and now the school is almost full. For us it has brought new life into the village and it feels a bit more hopeful.

In terms of other infrastructure, we don't have any and rely on the nearest town and surrounding villages for amenities, so this hasn't changed.

My parents are in a similar situation to yours.

There is literally a farm road up in to the village.... Which now needs to cope with the traffic from an additional 500 new 4 bed Barrat houses

The village school just won't be able to cope either

A development of almost 1000 new homes is being built near us. We only have one shop here so I suspect they’ll build another. I seem to spend my entire life stuck in temporary traffic lights due to the building works. I’m more worried about the 2000 extra cars that will appear over the next few years (assuming each household will have two cars due to lack of public transport). Traffic will be even more of a nightmare than it is already

Not me but some friends, they moved to a large new swanky development in a very successful expanding city. Houses all very very expensive (much more than I could ever dream of ).

The development had whatever the required %age is of social housing and a number of problem families were moved in. There were constant problems with antisocial loud behaviour, loudly revving dirt bikes, weed smoking, rowdy gangs of teens being dragged around by XL bullies, etc.

In the end our friends sold up and moved to an older suburban area.

I’m enjoying the indignation of posters berating you for worrying about the likelihood of the area changing for the worse. When in my recent lived experience your concerns are absolutely warranted.

We bought a new build close to a block of social housing flats. We didnt expect any problems but I'm sorry to say that we've had police call outs for domestic violence, some anti social behaviour and a strong smell of weed outside in an area otherwise consisting of mainly families. No similar issues in the non social housing. We will probably move.

We have similar, in that a tiny village nearby has seen about 400 houses built. A major city council bought a load of them to relocate their surplus population out of area. Not all of them are delighted by their new rural environment.

The village we used to live in struggled with flooding, roads, doctor, dentist and school. I really wouldn't recommend it, unless you get new infrastructure and school/GP etc.

It's a shame there isn't more interest in building a 21st century version of the New Towns. A whole new town built in a not-particularly-scenic area, with all the necessary infrastructure and transport links included and, hopefully, lessons learnt from the previous New Town movement. Then the existing lovely villages could be left as they are, or with very small amounts of building work to accommodate young people who'd grown up in that area.

The term 'affordable housing' irks me slightly....we left our leafy village as I couldn't quite afford to buy there after landlord sold after 9 years. This has had negative implications, commute to school, driving childrent to and from friends, just Driving!

Anyway, new houses are being built, the term affordable thrown around. Affordable equals council houses, not affordable to buy. So council houses and 400k houses being built next to each other. The private sale houses are not moving as quickly as developers had hoped, they have been reduced in price several times.

Affordable should mean affordable to buy.

God I hope I never become a selfish nimby.

What on earth do think was there before your house was built? Why deny those coming after you a chance at the same life you enjoy?

Expect to see more of this as government invest in affordable housing and farming families are forced to sell the fields that make these "semi-rural, leafy villages" so appealing, just to pay inheritance tax.

I agree, the truth is however unpalatable, is that social housing attracts this type as you have described, as much as Mumsneters will say (which I’ve seen on many similar threads) that it’s snobbery and SH tenants are the salt of the earth it’s generally not the case, the council built some lovely social housing in my town, really nice but unfortunately the bad apples that the council had to house soon ruined it for the decent tenants.

Sorry OP but NIMBY springs to mind. I could have written your post having had the same happen in our vicinity. Unfortunately where there is a huge amount of available space there will be development to address the serious housing shortage. Admittedly we are fortunate to still have a lovely view and the close proximity of affordable housing has had little impact other than the local shops are far busier. Despite the objections the days of living in sleepy villages will eventually be a thing of the past so we may as well get used to it.

I've been around long enough to realise that most leafy villages always have a tatty or less desirable bit and that the nicest bits are quite small.

New developments though always look really naff until they bed in and mature a bit. Thinking of a village and it's new development near me it's nothing but a dormitory for Glasgow or Edinburgh with no new facilities which is a huge shame.

I think many places have seen those developments. We certainly have seen them where we are.

Rather than ‘will it change everything?’, I think the question is more ‘can you actually find Somwhere that will still be your nice little leafy village wo any disturbances/vandalism etc…?’
As soon as a place develops and grows that much that quickly, it will change things.
But unless you’re in the middle of nowhere or instead in an area already so build up you can’t really add more, you’ll get those developments. Because we need them.

Negative impacts?

1 - lovely big old houses being demolished so that a road can be ploughed through where they once stood and onto the flood plain behind. Where they then build 150 large houses.

2 - The new estates have now been built in between the villages and their bypasses, so that now the bypass is totally clogged with traffic.

3 - there are no NHS dentists anywhere within a 25 mile radius at all, all the schools are full to bursting, and it would be easier to get an audience with the Pope than an appointment with a GP.

4 - monumental flooding, caused almost entirely by so much building on the water catchment in the wider area, so that the runoff isn't soaked into farners' fields any more, it goes straight into the rivers, which burst their banks and flood people's houses.

5 - an endless parade of massive "fuck-off I'm richer than you" cars everywhere clogging up the roads (the drivers of which think they own the road), and the school run AM and PM during term time are the absolute worst because so many of them haven't been able to get their kids into their catchment school and have to travel elsewhere in the district. Public transport being what it is, they have to drive them there, and then zoom off down the motorway to wherever it is they 'work hard'.

6 - the local folk and farming community who have lived here all their lives and work in the area cannot afford to either buy or rent around here anymore and many young people are having to move away from where they grew up because they've been forced out by incomers who can afford the sky-high property prices.

7 - there has been an increase in crime and antisocial behaviour, but that is not because of the arrival of so-called social housing tenants, but because the population has increased as a whole. Adolescents never used to cause trouble because everyone knew who they were, and they knew people would tell their family/school/cops exactly who the miscreants were. Not any more. There's too many of them.

8 - a severe and detrimental effect on the local woodland and other wild areas, where hordes of people now like to ride their mountain bikes, walk their many dogs (forgetting to shut gates or to avoid livestock), and encourage their kids to pick the snowdrops and bluebells.

9 - the community spirit has been totally sucked out of the place.

Will that do?

But where do you move to? Do you have an area in mind op. You could be moving alot, they seem to be popping up everywhere.
I live very rurally, more than sleepy! But the nearest town has had an influx of people, trying to get a doctors appointment has become very difficult. Anti social behaviour increased, more burglaries that didn't happen at this rate before. But it's happening everywhere from what I can see

I guess it's not the houses as such (though I wish to God the developers would ensure there is adequate parking), but people's behaviour that's the problem.

I'm personally just getting really tired of selfish inconsiderate fuckers.

Where we live was a new development in the 1970s.
Im pretty sure then it wasn’t really welcome. Nor was the social housing that came with it.
Now though, it’s just ‘normal’ and part of our little town.

Unless you’re living in an old village that hasnt changed for the last 200 years, there is always part of the town/village that was new and ‘undesirable’ then. Until people got used to it, plants grew etc….

Yes,we have had several new estates built in our village and there are more to come.Anti-social behaviour is worse,also car thefts and general vandalism.

The schools are full,no new facilities whatsoever,getting a GP appointment is virtually impossible.The list is endless really of the bad things these developments have brought.

I think the only reason our Council is not bankrupt is because of all the money they are getting from developers.They pass all planning applications without a thought for us residents.

We lived in an estate built in the 1970s/80s in what had previously been a small village. Now forty years later it’s generally fully integrated into the village.

Hopefully the dropping birth rate will help, as people won't need the big houses. My understanding is that developers make their money on the big fancy houses, and are obliged to put some social housing in too. But if the big houses don't sell well, developers will be less enthusiastic about building in the first place.