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.

I think you’ve misunderstood my point. I wasn’t having a pop at Londoners or the people in villages who are selling their houses to the highest bidder.

I was pointing out that if you’ve made the money to buy a lovely house in a lovely village by moving to London for work, pricing the locals out of the area and essentially contributing to the breakdown of their communities due to gentrification (aka social cleansing) then you’ve got a bit of a fucking brass neck complaining that you don’t like the look of the people who’ll be moving into your lovely village.

Excuse me?! I live in a social housing new build along with 8 other families on the development and we're ALL respectable, decent people who take good care of our homes. How fucking dare you?!

The only house which is an issue on the entire development is the biggest 5 bed, owned by a loud family who care little about others.

You sound vile

Before answering I'd just like to check if you meant to quote my post or if you were mistaken?

I have been in that position actually, well I am currently, I still think there is an element of snobbery from some people. I couldn’t get enough of a mortgage in my expensive town where 1 bed flats cost £350k despite a very good salary. I am shared ownership (50% ownership) and building up my shares. My neighbours are a mix of shared ownership, housing association and privately owned. Hopefully they don’t have preconceived ideas about us affordable housing gang but they seem nice enough people and very friendly.

This unfortunately we have just fought off an affordable homes development but it's going to appeal....glad we are moving in a few years.

A change in policy is needed, we need affordable starter homes but they should be in one location with a town/village allowing normal estates and executive estates to be build for people to climb the ladder too.

Our town has grown over the last decade and the affordable homes of the last (terrace etc) still exist together! The art deco and Victorian builds stand separate why we need to mix them now is beyond me

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

Yes. It has.

That doesn't mean I'm fully against it or that I don't see the need for new affordable homes, but yes, it has negatively changed the area in many ways.

Massively negatively impacted our quaint leafy village I'm afraid.

In the past 5 years we've seen almost 1600 new homes within three developments on the outskirts of the village. We are in the (un)enviable position of having a train station so commuting has become the major draw.

We were promised affordable housing too, the lowest price house was a two bed at over 300k and on the most recent estate its 3 and 4 beds only rising to over £650k.

We are over 30 mins to a decently sized city/town and over an hour from a big city. South West area so not exactly home counties.

Three years of CONSTANT roadworks and temporary traffic lights causing huge issues to the road system, adding additional 10.mins in some cases to the drive to work/school run. None of the changes made have benefited road users.

No addional resources as promised: GPs is bursting under the pressure of the extra families and people, no new dentists, local school is struggling with intake and class sizes are at full capacity, new supermarket being built which is virtuide identical to the one we already have, no new bus routes etc.

Flooding has increased as the neighbouring fields are now covered in concrete.
Crime and anti social behaviour is on the rise where before it was non existent.

All issues that come with an influx of people. I'm not bashing new build estates, it's just issues which arise with more people.

We sold up at the start of the year as just so fed up with it all. Of course with all the new competition the value of our house was affected. Moving to a smaller village further out. I'm sure the ever marching beast of industry will cacth up with us eventually but we might get another 5 years of peace while the children are young.

Good luck OP.

But where do you move to? Do you have an area in mind op

The best solution is probably to buy a property in a National Park because - at least in theory - those are still protected.

There are significantly more new build residents than people who were in the original village, it's over 1000 houses that were built. They put together a big campaign, lobbied their MP and councillors, objected in the planning consultation and got what they wanted. If you don't call that blocking something, I'm not quite sure how to word it.

The OP has said this is 1000 houses. There will need to be school places. LAs do plan for this and it’s highly unlikely all the DC generated by this are not known about or planned for. There’s a lot of people who don’t bother to look at local plans and see what is planned! They just guess. Where there is substantial expansion planned (and Labour has not got started yet!) there will be far more places facing expansion. If is not done in a vacuum. Local authorities essentially decide where their housing allocation goes. The government (Labour) will tell them to make a plan to provide it. The Cons did the same.

We all know not enough housing has been built. Young people cannot afford a lot of housing where they work or even nearby. Everyone will have to get used to this but a village that’s already 1000 houses is not small in the first place. Labour wants to ramp up house building and everyone will need to look at where it’s planned to go because it will be near you!

I find it ironic how new developments on the outskirts of towns/villages use names like Badger Way, Fox Hill, Skylark Avenue etc. basically naming streets after the animals that used to live there

Yes or the trees they chopped down to build them. For me its not the social housing but the arrogance of incomers moving to the country, their worrying lack of any understanding of how to behave around farm animals and entitlement in terms of loose dogs. Very wearing having horses mansplained to me by someone who has never been near one really but became an expert when their child had a riding school lesson. Whilst their dog runs at a horse off the lead. I wish that was an exaggeration. Elbowy social climbing mothers at the school gate looking down on locals. One new mini estate attempted to block access to the village allotments across a few meters of access they do not own but have a right of way over. Another was built on a single track road than is recorded in 1700s so no passing car width and little parking and complains to all the locals about the on road parking which happened long before their houses existed and which they have made worse - when you looked at the new build houses which have terrible access the road situation should have been obvious and you cannot expect it to change for you. The list goes on and the absolute worst offenders are the middle age and upwards moderately well off.

Ok I see your point. No you maybe don’t have the same right to complain about new housing being built if you are one of the newcomers mopping up existing housing stock. That’s a bit like the pull up the drawbridge attitude of immigrants voting for Trump or Reform. But I do think wherever you live and however you got there you have the right to complain about antisocial behaviour, if that is the result.

But everyone's house was built on what used to be a field and spoiled someone else's view, including the "rightful" indigenous natives! At what point in the past does this logic stop? (I strongly suspect that the answer is just after I moved into my my house!)

@Hellohelga Yes, it is outrageous that anyone who moved to London for work would have the cheek to complain about new homes being built now that they’re living somewhere they think is nicer. But no, I don’t think you’re seeing my point at all.

If you’re living in your lovely village because you moved to London to work and benefited from increased property prices due to gentrification, did you apologise to those locals as you were leaving (if you could find any) for the changes to the area that came as a result of your presence? Or are you under the impression that the changes were all positive and that they should be grateful because their local is now a gastro pub?

How are you any different from the potential new residents? People move about. Areas change. Other people were forced to accept it when you came to London to work. Now it’s your turn to accept it because people are being priced out of cities.

There is a playground. Taken over by teens when they're bored.

And before you start on youth clubs, you couldn't pay most teens to join one.

People that have had to move from towns don't want to live in quiet villages

It won’t be quiet with 1000 more houses on top of the 1000 already there! Thats the point of the thread. It will clearly be a raging metropolis in a leafy area. It’s also not far from a town. Of course the housing association might not want this volume of housing in this location so % might change.

What is the definition of 'affordable housing' excuse my ignorance.

Do you mean HA owned?

Or does it extend to Shared Ownership?

Every time someone unironically describes where they live as 'sleepy', 'leafy' or 'quaint' I grow another new grey hair I think. Some unimaginable snobbery towards social housing going on on this thread, to the point I originally thought the first few responses were satire.

OP, you should move - but beware, there are low-income people everywhere. And not every new build estate with social housing on becomes a hotbed of crime and vandalism, FYI. Where I live has seen hundreds of new build homes go up in the last few years and the only difference is more traffic on the main road at rush hour, for what it's worth.

Absolutely. Influx of (to massively generalise) non country folk descending on a rural village. Questions on nearby facebook page eg 'where is the nearest tube, is it within walking distance?' Answer.....about 45 miles away. Have you even visited the house you are proposing to buy, or even looked at a map. The country is divided in so many ways (cat people and dog people, townies and city people, and country folk). Sometimes ne'er the two will meet.
And the countryside where these new people want to move to, in search of the idealised rural idyll being destroyed by the very housing developments they are demanding.

I have a different take. We moved out of London two years ago to a new development on the south coast. 600 houses. The area was a bit rough when we moved in. Deprived etc. The new influx has been good for the area. The antisocial behaviour is actually from the locals towards us, not vice versa. The new housing isn’t the issue, it’s people’s reactions.

@Theroadnottravelled There are villages around where I live (very leafy lane!) that I used to visit as part of my job going into schools. What was a common complaint in the schools even 30 years ago? Needles in the playground opposite the school. Litter around the schools. Dogs fouling playing fields. The villagers were quite good at fouling up their own space.No help from outsiders! It’s unfortunate that the people we don’t admire are everywhere. In my own leafy corner we had DC on noisy scrambling off road bikes. Plus a few roaring around in cars. None are ex London and none from social housing - we don’t have any!

Yes it’s awful , they put Xmas decorations up in November, put Halloween decorations in the garden in September , a co op will follow with no oat milk or venison. Women drive to school in their pjs and the men vape and wear discolored vests . The teens play music loudly and wear Canada Goose coats!! Run away while you can please!

So you’re saying that affordable housing = increased crime rate??
I'm really sorry but you are a complete snob!
absolute Nimbyism no wonder there is a lack of housing.
Can I suggest you save up and move to a gated community where you will not have to associate with ‘these kind of people’

We live in a village, the local town about 4 miles away, is having thousands of houses being built. There is a lot of social housing going in too. The problem we have is no one from the local area is entitled to the social housing, they are moving people out from London. The crime rate in the town and the local area has soared. It's such a shame, as the town is a lovely quiet market town. It's quite obvious who the Londoners are, they stand out and have no respect for the area.