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.

In our area it’s 30% lower than market value. The buyer has to have local connections and prove low income. Then when they want to sell and move on they have to sell it under the same conditions.

I think it’s a fantastic scheme. My friend benefited as she was able to buy her own home. She was very happy, until the LA moved violent drug users in from cities and she had to steer her kids around people off their faces and zombie like on the school run.

She's not a snob and plenty of people have posted their personal experiences of it being the truth. You're a hypocrite with your gated community comment. Reverse snobbery indeed!

Not enjoying this thread. Why?
It feels like nobody really acknowledges that we need much more new housing for our current population, let alone our projected one.
There's quite a lot of nimbyism going on in these posts. Build new housing somewhere, BUT NOT HERE! In our lovely village!
And snobby and fearful. Not completely unrealistic but social housing does not mean an automatic rocketing in crime. It does mean people with less means but more likely to need and use local services - shops, buses, schools.
Which leads to me to sympathise with posters about the idiotic failure by planners to also build in the corresponding infrastructure when adding large numbers of new homes to a locality. Eg doctors, nurseries, shops, joined up travel. It's quite complex as it involves so many different organisations but has to be done for a successful new community.

It depends what's meant by "affordable housing" Leedsfan, but in the case of social housing the sad fact is that research indicates a much higher risk of crime and antisocial behaviour: https://www.ntu.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/480817/Should-you-accept-40-more-risk-in-social-housing.pdf

It's important to note that this does not mean everyone living in such homes is some scumbag who'll behave like this - only that the chance is greater

@Toptops It’s not entirely a failure to plan it’s a failure to have budgets to deliver the plans. I recently went to a brand new large NHS facility. Doctors, dentists, nurses, etc. The dentist DM went to was on the first floor. It was like the Marie Celeste up there. You can build a facility but there’s a staff shortage. There are shops on new estates if they are big enough. Whether anyone really wants to open them is another matter. I do know of a few highly successful corner shops operating on new estates. There’s even decent transport! Where I live there’s none. The denser the population with HA homes usually brings transport. Estates with large houses tends not to. These home owners don’t use it.

We have HAs here doing small developments specifically for local people. The latest one is tiny (8 x 2 bed homes) and even that has been heavily criticised! It’s for local people! No one will ever win but the biggest losers are people with no homes.

I moved from the city into a new build estate in a leafy village. There were about 400 houses built. The village like it as it’s bringing money and life to the area. The pubs, restaurants and local shop say business has improved.

I live next to some of the social housing and no issues as most are families. I was also told they are vetted better and if any issues more strict. I do have noise and untidy gardens from my other neighbours who own their 5 bedroom house. It’s them that have barking dogs, parties in their garden till early hours.

Ju

if you have to ask the question you know the answer already. You don’t want ‘these sorts of people ‘ living near you and frankly should be ashamed.

In the past 20 years or so, there's been a polarisation of housing areas meaning rural locations have escaped having a normal social mix. I grew up in a village, and we had all sorts. There were many poorer people, there were antisocial teens, as well as those simple folk with LD or mental health problems. Now that village is much gentrified, with council homes sold off to right to buy, and much less social variety. It's become very aged, which I notice more every time I visit. It's also very quiet, you could say soulless. The footfall is nonexistent, there are fewer people living there now it's single pensioners not families in the homes.

Although I'm not saying I love antisocial behaviour, I do think it's a burden we all have to share. 😔

I now live in a wealthy outer suburb of a big city where housing is expensive. However, we are cheek-by-jowl with council estates, cheaper rented housing, halfway houses, and places where new migrants are moving in. It's very mixed, and if I'm honest, it's healthy. There are people on our road who seem to have moved from somewhere in the world where barbecuing is popular. They live in a small rented conversion flat, and they are out the front, bbqing and smoking at all hours and in all weathers. Scooters carrying drug dealers whizz past, but they do no harm tbh. We have the mad characters like pregnant older lady and the local wizard. All fairly harmless in reality.

Many country areas were in real danger of becoming retirement hinterlands, where no families live, no working class folk can afford to live, and therefore massively dwindling village life.

The village housing stock has become dominated by single older person in large, family homes amd extremely well off families. The misfits of the world have to live somewhere, and it's just fairer to share them out. It's not as bad in practice as you'd think.

The lack of investment in infrastructure is a result of our declining wealth under the Tories and after Brexit. Plus, to be fair, the population has reduced, then increased back up again. Rural policing needs to improve. But these things are investment related - lobby your council.

I understand the concerns amd how it must feel to think you've got away from all that, but this is really just a rebalancing back to a mix of population rather than exporting all the problem people to urban sink areas.

Excellent post

I don't think I am abnormal in not wanting to live cheek by jowl with a large new housing estate. We bought a detached house in an AONB. We would prefer neighbours to be peaceful occupants of their own property. We invite neighbours to any parties we have, and they invite us in return. We trim our hedges and so do they. We consult over any changes we or they want to make. It would be harder to coexist as neighbours if they had a wildly different mindset. So yes, it's a bit staid.

She may be ‘ashamed’, but she will also be less stressed.

why do you think that people in affordable or social housing are going to be worse neighbours than those you already have?

my husband is disabled and we rely on benefits. that doesn't mean we are more likely to be criminals, or bring down the local area. being poorer doesn't make you a worse person to live near.

honestly, I can't STAND the stink of the stuff, but people smoking weed is the least of my worries. there's a few people it turns into absolute dickheads, but, as someone that likes my drinking, it's less of a social issue. we think someone who used to live on our cul de sac was a dealer, as he had people coming and going from his house all through the evening (my husband uses an exercise bike for an hour or two in our front bedroom, and used to watch the world going by on our road) but he was friendly, helpful, his children were polite, his garden always tidy. and none of the people coming and going made any issues. I think he was a single dad, and was always friendly and kind. I don't like it if I'm in my garden and I can smell it, but I don't like the smell if anyone is smoking ANYTHING, or if they're hanging out strongly overscented laundry. it's just one of those things.

we're on the outskirts of a small town, and basically part of a massive tree of cul de sacs that are mostly people on benefits. and it's never once felt unsafe or rough. just a bit run down. we're on good terms with our neighbours, even the ones whose names we don't know. if someone has too much of some kind of food from the allotments, or they've bought more than they need, they'll knock at the neighbours and see if they would like the excess. one of our neighbours is an absolute star for looking out for everyone. he lives alone, takes in our parcels, and as soon as he sees us come back is right there with them for us (we quite often give him a few tins of lager in thanks) he's come round a few times to tell us if the weather is looking bad and our laundry is bad or the car window is a bit open.
everyone looks out for everyone else in our close.
being poorer doesn't make people worse neighbours.

I grew up in Surrey. the same is true of those from well off families too.
more money doesn't mean people are brought up better, or behave better.
I mean, look at the sort of stuff the Bullingdon club get up to, and they are supposed to be the best of the best.

I think part of the problem in the UK is that tax collection is so centralized. In some countries, more wage earners moving into an area (or even retired people if they have some assets) means loads more tax revenues coming into the local area too, making it possible to step up services. In the UK, it seems like only a small % of tax is collected-and-spent locally.

I think we're talking about the average odds, not saying that every person in social housing exhibits problematic behavior. We all know that some people are eligible for SH because they are disabled etc. But equally, there are quite a lot who are there because they have issues that make them poor with money, not able to hold a job down, form ill-thought-out relationships that are volatile etc. People like this are far more likely to have poor impulse control or behave aggressively towards other people. My experience is that dodgy behavior is commoner (though not exclusive to) in social housing areas. I think the tendency now is to pepper pot social housing among regular/market housing to try and spread the potential issues around abit.

As councils were prevented from building social housing as it was sold off, it’s inevitable it moved to housing associations and housebuilders. The only estates being built are built by private developers. There are HA’s who build a few houses in local small villages as I described above. The one here doesn’t pay the going rate for the land. They need a benefactor to help with a suitable site. We have villages in the AONB with no new builds at all and you can only replace with very stringent planning restrictions. Generally though you will pay a high price for this. Two semis are available just down my road - one is over £1m and the other just under. They are attractive older properties but not many properties here would be much less than that.

Other non protected villages are expanding but mostly it’s the larger ones and where there are good transport links, schools and doctors surgeries already. The ones I know therefore have infrastructure to cope but school extensions are necessary. We have seen the CofE schools quite keen on expansion. There’s pressure on non AONB villages to expand because AONB villages take 0 housing. Relaxing the AONB restrictions would help of course.

It is the government that requires plans to build housing. They won’t approve local plans that avoid the housing quota. No plan in place means developers are more likely to get speculative developments through planning. Other areas work within their plans and locals have had an input into them. However just saying no and objecting doesn’t work. It won’t in the future either.

Are you sure you've thought this through properly? Sounds incredibly risky to me? I'm near your age and would never consider this option - there's still lots to love about living here. What about your family? Also what happens if one of you gets ill/dies unexpectedly? I've seen this happen quite a few times with friends and acquaintances. If it seems too good to be true, it usually is!

on the upside your own feral teenagers may be able to stay living in their home town if they choose to once they reach adulthood, your village pub / shop / post office / primary school might remain open. your local scout group / sports club might have some new volunteers. there may be people working as carers who can support the local ageing population.

They aren’t “moving people out from London” you make it sound like they are bussing them in.

What you mean is people are moving to the town from London because they can’t afford to buy in London and qualify for social housing in your area.

Which is entirely their right. Why should it be reserved for local people? They are free to move somewhere more affordable as the ex Londoners have been forced to do.

There is a fascinating disconnect between modern views on international vs internal immigration. A lot of people who are quite comfortable with people immigrating in from different countries are surprisingly resentful of people migrating in from other areas of the same country. No doubt there is a thesis to be written on this.

My concern about all this is not really about those who have bought exclusive properties and are now cross that they are becoming less exclusive (nobody owns their neighborhood, ultimately).

Rather, my big concern that providing local government services to straggly rural areas (rural bus services for people who lose the ability to drive, SEN home-to-school transport, carers and helpers for the elderly) is really really really expensive, so I have to wonder about the wisdom of housing a lot of less wealthy people (who are more, not less, likely to need these expensive services) in areas where providing said services is going to cost a lot more...at a time when local governments are worrying about ballooning costs and bankruptcy. In particular, SEN transport and adult care for the elderly are two of the main costs that are eating local governments alive, and yet providing these services to people who are housed rurally raises the costs to alarming levels.

It would make more sense to go the other way, and develop taller, denser housing in cities, but this means reckoning with the British dislike of this type of housing model.

They absolutely are, it's causing a scandal in Durham because people are being put there when they don't want to be and are like a fish out of water. I agree with the previous poster who mentioned the "new towns" that we used to have, people applied to go there so it was more of a community and they got used to it together, rather than just being put somewhere they didn't know or particularly want to be in.

Grew up and lived on a council estate until my mid 20's.

Purchased our first property out of area, second moved back to home bread area and now live in a semi rural pretty expensive area, large houses, non estate..

The one thing I've learned is its definitely the people that make the area what it is.
If you tthink that its only on estates where social housing is part of it that you'll be living amongst the 'wronguns' you'd be wrong...

Consideration is what makes your environment an enjoyable place to be, inconsiderate people have no thought for others, they're intrusive, be it constantly banging their music out all hours of the day, bonfires or their DC thinking their princes/princess are above every one else, and don't get me started on the amount that leave the butler at home when they themselves decide to take their dogs for a walk thinking it's not their job to pick up it's shit.

Money certainly doesn't always buy you a peaceful existence.

I live in one of the new build estates that is a mix of housing from HA properties, to flats to 6 bedroom Exec homes.

However as most people own, there is zero tolerance for poor behaviour. Other residents are very quick to report poor behaviour to police and the housing association and insist its dealt with. Its also on the facebook page quickly. Groups of kids causing trouble or other issues are quickly identified , called out and there is a peer pressure for them to be dealt with. One mother did argue back that everyone else are snobs and her child is entitled to do what he likes - that did not go well.