Wednesday, Jun 13, 2007
NIMBY? (see 130 comments to the article)
Times: Build on the green belt, and build now
"We will have to accept a lot of building on greenfield sites and green belts and it will have to be low rise and low density. People overwhelmingly hate flats and long for houses with gardens. We will have to accept the suburbanisation of whole swathes of the country. However, it may not be quite as bad as we imagine."
Posted by confused76 @ 03:11 PM (160 views) Add Comment
7 Comments
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1. Becky said...
This is really starting to heat up as an issue on all fronts. Last Sunday I watched my usual diet of interview shows and three politicians were having to mention housing problems (Ming Cambell, Ruth Kelly and one of the labour deputies Cruddas??).
I can still remember my old boss who was quite a wily old fox saying housing was overvalued and prices will have to fall "sure as eggs are eggs" and that must have been over 5 years ago!!
2. paul said...
"There are 81,000 empty homes in Cambridge alone. The REAL myth is the housing shortage.
Still, once interest rates bite, the 3% of the total number of houses in the UK that are currently standing empty will suddenly flood the market, putting an end to the smug, self-satisfied soul-searching in articles like this.
Jo, Cambridgeshire, uk"
Well said Jo.
3. Richard A said...
It can't be said too often: if there was a genuine housing shortage, rents would rise. By and large, they haven't.
4. enuii said...
Here, here.
There is no real shortage in my area as well, there may be shortages in a few well publicised areas, but for the majority of the UK there a plenty of empty properties.
Once the 'investors' are cleared out who leave properties empty rather than have the 'hassle' of renting whilst they in theory appreciate or use them to 'launder' money then there will be no shortage.
Leaving property empty, especially around Manchester is quite a phenomenon where strangely most of the money is Irish in origin and many buyers buy multiple flats in the same new property. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions!
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6. Pr said...
Yes, some bits of Greenbelt are protected too much, I always feel queezy however when one factor is made scape goat. We have had greenbelt decades now, so it is always good to review old policies, but greenbelt was around when property prices plummetted the last few times. Will we be blaming it also for the crash? Sure, lets have a debate about greenbelt, and, at a local level, individual patches of it, but lets put it into perspective and not use psuedo-economics to ignore the benefits that it provides to some/many places. These people are also clutching at straws because they must know that no politician will bet their future on the abolition of greenbelt or planning controls, cart blanch. An argument like that must be to divert attention from something else, or be a desparate rant from a lost cause.
7. Orwell said...
A desperate rant from a lost cause mmmmmmmmm quite poetic I think you are right though, it appears to be getting the blame not the financial 'industry' for printing funny money! ...