Friday, May 16, 2008
Smoke and mirrors
BBC News: '1m more' on housing waiting list
About 4m people are now waiting for a council or housing association home, and the Local Government Association expects this to reach 5m by 2010.
Posted by cornishman @ 07:42 AM (756 views) Add Comment
13 Comments
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1. cornishman said...
Brown pledged Ģ200,000,000 the other day for social housing. Money which, it appears, was in the budget already and was being re-announced. But leaving that aside:
This buys, at best, 1500 homes - say 6000 people.
What is he going to do for the other 4,994,000 people who can't get on with their lives? And they are just the ones on the waiting list.
Perhaps Young_mark will enlighten me.
2. hpwatcher said...
What is he going to do for the other 4,994,000 people who can't get on with their lives?
He never intended to do anything about them. He just want's to be seen to be doing something, no matter how small.
3. harold said...
What do people expect from a financial system which encourages, nay forces people into debt? A population dependent upon Government hand-outs.
4. uncle tom said...
Duff link - here is the story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7403896.stm
Despite their protests when the popular 'right to buy' was introduced by Mrs T. Labour since '97 have all but prohibited the build of new council housing, and have overseen the sell-off of much that remained.
Personally, I'm lukewarm on the subject, as I would like to see those who are capable of self-reliance being just that, with social housing reserved for those who are much less fortunate than most.
I would like to see the creation of a million new building plots across the country for self-build projects, the land compulsory purchased at agricultural value and then leased on 99yr leases at Ģ20k per plot (to cover the cost of purchase, roads and services) with each plot being a generous 50ft x 50ft and complete with consent for a single dwelling.
Ownership by companies or multiple ownership would be prohibited. To minimise architectural and planning costs, there should be a catalogue of perhaps 100 pre-approved and fully detailed plans to choose from.
Before anyone screams about concreting over the entire countryside, this would require just 0.15% of the UK land area. - Worth doing!
5. last_days_of_disco said...
@uncle tom
I like your idea, in fact my strategy is is similar, but more short term. Wait for builders to pop, then pick up the very thing you discuss for cheap. Pre-approved, serviced, etc, etc.
And build my own house.
6. denzil said...
UT said:
"I would like to see the creation of a million new building plots across the country for self-build projects, the land compulsory purchased at agricultural value and then leased on 99yr leases at Ģ20k per plot (to cover the cost of purchase, roads and services) with each plot being a generous 50ft x 50ft and complete with consent for a single dwelling. "
I quite like this idea but my reservation is due to a vision that this sort of development would resemble a traveller camp. I've nothing against travellers but from first-hand experience I've yet to see one of these places that isn't packed out with old cars without wheels, rubbish everywhere and the obligatory quad or trials bike screaming around the place.
On a related point to social housing. My sister bought a house on an ex RAF base. It was cheap but with house prices being so high it was her chance of a foot on the ladder. The problem was that BTL also viewed it as easy pickings. The BTL crowd then rented back their places to the local council who then shipped out all the trouble-makers from local authority housing onto the RAF base, thus killing the tranquility of those like my sister who were desperate to have a place of their own. My sisters place was burgled 5 times in 14 months, the youngest burgler (who she caught in the act) was 8 years old. Because my sister called the police, the family of said 8 year old robber then constantly spat at her and smashed her windows. The RAF base is close to a police no-go zone and is referred to as Beirut. Fortunately my sister has sinced sold her place.
I don't know the answer to the problem but masses of cheap housing attracts a fair proportion of those who have no self-respect or consideration for others. As a child I was raised on what is commonly referred to as sink estates so feel I'm reasonably qualified to provide some input on this matter. I would say that class division is more apparent now than at any point in my life.
7. cornishman said...
sorry about the duff link.
@ UT nice idea.
It's similar to the system the French had in Brittany. Each town had some dirt cheap building plots so that the youngsters could build themselves a house that they would live in for life and stay local. They would build nice detached houses and would live on the ground floor to start with and then as time went by and their income/savings increased they would fit out the upstairs as the children arrived. Each one would be slightly different reflecting the character of the owner. Builders were kept busy building these one-offs.
None of this ridiculous housing 'ladder' we have here - which is just a pyramid/ponzi scheme.
I know you aren't keen on the French, UT, but they do have much of life well sussed.
[You had nice weather whilst you were in Cornwall. It looks its best at this time of tear]
8. Ah-so said...
If the government subsidised cars for people as well I bet there would be a massive queue for them.
Council housing should be for those genuinely unable to get anywhere to live otherwise. For the working poor (and not so poor), housing associations are the best route - non-profit making organisations that let at cost. Of course "non-profit making" also applies to most landlords who acquired property in the last few years!
9. inbreda said...
UT - a very good idea indeed
cornishman - if the exchange rate wasn't so damn awful at the moment I would be over there enjoying the life already!!
10. drewster said...
@uncle tom,
There are two problems with your statistics.
Firstly, your 50ft plots don't take into account all the other requirements of human living. Your figures give a population density of 12,931 people per kmē (see working out below). That's approximately the same density as the London Borough of Islington (12,483p/kmē). Your figures fail to take into account the need for roads, train lines, parks, places of employment (offices, factories, etc.), schools, hospitals, shops, car parks, pubs, cinemas, football fields, and so on. A better comparison would be with somewhere like Milton Keynes (2,073p/kmē), but even there very few houses are built on 50ft plots. To accommodate 3m people at Milton Keynes density would require nearly 1500kmē of land, or 0.6% of all UK land. That's more than sixteen new towns the size of MK. Where would you want to put them all?
Secondly, even my higher figure of "0.6% of all UK land" includes places like the Scottish Highlands where demand is low (apparently there are few jobs out there, who'd have thought?!). If you look at England alone, that doubles to 1.2% of all England land. The affordability gap is greatest in the southeast, so if we put half those new plots in the southeast, we'd be looking at 4% of southeast land.
There are still plenty of affordable houses (sub-Ģ70k) in places like Hull, Stoke-on-Trent, and the rougher parts of Liverpool or Manchester, but few people want to live in those areas. The solution is not just building more houses in the southeast, but instead boosting the economy of poorer regions and reducing the crime and anti-social behaviour problems which dissuade people from living there.
(Working out: 50ft x 50ft x 1,000,000 plots makes 2,500,000,000 sqft which is 232kmē; assuming an average of three people per house means 3m people can fit into 232kmē, gives 12,931 people per kmē)
11. uncle tom said...
Drewster,
You've miscalculated - my estimate was for 63% of land area to be plots, with the rest for roads, schools, shops, open spaces etc.
Density (if you must be metric!) of 2725 plots per sq/km or about 6250 people (2.3 per household) - roughly half that of Islington, if every house were occupied.
Total land area covered 367 sq km = 0.15% of UK (244,820 Sq Km)
12. cornishman said...
@ drewster
"That's more than sixteen new towns the size of MK. Where would you want to put them all?"
What is wrong with having 16 new towns? If they are fully independent communities - rather than commuter dormitories - and properly designed and built with integrated housing, shops and workplaces that people can walk to. They wouldn't put any strain on established settlements and would create masses of work in the building.
What a fantastic and liberating opportunity the whole thing would be.
Brown's vision?
13. Stupid_boy_pike said...
Yeah, I've been thinking of this for years. There's a lot of open space in the UK, and a realively small percentage of land is all it would take. I'd love to pick up a plot for 20k and build my own place. That's the frustrating part about all this. There is a lot of land sitting there doing nothing. I believe only 11% is built on. Lets get it released. I'm fed up with being told the lie that this island is overcrowded, wel it is, overcowded with greedy landowners.