The housing crisis (London and beyond)

[teuchter]

And football pitches.

 

[pbsmooth]

And football pitches.

Nah.

 

[WouldBe]

Nah.

Tennis courts.

 

[pbsmooth]

Golf clubs are much much bigger, expensive and elitist. Football pitches and tennis courts are none of the above and often free.

 

[Tulster218]

Golf clubs are much much bigger, expensive and elitist. Football pitches and tennis courts are none of the above and often free.

That's all true, but the wider point is that prioritising any land use above another leads to misallocation and inefficiency.

London has about ten times as much farmland as golf courses. We should build on that too.

 

[WouldBe]

London has about ten times as much farmland as golf courses. We should build on that too.

You can't eat houses.

 

[Tulster218]

You can't eat houses.

We already import about 48% of our food. A tiny increase in food imports won't make much difference.

Also there's an obesity crisis.

We should use the available land for housing, not growing food.

 

[nagapie]

What's the obesity crisis got to do with growing food.

I'd love to think he's a great troll but I think he actually believes his own shit.

 

[Tulster218]

Labour is again promising to build on the Greenbelt. Of course they won't, but it's nice that they're at least pretending.

Labour unveils plans for new housing on 'grey belt'

Low-quality green belt areas will be classed as "grey belt" and targeted for development, Labour say.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Tulster218]

I know what economics is

But I also know if we actually care about a service we can override it

If we're overriding things then lets just override maths too! We can say that the two ten pound notes in my pocket add up to a million pounds.
We can solve climate change by overriding science. We can stop things dropping by overriding gravity.

Or rather we can't, because you can't simply override something you don't like. Economics is a description of the world, not a set of instructions.

If something is essential it shouldn't be a commodity

Commodity means something which can be traded for money. So saying that housing shouldn't be a commodity is to say that housing can't be bought or sold. Even if you could get existing homeowners to give up owning their properties, what you're suggesting is communism and it's failed everywhere it's been tried costing millions of lives.

Being essential means you should be able to have it

How? If you can't buy or sell property how can you get it? From the government? How will they get it?

Coffee and alcohol are not essential and so it's price is not an apple's to apples comparison

They're not apples either. The point of money is that it enables us to compare the price of different things, otherwise barter would still be a thing.

Being angry about the state of housing is justifiable and to most people appropriate.

You would be better directing you anger at the cause of the high price of housing, which is a lack of supply.

I'm saying that as someone from a family who has/had landlords in it.

This is irrelevant. I never assumed that you were arguing from a position of self-interest.

 

[Dystopiary]

A woman who is due to be evicted on the 1st May (tomorrow) had a letter from her local council telling her she wasn't in priority need and that she would cope well with being homeless.

Thurrock Council in Essex told Heidi Dodson that she would manage if being homeless led to her "having to sleep rough occasionally or in the longer term."

You are a person that I am satisfied can cope and function reasonably well with ‘day to day’ living and this would, I believe, still be the case if you were to become homeless or to remain homeless.

So dehumanising to wave someone away like "Ach, you're tough - you'll manage." No clue what it's like.

“I’m a woman of 56," [Ms Dodson] said. "To say ‘you’ll be all right on the streets, you’ll be ok sleeping rough’ - I was completely and utterly lost for words.

“To think that I’d be sleeping on a bench or standing in a doorway...

"I’ve lost so much weight from the stress.

"I’m having to ask friends that I’ve lost touch with if they can help me out, lend me a bit of money so I can put all my stuff into storage.”

Woman facing eviction told she would cope living on the streets

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

No matter how housing is built and paid for we just need more of it. I'm glad to hear Manchester is thriving. It sounds like they need lots more housing too. The fact remains that the only way to reduce the price of housing for everyone, is to build more of it. Different interventions may increase or decrease demand or supply or both, but any theory which ignores the basic concept of demand and supply is flawed.

Big fancy blocks of flats near me were built by private sector property developers who were subsidised by cheap loans from a regional development agency.

If public monies are going to be used to build homes, it should be used to build social housing, or at least affordable housing.

Cheap loans of public monies shouldn't be used to build yuppy flats to rent for £2,500 per month and £2.5m penthouses.

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/67215097/?search_identifier=aeb0252c2527e96bb7769bda2b8efd069b030cdc46ed0475e718880346b53dbd

Deansgate Square, Owen Street, Manchester, M15 4RT | New homes for sale | Savills

Property details for Deansgate Square. One of many new homes for sale in Owen Street, Manchester, M15 4RT from Savills, world leading estate agents.

search.savills.com

 

[pbsmooth]

Fucking Airbnb and scummy “landlords” again

About 90 per cent of the 118 properties at Forset Court, a block next to Hyde Park, were being used for holiday stays, Westminster investigators found.
Residents at the Park West apartment block opposite have complained of loud parties and overcrowding “shattering their peace” as revellers rent out flats almost every night of the week. Both blocks are said to be accommodating more tourists than the Ritz each week.
An analysis of 2,800 short-term lets available in the capital over the past three years found that more than a fifth had previously had longer-term tenants.

London's Airbnb Wild West: Capital 'hollowed out' by short-term lets

Suspected brothels, party pads and severe overcrowding have all been uncovered in short-term let properties during previous council probes

www.standard.co.uk

 

[pbsmooth]

oooh dear. where to begin with this one...

The flat pack: Meet the London families embracing apartment living

With 42 per cent of young London families living in flats and that figure only rising, these Londoners are eschewing houses and choosing to raise their children in apartments

www.standard.co.uk

 

[hitmouse]

Good new big James Meek piece on the housing crisis:

James Meek · Market Forces and Malpractice: The Housing Crisis

Andy Burnham uses the phrase ‘perfect storm’ to describe the current surge of homelessness. Clichés become clichés...

www.lrb.co.uk

Interesting that some of the article seems to directly address some of the more hard-of-thinking posts on this thread:

One view, held by the homelessness lobby and many on the left, is that a huge programme of subsidised housing, to be let at ‘social’ and ‘affordable’ rents, is needed to fill the gap that was left by Right to Buy and decades of failure to replace lost council houses. The other view is that it doesn’t matter what kind of houses are built – mansions, luxury flats, council houses – as long as they get built. Make it easier to build them. Loosen planning, loosen the regulations. The market will provide. Once the build rate reaches the ‘right’ level, everything resolves itself, the range of prices widens downwards, and everyone gets housed.

As things stand, partly because the government hasn’t supported an alternative and partly through choice, Manchester has gone down the second route. If it’s working, it’s not clear how. There’s a popular perception that the skyscrapers and lower-rise developments in the centre are disconnected from the local market. The reductive logic that if you build a stack of luxury flats in a relatively well-off area where there isn’t enough housing, everyone shuffles up a notch – the rich move into the luxury flats, the slightly less rich move into their old flats and so on until the poorest find space in the homes nobody else wants – isn’t playing out. One reason – and this is what everyone I spoke to believed, despite a lack of hard evidence – might be that if you build ritzy accommodation in a city that is significantly cheaper than a not dissimilar city only a few hours away, you end up drawing in new people from that city rather than expanding the housing choice for local people. ‘You walked around Manchester ten years ago, you wouldn’t hear that many London accents,’ the industry insider said. ‘Now you hear them absolutely everywhere. You know, these towers, apart from overseas students ... there’s a lot of, you know, influencers from down south.’

‘So why are they here?’

‘Because London’s too expensive. Manchester’s got everything that London has, just on a smaller scale, and it’s much cheaper – for people coming. For people who are here, it’s getting more and more expensive.’

 

[pbsmooth]

What a benevolent businessman. Soon to have 10 scooters with learner plates on outside.

Plan to turn Stretford property into shared 10-bed house

Aamer Shah has submitted plans to change the home in Stretford into a house of multiple occupation.

www.bbc.com

 

[frogwoman]

Wrong thread sorry

 

[two sheds]

This looks eminently sensible, but destroying one local business

182-day rule for holiday lets has ‘killed’ Pembrokeshire man's business

A Pembrokeshire retiree, who has a seaside holiday let, says the introduction of the Welsh Government 182-day rule for holiday lets has ‘killed’ his business, forcing him to rent it out full time instead.

www.tenby-today.co.uk

Retired Geologist Dr John Roobol, originally from Milford Haven, has been successfully letting The Anchorage, Sandy Haven for 16 years.

He now feels the combination of Pembrokeshire County Council increasing the second homes tax premium to 200%, along with a change in Welsh Government criteria where holiday lets must be filled for 182 days a year in order to qualify for business rates has “destroyed” his business.

Last April the business rate level was moved from 70 to 182 days, which Mr Roobol says he’s never exceeded, meaning he would pay the treble council tax rate on his holiday let.

“According to local estate agents many are now selling their holiday homes and the people leaving are saying they will not be back. What prosperity we know in Pembrokeshire is now threatened,” he said.

“The huge rates increase has destroyed my business. To survive I must now cease tourist letting and switch over to full-time long-term letting. This problem is being faced by others across Wales.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

This looks eminently sensible, but destroying one local business

182-day rule for holiday lets has ‘killed’ Pembrokeshire man's business

A Pembrokeshire retiree, who has a seaside holiday let, says the introduction of the Welsh Government 182-day rule for holiday lets has ‘killed’ his business, forcing him to rent it out full time instead.

www.tenby-today.co.uk

This is just the policy functioning as it's intended to isn't it. The guy is still making money off his property anyway.

 

[two sheds]

Indeed, if he's been renting it out for 16 years then it'll probably be worth four or five times what he paid for it by now and he'll have likely paid for it several times over already. I'd like to see a law taxing profiteering myself.

 

[DJWrongspeed]

This is an interesting story about a block development in Redhill, Surrey. The residents allude to Lambeth and the horror of Woking for different comparisons.
These are the kind of debates people and housing policy makers should be having. If you've ever been to that part of Redhill it's architecturally barren and just a boring roundabout so building this will in no way blight the area.
Building a block here by the station would appear to be a good idea. 10mins from Gatwick, ~40 from Central London.
Redhill Station Development

 

[alex_]

This is an interesting story about a block development in Redhill, Surrey. The residents allude to Lambeth and the horror of Woking for different comparisons.
These are the kind of debates people and housing policy makers should be having. If you've ever been to that part of Redhill it's architecturally barren and just a boring roundabout so building this will in no way blight the area.
Building a block here by the station would appear to be a good idea. 10mins from Gatwick, ~40 from Central London.
Redhill Station Development

This is very standard nimby fare though, almost nimby bingo ( nimbo ? )

Not suitable for the area, suitable somewhere else.
Not enough parking provision ( with a pre-emptive “will bring too much traffic” )

 

[InArduisFouette]

This looks eminently sensible, but destroying one local business

182-day rule for holiday lets has ‘killed’ Pembrokeshire man's business

A Pembrokeshire retiree, who has a seaside holiday let, says the introduction of the Welsh Government 182-day rule for holiday lets has ‘killed’ his business, forcing him to rent it out full time instead.

www.tenby-today.co.uk

the policy working exactly as it should

 

[two sheds]

the policy working exactly as it should

I know

 

[marty21]

This is an interesting story about a block development in Redhill, Surrey. The residents allude to Lambeth and the horror of Woking for different comparisons.
These are the kind of debates people and housing policy makers should be having. If you've ever been to that part of Redhill it's architecturally barren and just a boring roundabout so building this will in no way blight the area.
Building a block here by the station would appear to be a good idea. 10mins from Gatwick, ~40 from Central London.
Redhill Station Development

I've had some involvement with new developments (social housing ) and generally Housing Management don't get a lot of input . Local Authorities have development departments (more influential now that Councils can actually build again) & Housing Associations have similar departments, and 30ish years in the sector (HAs & Councils) have proven to me that those Development departments have no interest in what happens after they finish building.

 

[oryx]

30ish years in the sector (HAs & Councils) have proven to me that those Development departments have no interest in what happens after they finish building.

That was also my experience!

 

[hitmouse]

Bit last-minute, but just to crosspost a bit:


All out on Saturday, 28th of September! Meet at 1PM, on Colony One Silk Street, M4 6AG! Banner and placards provided.

Let @spareroomuk know that we demand change in how landlords upload their listings to discriminate against benefit claimants!

The process of advertising on SpareRoom is limited to “Professionals, Students and No Preference”. This implies that there are only two types of renters that might be searching for housing: in a “professional” job or higher education. Renting costs are at an all time high, so further limitations make it even harder to find housing.

 

[hitmouse]

'There's water running down the walls': Social housing complaints soar by 162% as council repairs costs quadruple

An investigation by LBC has found local councils are experiencing a surge in the number of complaints concerning the condition of social housing and, as a result, facing ever-increasing repair bills.

www.lbc.co.uk

For more on the Middleton tenants fighting for repairs and compensation, there's an indepth interview with them on Renters' Radio here:

 

[pbsmooth]

Tip of the iceberg I’ve no doubt.

“November 2023, Environmental Health Officers inspected the house and found five rooms occupied by at least four unrelated families. Two of the families had small children… There was also a severe mice infestation in the house, officers found“

Dodgy landlord rents 5-bed house to 13 people for up to £750 each

He has been slapped with a £60,000 fine after 13 people from four families (two with small children) were found to be sharing one kitchen and bathroom

www.mylondon.news