Housing

[Serial_Apologist]

Well we'll never get anything done if you persist with this Eeyore-ish attitude ahinton - to the bottom of the garden with you and eat some worms!

We need to set up a Housing Commission urgently and test some of the these ideas out and generate some new ones.

And yes there will be a seat for you from which you can suck your teeth, shake your head and wail ".. we'rrrre doomed ah tell ye, arrrll doomed!"

{BIG Smiley + hug & thumbs-up}

If there was a war on the problem would be solved just like that, by commandeering brownfield sites and filling them with habitable portacabins. The reason there's a housing crisis is that solving it is individualised and seen as "up to us". Stay at home with mum and dad, don't get your girlfriend up the duff, save up and don't be enticed by the ads and property programmes. I don't think it's stretching a point too far into rhetoric to suggest that if governments didn't advocate interventionist policies serving not-so-obscure purposes around the Globe "in their national interests", they might not be subcontracting the resultant homelessness to charities organising tent cities - the Third World equivalent of our privatised housing associations. Which is the same thing as wringing our consciences to put hands in pockets rather than the more efficient means of taxation.

[ahinton]

{BIG Smiley + hug & thumbs-up}

If there was a war on the problem would be solved just like that, by commandeering brownfield sites and filling them with habitable portacabins.

Is that one answer to the problem, as you see it? And who would manufacture millions of such products, who would pay for them, who would fund the water / sanitation / energy &c. facilities to serve them all?

The reason there's a housing crisis is that solving it is individualised and seen as "up to us".

That is, I think, a far too simplistic view (not that I'm suggesting that you share it!). There are surely two such crises, albeit inextricably linked, the one being the shortage of housing and the other its affordability, neither of which is "up to us" to the extent that it's neither the fault - nor within the control - of any individual that there's insufficient housing stock or that so much of what there is of it is beyond the reach of all too many potential owners and tenants.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

And who would manufacture millions of such products, who would pay for them, who would fund the water / sanitation / energy &c. facilities to serve them all?

the commune comrade, the commune .........

[ahinton]

the commune comrade, the commune .........

And where does it source its funds?

[Serial_Apologist]

the commune comrade, the commune .........

Cynicism aside, it's interesting, isn't it, that although pre-fab housing built during WW2 was only intended as a pro-tem solution to the homelessness of the time, those still living in it, years later - poor insulation, asbestos, the lot - prefer or preferred it for longer than tower blocks for the communitarianism encouraged in the layouts and spatial arrangements of its estates.

[ahinton]

Cynicism aside, it's interesting, isn't it, that although pre-fab housing built during WW2 was only intended as a pro-tem solution to the homelessness of the time, those still living in it, years later - poor insulation, asbestos, the lot - prefer or preferred it for longer than tower blocks for the communitarianism encouraged in the layouts and spatial arrangements of its estates.

That much may be broadly true - and understandably so in some senses - but an equivalent project in "peacetime" on the kind of scale that would be necessary would simply not work because it couldn't be funded adequately and the properties could not be properly managed, maintained, insured and the rest.

[amateur51]

That much may be broadly true - and understandably so in some senses - but an equivalent project in "peacetime" on the kind of scale that would be necessary would simply not work because it couldn't be funded adequately and the properties could not be properly managed, maintained, insured and the rest.

This is the first time I've read someone advocating WWIII as a solution to the nation's housing problems.

[teamsaint]

This is the first time I've read someone advocating WWIII as a solution to the nation's housing problems.

good point.

but lots of people think that dramatically reducing the population is the answer.....although they never usually volunteer, I notice......

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I agree that the supply of land, both brown and green field, is the fundamental problem.

Well, you would expect my reply to be my idée fixe: It isn't that there are too few houses - it's that there are too many people. The sooner everybody faces this little piece of mathematical logic, the sooner we shall create a sustainable society.

The housing problem is just one of many consequences of the world not dealing with this.

[amateur51]

Well, you would expect my reply to be my idée fixe: It isn't that there are too few houses - it's that there are too many people. The sooner everybody faces this little piece of mathematical logic, the sooner we shall create a sustainable society.

The housing problem is just one of many consequences of the world not dealing with this.

Hot on ahinton's heels, another proposal for mass genocide?!

[ahinton]

This is the first time I've read someone advocating WWIII as a solution to the nation's housing problems.

I trust that it will also be the last, since I said and implied nothing of the kind; the wartime analogy and the portable accommodation associated therewith was not mine in the first place and my reference to "peacetime" (as a contrast thereto in that particular context only) was for the sole purpose of pointing out that such a project could not be adequately funded and, by implication, would not attract favour in any event because it would not be regarded by the publc as an "emergency" solution of the kind that the government of the day might otherwise just get away with in wartime.

[ahinton]

Hot on ahinton's heels, another proposal for mass genocide?!

Those heels are not mine and I do not, of course, advocate any such policy.

[Richard Barrett]

It isn't that there are too few houses - it's that there are too many people.

It isn't really valid to counterpose those: it's a fact that there are too few houses for the people living in the UK, whereas it's an opinion that there are "too many people" .

[ardcarp]

That was the wickedest thing of all. I still meet people who refuse to believe that it happened.

I agree 100% with ff and Jean about the scandal of flogging off council housing. One hears of Labour politicians (eg Blair and even Milliband) who 'admire' Margaret Thatcher for her brand of conviction politics. I see nothing to admire in someone who foists what they think is 'right' on a nation. IMV Britain's sense of public service was wrecked by Thatcher and we now have to live with things (e.g. market forces in transport, utilities, education, hospitals) which would have been considered highly unethical pre-1980s.

Coming back to private landlords, however, we are where we are. Many young couples just would not be able to buy a property however cheap because of a lack of a deposit and lack of credentials to be considered for a mortgage. I have personal experience in my family about the near impossibility of getting one of the few council houses still available. There is a a set of criteria laid out by councils, and whilst there are 'waiting lists', an applicant would effectively wait for ever. This is because (rightly) councils have to prioritise, and families with difficulties (mental, social, and especially with children in need) have to be given first consideration.

As I said earlier, without the private rental sector, however wicked you think it may be, there would be a MASSIVE crisis of homelessness. I don't think the next (!) Labour government is going to re-nationalise the railways and the utilities, let alone abolish private schools. The thought that they would nationalise the landlord is just way off the spectrum. That is the stuff of real revolutions, blood, guts and hanging the aristocracy. I can hear some faint cries of 'Hurrah' offstage, but let's be realistic shall we? The average Sun-reading Brit is well to the right of Genghis Khan and is not going to swap his wide screen HD TV, laminate flooring and fitted kitchen for a little red book and a Kafka-esque apartment block.

[ahinton]

It isn't really valid to counterpose those: it's a fact that there are too few houses for the people living in the UK, whereas it's an opinion that there are "too many people" .

Indeed. Which factors determine - or indeed even could determine - the correct or the maximum number of people who should be living in UK at any one time in any case?

Given the sheer extent of the housing crisis, one might argue that if the UK population were redeuced to, say, 80% of its present level, there would still be too few houses.