It's official - BTL destroys communities

olly300

chucky wrote: »

very rare - i've seen this very rarely personally, most i've ever had was a one renewal on a one year contract.

It's not actually rare.

The people like myself who have ended up staying in properties for years don't post on the boards about those particular landlords because they tend to be good landlords.

However to be fair I only know of one case where the people rented off a letting agent and stayed in the property for over 3 years.

chucky

olly300 wrote: »

It's not actually rare.

The people like myself who have ended up staying in properties for years don't post on the boards about those particular landlords because they tend to be good landlords.

However to be fair I only know of one case where the people rented off a letting agent and stayed in the property for over 3 years.

happened to me only once - location is Central London, maybe it's because I'm a Pickles style Landlord

mvengemvenge

carolt wrote: »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7755641.stm

Life in UK 'has become lonelier'

Community life in Britain has weakened substantially over the past 30 years, according to research commissioned by the BBC.

Analysis of census data reveals how neighbourhoods in every part of the UK have become more socially fragmented.

The study assesses the health of a community by looking at how rooted people are in their neighbourhood.

Academics created "loneliness indices", to identify where people had a "feeling of not belonging".

Substantial changes

The study ranks places using a formula based on the proportion of people in an area who are single, those who live alone, the numbers in private rented accommodation and those who have lived there for less than a year.

The higher the proportion of people in those categories, the less rooted the community, according to social scientists. They refer to it as the level of "anomie" or the "feeling of not belonging".

Professor Daniel Dorling, who headed the research team at the University of Sheffield, said the measures could also be described as "loneliness indices".

Comparing the figures from the 1971 census with those in 2001 reveals substantial change.

Every region in the UK, broadly defined by a BBC local radio areas, has seen its communities become less rooted.

Census figures for Northern Ireland in 1971 were unavailable but later census data reveals that this trend is reflected here too.

"Even the weakest communities in 1971 were stronger than any community now," says Professor Dorling.

The researchers conclude that the increase in anomie weakens the "social glue" of communities. The result, they suggest, is that neighbourhoods are likely to be less trusting and more fearful.

The local radio area with the strongest communities on this measure is Stoke-on-Trent. Edinburgh has the weakest communities.

While society has certainly become more fractured, I don't think it's fair to say that is down to BTL (and I'm no big supporter of BTL LL's). Privately rented properties have just replaced non-existent council ones, imho.

I blame our fractured society on Thatcher, Reagan and the greed they encouraged in the 80's. Life in the UK was far from perfect before Thatcher, don't get me wrong, but she destroyed the lives and communities of the have-nots, while the haves were encouraged to grab everything they could. The 80's was the decade that fractured us. There are many people who believe that we've actually been in a recession since 1991, it's just that the blossoming world of finance built a fantasy world built on debt to cover it up.

Do we produce/sell more now than we did then? No.

So where did all our 'wealth' come from? Truth is, we never had any.

Gorgeous_George

The BTL LL only owns the house. The tenant makes it a home.

If the communities are being destroyed, I suggest that the blame should lie at the feet of the tenant. The LL lives in a much nicer area - probably next to other LLs.

(Apologies, but this thread has been bugging me all day).

GG

tomstickland

It's official, BTL increases the number of rented homes in an area.
If you then define a community index based on the number of rented homes then, unsurpisingly, that index is affected by the number of rented homes.

baby_boomer

The decline in our sense of community is in inverse proportion to politicians' use of the word "community" IME.

John_Pierpoint

People don't work locally.
People don't walk locally.
People don't shop locally..
People crash around the place in little metal boxes, dispossessing local people from:
Chatting on street corners.
Cycling safely.
Walking safely.
Allowing children to play on street corners.
Allowing children to walk to school.

This new boxed mobility means:
People travel through communities with no interaction what so ever.
People spend hours per day commuting.
Families live hours away from each other.
People can live in gated ghettos of their own kind.
Thieves and other antisocial spivs can range far and wide destroying trust.

This applies regardless of property tenure.