Would you march for more affordable housing?

moggylover

Yes

mr.brown wrote: »

hmmm. I think you are being a bit unfair hamish. Not everyone can get a decent well paid job - either through opportunity, or skill , or luck. So not everyone can climb onto a housing ladder, particularly if it is overpriced. Not really fair to expect people to move miles away from their families, friends network, local area. Some will, some should not have to.

You know hamish, i have got the message. You bought a house, you have a job. Well, big deal, it isn't everything you know. Try a little bit of compassion and understanding some time - you know - give something back to celebrate your good fortune.

Btw - i'm not a socialist, i don't really care - i just think not everyone is lucky, and they don't need slagging off into the bargain.

:t:t:t:t:t:t:t

moggylover

Yes

Deleted_User wrote: »

Well of course you won't have the right people for the job when you first make the move. People need time to train for jobs if those jobs are new to the area.

But that's not a problem. There aren't enough houses where the jobs are currently. It's not just a question of giving work to areas of unemployment but also getting people out of the overpopulated parts of the country where there's no hope of housing them all.

The idea is that a certain number of skilled people move with the jobs. More housing to go around in the over-populated areas (thus prices come down) and more work to go around in the less heavily populated areas with higher unemployment.

But that is common sense Scarter - thus unfortunately unlikely to happen;)

moggylover

Yes

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Moan all you like.

As long as we continue to add an additional 250,000 households a year, but only build 80,000 houses, prices are only going one way. Sure, there may be blips, as we have just seen, but the only way is up over the medium to long term.

There are still only two choices.

Choose to position yourself to take advantage of that fact, or choose not to.

It really is that simple.

Unfortunately you are right, at least for the forseeable future: but that doesn't change the fact that you are a pretty detestable example of why it continues and will probably remain a smug, self-satisfied and arrogant ......... for the rest of your days:D

[Deleted User]

moggylover wrote: »

But that is common sense Scarter - thus unfortunately unlikely to happen;)

In which case the only options available to people are as Hamish said:

Hamish wrote:

If you can't afford a house where you live now, then move somewhere cheaper, or make more money.

How else are you going to give everyone in the South East a home when there are more households than there are homes? It seems to me that some of you are getting ratty with Hamish because he's pointing out the facts. Facts that some of you don't want to hear.

If you want to march for affordable housing then march out of the South East to where there's less competition for housing. And if you want a job when you get there start convincing employers, MP's etc to move work out to these areas.

Lack of availability of housing is not the fault of the people that have homes. It's the fault of ALL the people that choose to live in overly populated areas. It's the fault of ALL the employers that choose not to move out to cheaper, less populated locations. And it's the fault of successive governments that allowed the South East to get so over populated that many people can't have a home (because there aren't enough to go around) and those that can have to pay rediculous prices for it.

If you live in the South East you are part of the problem - whether you have a home or not. Hamish doesn't live in an overly populated area. He is actually helping by not adding to the competition for homes in the South East.

I think some of you need to say a big thank you to Hamish for making it easier for YOUR KIDS to have affordable homes while you make things MORE DIFFICULT for YOUR OWN CHILDREN by insisting on living in the South East. You should be ashamed of yourselves.:rotfl:

chucky

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Moan all you like.

As long as we continue to add an additional 250,000 households a year, but only build 80,000 houses, prices are only going one way. Sure, there may be blips, as we have just seen, but the only way is up over the medium to long term.

There are still only two choices.

Choose to position yourself to take advantage of that fact, or choose not to.

It really is that simple.

unfortunately Hamish is right - however much people want to be in denial that it is the case.

either people get onto the HPI bandwagon or they will be left behind in some way or another.

it's not nice and pretty sad but it's true and it's the way of the world unfortunately.

carolt

Yes

Right on cue, here's an excellent article on this vey topic:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article6974622.ece

We’re picking up the bill for right-to-buy

It’s folly that taxpayers pay for poor families to live in luxury homes. We need more social housing

Laughable though it sounds now, the stated purpose of reforming housing benefit two years ago was to save the taxpayer money. The result is a housing benefit bill that will soar by 15 per cent to £19.6 billion this year and which pays 550 families sums in excess of £30,000 a year. One family are receiving £2,875 a week to live in a seven-bedroom house in Brent. Three families have received in excess of £200,000 in housing benefits in just 18 months.

... Moreover, in areas such as Central London, where the rental market is dominated by prime properties, the system was always bound to produce bizarre results. A typical tenant of a four-bedroom house in Chelsea is a corporate high-flyer on a short secondment in London, whose company is happy to pay a fancy rent. Taxpayers should not be expected to compete in the corporate let market to house the poor.

The farce that is the housing benefit system cannot, however, be laid at the door of the Brown reforms alone. Its origins lie in the right-to-buy policy introduced 30 years ago by Margaret Thatcher and since warmly embraced by new Labour. Fulfilling the homeowning ambitions of council house tenants played well in the polling booths and helped to break up monolithic council estates. But in the long term it has cost us dearly. It has robbed the social housing stock of family homes and forced councils to look for expensive privately rented houses in which to house families.

It should have been obvious that the first properties bought under the right-to-buy would be the best ones. The solid, four-bedroom postwar semis in large gardens with development potential have long since been sold and their owners rewarded with large profits. This has skewed the social housing stock towards ugly concrete flats built in the 1960s and 1970s. Few of the larger homes have been replaced. An increasing proportion of social housing built by housing associations in the past 30 years has been in the form of flats and small houses — especially since John Prescott’s planning rules forced homes to be built at ever-higher densities. In 1997-98, 35 per cent of new social housing units had three or more bedrooms. By 2008-09 that had fallen to just 23 per cent.

Councils cannot boost the building of family homes: apart from in a few exceptional cases, they are forbidden from borrowing to build homes. Yet they are obliged to house low-income families. This leaves them with one option: to pay through the nose to house families in Victorian villas or homes designed for executives.

The problem is compounded by the rules for assessing need, which are worked out according to an inflexible “bedroom calculator”. Children over the age of 16 are not expected to share a room. No teenagers of the opposite sex are expected to share and no more than two younger children are allowed to share — no matter how large the bedroom.

This is why we keep reading about families living in seven-bedroom villas at a cost to the taxpayer of tens of thousands of pounds a year. The system was adjusted last year so that payments are capped at the rent of the median five-bedroom home. But benefit claimants living in private- rented homes receive an average of £109.13, nearly twice as much as the average £68.21 a week paid to those living in council-owned homes.

Tenants who pay their own way in the rental market are paying for this folly twice: once through their taxes and again through the extra money that they must pay to outbid benefit claimants for a property. And by being over-generous, the housing benefit system is creating a welfare trap. A family living in an average- priced rental property knows that if their income rises so that they are no longer eligible for housing benefit, they are likely to have to move to a cheaper home. So why work harder?

There is only one way that the Government is going to correct this iniquity and trim the soaring housing benefit bill: to resume building social housing units of sufficient size to accommodate families. In the 1990s I remember reading how a council housed a family of 20 children by knocking together a pair of four- bedroom semis. Nowadays, that same council would have to spend enough money to rent a stately home.

We need to get back to decent but budget-priced social houses built in the cheap parts of town and protected forever from the right to buy. You don’t have to be a socialist to believe in council houses. On the contrary, you just have to have a dislike for extravagant public spending.

carolt

Yes

Deleted_User wrote: »

In which case the only options available to people are as Hamish said:



How else are you going to give everyone in the South East a home when there are more households than there are homes? It seems to me that some of you are getting ratty with Hamish because he's pointing out the facts. Facts that some of you don't want to hear.

If you want to march for affordable housing then march out of the South East to where there's less competition for housing. And if you want a job when you get there start convincing employers, MP's etc to move work out to these areas.

Lack of availability of housing is not the fault of the people that have homes. It's the fault of ALL the people that choose to live in overly populated areas. It's the fault of ALL the employers that choose not to move out to cheaper, less populated locations. And it's the fault of successive governments that allowed the South East to get so over populated that many people can't have a home (because there aren't enough to go around) and those that can have to pay rediculous prices for it.

If you live in the South East you are part of the problem - whether you have a home or not. Hamish doesn't live in an overly populated area. He is actually helping by not adding to the competition for homes in the South East.

I think some of you need to say a big thank you to Hamish for making it easier for YOUR KIDS to have affordable homes while you make things MORE DIFFICULT for YOUR OWN CHILDREN by insisting on living in the South East. You should be ashamed of yourselves.:rotfl:

Nonsense - there is no shortage of homes. If there was, we'd all be homeless. We're not.

The problem is that they are too expensive - not nonexistent.

Emy1501

Deleted_User wrote: »

In which case the only options available to people are as Hamish said:



How else are you going to give everyone in the South East a home when there are more households than there are homes? It seems to me that some of you are getting ratty with Hamish because he's pointing out the facts. Facts that some of you don't want to hear.

If you want to march for affordable housing then march out of the South East to where there's less competition for housing. And if you want a job when you get there start convincing employers, MP's etc to move work out to these areas.

Lack of availability of housing is not the fault of the people that have homes. It's the fault of ALL the people that choose to live in overly populated areas. It's the fault of ALL the employers that choose not to move out to cheaper, less populated locations. And it's the fault of successive governments that allowed the South East to get so over populated that many people can't have a home (because there aren't enough to go around) and those that can have to pay rediculous prices for it.

If you live in the South East you are part of the problem - whether you have a home or not. Hamish doesn't live in an overly populated area. He is actually helping by not adding to the competition for homes in the South East.

I think some of you need to say a big thank you to Hamish for making it easier for YOUR KIDS to have affordable homes while you make things MORE DIFFICULT for YOUR OWN CHILDREN by insisting on living in the South East. You should be ashamed of yourselves.:rotfl:

Pretty sad that you happy to make fun of the situation that some kids may find themselves in the future due to the greed of some. Of course you do not have children though do you:rolleyes:

Emy1501

chucky wrote: »

unfortunately Hamish is right - however much people want to be in denial that it is the case.

either people get onto the HPI bandwagon or they will be left behind in some way or another.

it's not nice and pretty sad but it's true and it's the way of the world unfortunately.

I suspect one day you may be right but at this time there is not a shortage of home simply many speculators sitting on property many being propped up by various schemes.

I agree though that at sometime though there could be a time where your prediction comes true.

My issue with Hamish and others though is the nonsense that they worked so hard to get where they are blah blah blah

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

No

moggylover wrote: »

Unfortunately you are right, at least for the forseeable future:

Hey, I don't mind the tirade of abuse so long as you can at least differentiate between the facts of the matter, and your dislike of me for telling it like it is.

but that doesn't change the fact that you are a pretty detestable example of why it continues and will probably remain a smug, self-satisfied and arrogant ......... for the rest of your days:D

True.:D

But I can live with that. Particularly as I'm not here to win any popularity contests. Just some arguments.;)