Bole Blasts Nimby Boomers with Brickbats

ruggedtoast

Home owning boomers were left stunned as top planning minister Nick Boles announced he is gunning for affordable housing and he has their housing stanglehold firmly in his gun sites.

On BBC2's Newsnight, he says the "right to a home with a little bit of ground around it to bring your family up in" is a basic moral right on a par with a right to education. "We're going to protect the greenbelt but if people want to have housing for their kids they have got to accept we need to build more on some open land. In the UK and England at the moment we've got about 9% of land developed. All we need to do is build on another 2-3% of land and we'll have solved a housing problem."

While still reeling from this comment Newsnight's land hoarding rental property owning viewing boomers were dealt a further body blow:

Addressing so-called nimbys, Boles says: "It's my job to make the arguments to these people [people who oppose development that if they carry on writing letters their kids are never going to get a place with a garden to bring up their grandkids.

And the final knockout punch:

In addition, the government is taking powers to fast-track thousands of big residential applications.

Unofficial sources state that Newsnight phones have been ringing off the hook with thousands of complaints from "My House is My Pension - Sidcup" and "Generally Enraged BTL- Tunbridge Wells".

Finally there is some news to slake the thirst of first time buyers who have been wandering the desert of BTL and homelessness, searching for an oasis the generation before them long sucked dry, their camels prancing and sloshing with all the water they hoovered up.


Legend Nick Boles celebrates phase one of his plan to allow more than 30% of the country to have somewhere to secure to live

Edited to add link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/27/housebuilding-needs-more-open-land?INTCMP=SRCH

Generali

More houses should be built in SE England. It's where the jobs are and where people want to live. It's near impossible to build houses in that part of the country at present.

The Government have this one absolutely spot on. You can't just not build houses for people to live in. It's a ludicrous idea.

You can build a house for £50-£100,000 easily plus land. If the price of building land falls, which is what will happen if more is made available by changing planning rules, then more houses can be built at a price people can afford.

A._Badger

Remind us where you live please, General.

ruggedtoast

Boles also points out that modern developments are pig ugly and developers must be made to make them look nice.

I can understand no one wanting to live next to some ugly development but the nimby a priori assumption that no building must happen on any countryside anywhere makes my blood boil.

Firstly I dont see them bulldozing their own houses to plant trees, which is what was there before someone decided that they should have a place to live, secondly you dont see hoards of peopl wandering around Westminster, Bath, Canterbury or any of Britain's other beautiful towns whingeing about how much better it would look if it were a field.

Idiots.

ukcarper

Where in the South East do people suggest these houses should be built.

ruggedtoast

ukcarper wrote: »

Where in the South East do people suggest these houses should be built.

Oh but its not a suggestion Carper, its a soon to be reality.

There seem to be plenty of green bits on this map, I imagine some of them might even be near you.

http://goo.gl/maps/yxV1W

Radiantsoul

I think the government could probably buy up chunks of farmland, change the allowed use and then auction it off to developers. The proceeds could be used to build the infrastructure - roads, school, etc.
A large building program would create jobs and hold housing costs down. Probably will not happen though.

ukcarper

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Oh but its not a suggestion Carper, its a soon to be reality.

There seem to be plenty of green bits on this map, I imagine some of them might even be near you.

http://goo.gl/maps/yxV1W

Reality

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Generali

A._Badger wrote: »

Remind us where you live please, General.

Why does that make a difference? There are plenty of people that don't want to see small terraces or small low rise flats built on large blocks of land in suburban Sydney. I think they are just as dumb as the British NIMBYs.

An expanding population means you need more homes or more people per existing home. I prefer the former solution, presumably those who oppose more building want more people per home as it's the only logically consistent alternative outcome.

princeofpounds

In addition, the government is taking powers to fast-track thousands of big residential applications

I stated in the other thread that I am glad Boles has stated this.

However, the above comment I don't like. It means that large builders have a privileged access into the planning system, churning out their identikit plasterboard huts.

You only have to look at France and Belgium to see that individual builders, when allowed plots, tend to build more varied and higher quality architecture.

Oh, and I live in the SE. There is loads of space around here. You just aren't allowed to build on it for a variety of reasons.

the_flying_pig

yeah, i mean, stuff he's right about includes the following:

1 - we should build more houses;
2 - some of these, inevitably, must be built on the 'green belt';
3 - allowing residents to decide whether houses get built in their area is problematic - unless the way that it's done is changed, e.g. a town of 50,000 families with a population growth rate of 1% p.a. could be forced to build 500 new houses per year somewhere within its boundaries, up to the pupulation to decide where exactly they go.
4 - anti-development NIMBYism is immoral & needs to be ignored.

stuff i'm less sure about includes the following:

1 - the idea of seemingly all houses having a garden - gardens are nice, clearly, but huge cities like London [see LA, Sydney] will sprawl horribly without lots of well-made blocks of flats, as well. people in the main prefer more space, obviously, but if the price is right and, as in London now, there are plenty of public gardens, then private gardens are worth sacrificing.
2 - a general doubt that the current group of housebuilders are really geared up, or even willing, to build the number of houses that we're talking about here, land or no land.