Why don't people allow necessary houses to be build?

moneyistooshorttomention

maninthestreet wrote: »

We are both in the UK, though Wales is certainly not as densely populated as England.

Bit confused - by "our country" I mean Britain as a whole.

cheesemouse_2

In my view, immigration and the amount of kids people are having is contributing to the shortage of housing, how can it not? What on earth is wrong with saying that this island has a finite amount of space to build houses on, and we can't keep taking in an infinite amount of immigrants. And do people have to have so many kids? Two should be the absolute limit. Do the people having say five kids, not realise that it means five houses need to be available for them when they grow up? (No, they probably don't think of that to be honest).

And.. one thing I don't understand, but why do people feel they have a right to own their own home? What is so wrong with renting? We (husband and me) had to rent for several years after having to sell our home a few years ago. It wasn't ideal, especially with pets, but we made do and were happy cos that's all we could do at the time. Now, luckily, we're in the position that we've been able to buy our own home again. But at no point have we ever felt that we had a right to own a house. It happened, quite simply, when we were in a position to afford it. Had we not got into that position, we'd still be renting, and we'd be perfectly happy to do so.

Something that makes me incredibly sad is seeing lots of beautiful old houses and buildings, abandoned and left to go to ruin. Why build more new houses when the old ones could be developed instead of being left to crumble?

But on the subject of new houses, maybe it's about time that we went back to having high-rise blocks of flats? Would house much more people on the same footprint of land than a new build estate would.

And, let's face it, they wouldn't be any more ugly to look at than new-build estates anyway.

This thread has put me in the mood for listening to "Get Em' Out By Friday" by Genesis. Have a listen.

sniggings

ringo_24601 wrote: »

A shrinking population would lead to gaping holes in our economy. The age distribution is changed - a shrinking population ends up top heavy with older people and pensioners.

Look at Japan as an example. Their wealthfare system is being hammered by their elderly population. They have very little immigration, and will likely have some significant cultural changes to come in the next few decades as their workforce becomes unable to support itself. http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/03/japans-demography

Germany is heading that way but will counter it with EU immigration. Japan will have to change its ways or accept immigrants to increase its labour pool.

Immigration is good for a country when controlled. You typically get working-aged people and pre-trained (i.e. low costs, but good taxable earnings)

it's not tho is it.

and what happens when this generation of low paid worker reach retirement age, do we accept another few million low paid workers to pay their pensions!

thenewbee

leveller2911 wrote: »

The problem many rural communities face is that developers don't want to build the type of houses the area needs. They want to build 4 and 5 bedroom houses and we need 2-3 bedroom low cost housing for the young people of the area. Many developers are like locusts, they turn up cause havoc whilst building expensive 4-5 bedroom detached houses for wealthy people from London and then they run off with their profit.

The local communities gain little from many developments so its not surprising they don't want them built. Build the houses we actually ned and many people would be in favour. The South East in particular is seeing ever increasing problems with congestion on the roads, pressure on the water services and sewage problems etc from too many houses and not enough investment on the infrastructure.

Hit the nail on the head for my area - semi rural village. There have been hundreds of massive detached houses built in surrounding areas and 13 are being built in my village at the moment. No smaller houses - all 4/5 beds priced in excess of 500k...

We've also heard our local MP is supporting plans to build 5000 houses on farmers fields less than a mile from our village. In the context of our village having a population of 1500 & neighboring villages 1200 & 2500. Absolute insanity - the infrastructure of our village can't support it & we know it will have a negative impact. This is not the solution. I don't know what is, though.

davidwoody

I have allotments behind my house, and I would be mortified if they were given over to house-building.

Backing onto the allotments was a major draw of the house. We get lots of birds in our garden and aren't overlooked by other houses. It's a conservation area, a Victorian terraced street, and a large part of the historic feel of the area.

Lots of local people use the allotments, and have done so for many years. The houses surrounding the allotments benefit and there is historic value to maintaining the allotments.

The idea that allotments should be built on because it's not already housing accommodation is ridiculous. We should aim to keep these green spaces in towns, and look to find alternatives for housing if we can. There are plenty of alternatives!

GwylimT

The new estate my brother lives on is ex-industrial, it had a few food factories and warehouses, all the roads were already there as were services, it was also incredibly cheap to buy. As it has proper roads, not the usual twisty narrow roads on new estates they also have a bus service, not very common at all on new estates.

Unfortunately barrat built them.

I own two allotments, I would be very angry if someone removed my property from me.

GaleSF63

varghesejim wrote: »

I am a priced out serial renter.

Referring to this link:

http://www.dorkingandleatherheadadvertiser.co.uk/Campaigners-launch-bid-prevent-500-homes-built/story-26337537-detail/story.html

People protesting allotments to be replaced with homes.

There may be many reasons to protest against a development. But the matter of fact is we are in short of homes. We need to build homes where it can be build with least environmental impact.

In this case 100 allotments have to be replaced with 500 homes. And the council will get 21 million from the developer. The council will reallocate the allotments elsewhere in the area. Looks like win-win situation all the way except an inconvenience to allotment holders.

The council received 30 letters against the development from this campaign. Not even a single letter for the development from the many hundreds of unfortunate souls who don't have a home in the area. Granted, they might not be able to buy from the same development, but more homes will generally keep the prices to manageable levels so that people will get a chance to buy.

I think there need to be a campaign from first time buyers to apply pressure for more building of homes. Importantly voices need to be heard from non-home owners in government in such scenarios where there is protest against new development.

Are you talking about a housing shortage or a shortage of houses that you could afford?

Would you be equally as supportive of this scheme if it were a housing association wanting to build 500 homes for people to rent?

SnooksNJ

maninthestreet wrote: »

More British Expats than where???

There are more British Expats living in the US than American's living in the UK so why are you suggesting I'm a contributing factor to the housing crisis?

moneyistooshorttomention

It is a very difficult line to draw to differentiate between normal level of swap-over of populations (a few in/a few out because of people making genuine decisions that they prefer one country to another etc) on the one hand

versus economic migrants and illegal immigrants on the other hand

versus genuine refugees (and there is some element with the genuine ones amongst this current "massive wave" of certain governments having caused a rebound effect by interfering in the affairs of other countries - Tony B-liar I'm looking at you:cool:). Because our governments caused things to be a lot worse in some of those countries than they otherwise would be there is some element of "justice" to them coming (BUT fairly spread amongst the offending countries).

There have been some large shifts throughout history and I can see that the reason Wales has a lower population per acre on average than England by the look of it is because so many Welsh people have had to move away from their own country throughout the centuries because of there not being the work for many of them here and, of course, there is that modern-day 1970s onwards factor that is going to cause rather more of them to leave (ie not being able to get public sector jobs because of their applications being thrown out for not speaking Welsh) and those intending to have public sector jobs will more likely leave for England than learn the language.

The Irish have also had centuries of having to leave their own country for similar reasons.

The British, as a whole, often decide to "move to the sun" and be an expat on retirement (or possibly earlier).

That's the thing though - ie that probably the vast majority of people trying to get into our country are doing so as illegal immigrants or economic migrants (and not genuine refugees or expats swopping country iyswim).

varghesejim

GaleSF63 wrote: »

Would you be equally as supportive of this scheme if it were a housing association wanting to build 500 homes for people to rent?

Without a doubt, yes. I might not get one of them, but many families will.