Corbyn promises 'radical reboot' of council house building to tackle housing crisis

Generali

ukcarper wrote: »

So how come the new development of 3.5k properties near me is going to take 10 years to complete.

Because you live in an area where only 350 new houses a year will sell at a guess.

antrobus

Lungboy wrote: »

A blatent Push Poll to get the results that the "Party" wanted, ie. that the move to the Left was to blame.

As part of the exercise, the polling firm asked voters to state their main reason they voted for their chosen party. The Campaign Company say the results show the extent to which the issue of the country’s economic deficit emerged unprompted.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/04/anti-austerity-voters-poll-jeremy-corbyn-labour

Nice try, but no cigar.:)

Lungboy

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/what-is-push-poll.html

"There are two really glaring flaws in the conclusion that Labour lost the election because the electorate supposedly support ideological austerity.

The first is the loaded nature of the question. Of course people are going to tend to agree with a economically meaningless platitude like "live within our means". It's actually surprising that as many as 16% of people disagreed with it given the absurdly biased way the question was framed.

The second flaw is that agreeing that the deficit should be cut is clearly not the same as agreeing with ideological austerity, because the socially and economically destructive Tory "cut our way to growth" strategy is clearly not the only conceivable way of cutting the deficit. In fact, Jeremy Corbyn's plan is to cut the deficit by carefully investing in things that create more economic activity than they cost."

CLAPTON

Lungboy wrote: »

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/what-is-push-poll.html

"There are two really glaring flaws in the conclusion that Labour lost the election because the electorate supposedly support ideological austerity.

The first is the loaded nature of the question. Of course people are going to tend to agree with a economically meaningless platitude like "live within our means". It's actually surprising that as many as 16% of people disagreed with it given the absurdly biased way the question was framed.

The second flaw is that agreeing that the deficit should be cut is clearly not the same as agreeing with ideological austerity, because the socially and economically destructive Tory "cut our way to growth" strategy is clearly not the only conceivable way of cutting the deficit. In fact, Jeremy Corbyn's plan is to cut the deficit by carefully investing in things that create more economic activity than they cost."

presumably examples of careful investment would be to scrap the spare room fee and reducing/scrapping Uni fees.

martinsurrey

Graham_Devon wrote: »

In my view you are missing a trick here.

The cost of social housing already exists. It's called housing benefits. In many respects it's a transfer of tax payers money to private landlords.

Now, sure, there is a cost element of initially building X amount of council houses, but theres also a savings element. Once the houses are built, they will cost X amount to run and maintain. However, that amount will be far below the amount of housing benefit handed out by the state for the equivalent number of homes.

So although there is a huge upfront cost element, there are savings to be had also for as long as the house remains council owned and the famil are housed there rather than shelling out housing benefit each month.

You state that it would cost £20bn to build 100k houses. That's a one off cost.

The housing benefit bill is around £35bn annually.

So lets say we house 100,000 families in these new homes and each is getting an average £500 a month in housing benefit. Straight away you have saved £600m per year. Project that over 10 years and £6bn has been saved (more if you factor in the saved inflation on the benefits). But that's not the end of it, as rents across the spectrum will have reduced due to the new supply, reducing housing benefits across the board....another annual saving.

Then theres extra taxes paid by all those employed to build them.

In time, the houses pay for themselves.

I think my first argument got side tracked by posts on costs, the crux of the matter is we are building so few houses because of planning restrictions, NOT because councils cant build their own houses (which I also think is a terrible idea).

I for one would build my own house next year if I could get a piece of dirt for less than £300k to build on near me.

Freeing up planning would result in more houses overall, lower prices overall (or at least moderated price rises).

A council that wants to build 400 houses a year would hit the same barriers a private developer would, BUT they would be spending public money on failed attempts (can be £1m, pre planning on a large scheme), and would have to consider the NIMBY effect at the ballot box.

You could say the council could build on their own land, which is "free", but you have to consider the opportunity cost of not selling it. true they could build 400 affordable houses on that old factory site, but currently that site is worth £40m to a private developer, and in these times of squeezed budgets, £40m and 100 affordable houses might be more attractive than 400 affordable houses, which might cost the council £50m to build.

make that land worth less to developers, by making the planning premium lower, and its easier for the council to decide to use it for affordable.

I would love the UK to be building 300k houses a year, but this policy is not going to touch the sides. In fact nothing he has said will.

martinsurrey

ukcarper wrote: »

So how come the new development of 3.5k properties near me is going to take 10 years to complete.

try and sell your house and tell me if you get 100 offers for it.

You wont, as there is only a certain size pool of people who want to buy certain size houses in a certain area.

you build to the sales rate.

also the logistics of building 3.5k houses at once would be crazy You would need a thousand brickie teams for 12 months and then they would be sacked, then you would need 500 roofer teams at once, and then they would be sacked, while with a rolling build program you move 100 teams around from plot to plot for 10 years, keeping them in stable work.

this is part of the reason large builders have years of planning permission on their books, because they couldn't build them all at once, and if they did, they couldn't sell them all.

ukcarper

Generali wrote: »

Because you live in an area where only 350 new houses a year will sell at a guess.

So there is more to it than planning. The area I'm talking about is in the south east less than 1 hour from London by train.

ukcarper

martinsurrey wrote: »

try and sell your house and tell me if you get 100 offers for it.

You wont, as there is only a certain size pool of people who want to buy certain size houses in a certain area.

you build to the sales rate.

also the logistics of building 3.5k houses at once would be crazy You would need a thousand brickie teams for 12 months and then they would be sacked, then you would need 500 roofer teams at once, and then they would be sacked, while with a rolling build program you move 100 teams around from plot to plot for 10 years, keeping them in stable work.

this is part of the reason large builders have years of planning permission on their books, because they couldn't build them all at once, and if they did, they couldn't sell them all.

Exactly there is more to it than planning.

Marktheshark

He is an Old school Pro IRA sympathising champaign socialist.
Out further and further in to the wilderness of non electability they will go.

martinsurrey

ukcarper wrote: »

Exactly there is more to it than planning.

yes, BUT, if you split those 3.5k houses in to 35 100 unit developments around an area (so different product mix and placement mix), you could sell them a lot faster, but that would require a sea change in planning.

for example in Surrey, build 3.5k houses on the outskirts of Guildford and you'll be there for 10 years.

build 100 houses on the outskirts of/in the suburbs of/redevelop areas of the centre of Guildford, Woking, Godalming, Dorking, Bisley, Camberley, Bagshot, Cranley, Horley, Farnham, ect ect, and you could sell them all, almost every year.