Need a post Brexit boost? - get the Green Belt shovel ready!

michaels

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38828477

Building 1m homes on the greenbelt wouldn't solve the housing crisis. But it would certainly provide a huge boost to the economy to take up any Brexit slack.

GreatApe

better to accelerate the 'regeneration' of inner London.
Plenty of old estates that were built cheaply and poorly that can do with being knocked down and rebuilt 2-3x as dense or better yet 3-4x as dense

AFF8879

GreatApe wrote: »

better to accelerate the 'regeneration' of inner London.
Plenty of old estates that were built cheaply and poorly that can do with being knocked down and rebuilt 2-3x as dense or better yet 3-4x as dense

Trouble is most of the residents would oppose this sort of gentrification, there was a news report on an estate in Barnet that is planned to be knocked down and rebuilt. All residents have been promised alternative housing but suspect it'll probably be miles away in a cheaper location - that's the crux of the issue as far as I can see. No incentive for developers to bulldoze the site without making a profit, and no incentive for the council to bear the full cost unless it dramatically improves the local area.

There's an old council block down the road from me that's been re-skinned in a modern exterior, looks great, but the flats and communal areas are still the same inside.

[Deleted User]

There are 40 million acres of so called protected green belt i.e green belt surrounding large urban areas building on just 1% of that will go a long way to "solving" the housing crisis and the sooner we do it the better,I'm sick to death of the NIMBYS they should be taken away and shot !

The-Joker

Britain is lass than 10% built on, over 90% is just fields.

That's the two islands, including roads and car parks etc..

If it just grew by another 10%, say leave it 80% fields and 20% bricks and mortar then that would solve the housing crisis. It will happen just give it time.

Herzlos

AFF8879 wrote: »

Trouble is most of the residents would oppose this sort of gentrification, there was a news report on an estate in Barnet that is planned to be knocked down and rebuilt. All residents have been promised alternative housing but suspect it'll probably be miles away in a cheaper location - that's the crux of the issue as far as I can see.

Yeah I can see why they wouldn't be interested in moving away to somewhere random with more say. I always assumed that the residents would be temporarily housed somewhere else, and then move back into a similar unit in the new estate, but I guess that's just naive of me.

If they were re-building it with 3-4x density, then the new residents would only be taking up 25% of the new units.

Mind you, people who've lived somewhere for a while tend to become quite fond of them, but you'd think being offered a brand new home in the same location would be pretty tempting for most, even if it means they'd need to relocate for a year or 2.

Cloudydaze

Herzlos wrote: »

Yeah I can see why they wouldn't be interested in moving away to somewhere random with more say. I always assumed that the residents would be temporarily housed somewhere else, and then move back into a similar unit in the new estate, but I guess that's just naive of me.

If they were re-building it with 3-4x density, then the new residents would only be taking up 25% of the new units.

Mind you, people who've lived somewhere for a while tend to become quite fond of them, but you'd think being offered a brand new home in the same location would be pretty tempting for most, even if it means they'd need to relocate for a year or 2.

Like this?!

http://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/property-news/buying/new-homes/if-it-failed-we-d-all-lose-eight-clapham-neighbours-demolished-their-council-block-rebuilt-their-a107891.html


This was ex-council but privately owned. Personally think it's pretty ugly on the outside but the inside is nice.

GreatApe

Once again, there is no housing shortage in the vast majority of the UK

There is only a shortage in London and then really in inner London.

8 regions (Wales, Scotland, NI, NE, NW, Y&H, WM, EM) have cheap house prices so cheap that a mortgage on a starter terrace will be less than renting the local council stock

People are confusing two very different things, the falling ownership (and thus rising renting) with a lack of homes. The two are two very different problems weakly linked by price which is why so many are confusing the two

Renting is on the up and ownership down due to the big mortgage changes, specifically the removal of self certified mortgages and to a lessor extent also 100% Interest only mortgages. This is even why in the cheap 8 regions renting is up and ownership down its even true in Middlesborough which is a town where prices are very cheap where the population is failing and where they are continuing to build homes. If low prices falling population and additional building did not increase ownership in middlesborough why would it do so elsewhere? If you want higher ownership you need to bring back self cert

Inner London does lack homes, everyone wants to live there and be close to the big employment hubs of westminster, city, docklands. The problem is the councils that adjoin those areas as more socilist than corbyn so what they did is build huge amounts of council homes (so much so that parts of those boroughs are >60% council homes) right next to the big employment hubs and put poor or unemployed folk right next to the jobs. What needs to happen in a logical world is that those social estates in Z2 should be sold off in blocks to private ownership and the tenants moved out of Z2. The private owned blocks should then be rented out or sold to workers that work in Z1/Z2 the developers will also likely get moving a lot quicker to knock many down and replace at 2-3x the density. Chances of it happening is very low to zero.

The-Joker

The-smoker wrote: »

Britain is lass than 10% built on, over 90% is just fields.

That's the two islands, including roads and car parks etc..

If it just grew by another 10%, say leave it 80% fields and 20% bricks and mortar then that would solve the housing crisis. It will happen just give it time.

Some of that 90% should be left as parks and fields for farming, but we could go to 50% buildings and 50% fields.

Japan has about the same land mass as the UK but twice the population.

They still have about 90% of the land unused, so we should have a lot more room for increased population, but with the brexit, population will rise much slower

kathrynha

The-Joker wrote: »

Britain is lass than 10% built on, over 90% is just fields.

That's the two islands, including roads and car parks etc..

If it just grew by another 10%, say leave it 80% fields and 20% bricks and mortar then that would solve the housing crisis. It will happen just give it time.

That 90% includes rivers, lakes, beaches, mountains, steep hills, flood plains, etc.

How much of that 90% is actually suitable for building on?

Also a lot of it is a very long way from jobs. I wouldn't fancy commuting from the highlands where there is lots of space down to London.

Not sure what it's like in London, but in the areas I know, if they made better use of the 10%, and used all the brownfield sites they wouldn't need to build on any greenbelt.