Should suburban densification be part of the solution to the housing shortage?

GreatApe

stator wrote: »

We already have some of the smallest houses in europe.
Councils have already started knocking down decent houses and replacing them with twice as many matchbox houses with matchbox gardens and I think it's disgusting.
The answer is to build big houses in new estates. There is plenty of space to build, it's just politicians and middle class/rich folk stopping development.

I used to think that but now I believe that there simply isnt the demand/income to be able to afford large homes. A lot of the additional demand is going to be from single person households who probably could not afford nor want large 150 sqm homes. They will either need to be housed in HMOs (good quality ones) or small flats

On the surface it seems a large 150sqm house could be built for £225,000 at a cost of £1.5k/sqm but in reality costs are much higher. You will likely not have change out of £400,000 and in most parts of the country that is not affordable and the going price is below that so builders simply can not build much volume at those prices in much of the country

Personally I no longer believe there is a housing problem in the UK. Maybe a small one in inner London. We should probably build 200-250 thousand homes a year but trying for more is going to be very difficult. And even if achieved its primary outcome is going to be a lot more single person households not a lot more families.

I thin in some ways the UK market has solved the housing problem with the introduction of high quality HMOs. House across the road went from one old woman living in it to a very high spec HMO (man spent over £150k on the refurb) with 6 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms housing I believe 6 persons (perhaps more if some people have coupled up). That or build 6 x 1 bedroom flats. The HMO is cheaper quicker and even though no one likes them it seems to help with the housing problem

GreatApe

Loanranger wrote: »

In all this discussion no-one has yet mentioned the elephant in the room that every year the population of this country is growing by 500,000, 2016 figures according to the ONS.
So we do need to urgently provide housing units for these extra people many of whom are new borns.
I suspect that the original suggestion is a get rich quick scheme rather than a serious suggestion. After all, who would want to live in those nasty little bungalows with shared drives and no privacy from the two storey houses all around them?
But, the one thing we can all do is stop having so many children. This is an unpopular, almost taboo, subject because we have been brainwashed into believing that procreating is a human right. It is certainly a basic instinct but no more than that. It is irresponsible to have more than one child per couple, in my opinion.
In time this will help to reduce the strain on the earth's natural resources.

nonsense

Children are not the problem and we should be aiming for a 2.1 children per woman figure.
The idea of if only there were less humans the rats and cockroaches could be free to enjoy the earth is stupid. Humanity is far far more important than all of the other animals on this planet combined.

GreatApe

A large part of the problem is as follows

The inner London councils build far too many council homes, so much so that some areas like inner east London are still 60% social homes. The mass council house building programs meant there were so many council homes by the mid 1990s that the council would show you 3-4 houses and you would pick the one you wanted. Despite this there were still empty council homes and squatting too. So the inner London areas just took anyone from anywhere to fill the stock. This made inner London !!!!. 60% of the residents were poor many of them migrants who didn't speak English and had feral children. The natives were not much better. I recall many of my friends who broke cars and stole mopeds just for fun these were children age 10-15.

Fast forward a generation to today and much of the youth have left their mothers homes, so the council estate now with far fewer children and many more pensioners has calmed down and gotten safer and house prices rose a lot for it.

The problem however is that we now have about 180,000 council homes in just Hackney/Islington/Tower-Hamlets/Southwark who are mostly full of pensioners. They are living right next to the big employment hubs in London which are Westminster/city/docklands while a million people have to commute into an out of those employment hubs from much further away.


If you could remove these people to outside of London and replace them with people who work in the three big employment hubs you would solve the housing problem in London and much of the SE and make transport much better for everyone too.


And yes I am aware this is never going to happen, the tories suggested selling off the most expensive council homes as and when they become vacant....so it would take 50 years a very slow process but the right thing to do. That policy would effectively mean inner London would slowly sell off its social stock as the tenants died and they would be sold or rented out to workers who work in Z1 and live in Z2. It made sense yet the media and left wing were crying murder.

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

nonsense

Children are not the problem and we should be aiming for a 2.1 children per woman figure.
The idea of if only there were less humans the rats and cockroaches could be free to enjoy the earth is stupid. Humanity is far far more important than all of the other animals on this planet combined.

survival of humanity is more important then all other animals combined. however i would rather let an endangered animal live then a single human being (if you could only choose 1 to be alive).

boliston

GreatApe wrote: »

.....

If you could remove these people to outside of London and replace them with people who work in the three big employment hubs you would solve the housing problem in London and much of the SE and make transport much better for everyone too.....

So because someone is old and does not have a shed load of money they should be uprooted from their community just so rich younger people can take their place?

economic

boliston wrote: »

So because someone is old and does not have a shed load of money they should be uprooted from their community just so rich younger people can take their place?

no. people who do not need to live in Z1/2 for productivity (eg pensioners) should be moved further out. whilst people who are productive and are productive in Z1/2 should be able to live there.

GreatApe

boliston wrote: »

So because someone is old and does not have a shed load of money they should be uprooted from their community just so rich younger people can take their place?

Why does it have to be a negative.

I actually new one such woman who was moved from inner to outer London when the council demolished her block of flats. She was livid and horrid to the council and tried hard to protest for the flat not to be demolished and or to be rehoused very close. She told me years after the move it was the best thing to happen to her. The property was better and so was the area.

People just do not like change and just like you always equate it with a negative but it does not have to be a negative it can be a positive.

Rosemary7391

GreatApe wrote: »

I used to think that but now I believe that there simply isnt the demand/income to be able to afford large homes. A lot of the additional demand is going to be from single person households who probably could not afford nor want large 150 sqm homes. They will either need to be housed in HMOs (good quality ones) or small flats

Why assume that single people want to live stacked on top of each other? With people living alone for longer I'd say it's more likely that there would be a demand for 1 or 2 bedroom houses than flats. Who actually wants to live in a flat, all else being equal? They only do it because it's the only affordable option or the location outweighs the inconvenience. If employers weren't so crowded together, and/or encouraged working from home, people could space out more and I suspect be happier for it.

I do think the rush for ever more people, denser housing etc is a mistake. And getting rid of farmland is a mistake too - by all means make the land more productive, but having our own farmland increases the resilience of the country as a whole to adverse events.

boliston

economic wrote: »

no. people who do not need to live in Z1/2 for productivity (eg pensioners) should be moved further out. whilst people who are productive and are productive in Z1/2 should be able to live there.

I expect you probably want disabled people cleaned away from zone 1/2 as well yes?

GreatApe

boliston wrote: »

So because someone is old and does not have a shed load of money they should be uprooted from their community just so rich younger people can take their place?

There are two sides to the coin
Lets say we remove her, that is your negative.
On the other hand what is the positive?

Lets say we move in a couple from Luton who can now take a 30 min walk to work rather than a 70 mile return train trip. The couple pay the council £1k per month more than the old lady was paying

Over the course of a 45 year working life the positives are

1.6 million less miles on public transport making it less congested for everyone else

£540,000 more for the council who could use that huge sum to improve the council stock or build more council homes or cut council taxes.

The young couple get much more free time rather than travailing 2-3 hours a day they only do 1 hour a day.

Is all that really a lessor benefit than hurting the feelings of one old lady for a few weeks as she adjusted to a new area?