Need of affordable houses
There should be a property-owning democracy. Soaring house values are creating problems. Owing to this there are destitute people
who are seeking asylum, and the young homeless. The reasons for their plight
are often complex but the headline explanation is simple: social housing is
scarce and getting scarcer; rents in the private sector are rising; and housing
benefit is falling.
The government makes bold promises on new affordable homes to buy. But
what’s needed is homes that people can afford to rent.
House prices boomed during the 13 years. In the past a reasonable salary
would get you a property. It is a vicious circle - more people leads to more
strain on our housing, transport and education resulting in more people being
required to work in these sectors.
It is simply too many people for too few houses. Yes, it is true that one
should care about the
environment not to concrete over the country to build more and more homes. It's
not too few homes; it is too many people.
If there was will to fix this issue, it could be sorted, it would do
wonders for our economy too. Lack of affordable housing is a national disgrace
and a kick in the face to those that we expect to manage our future well-being.
The nature of things is that we get along as friends where possible, the future
being as unpredictable as it is makes being civilised and respectful as good as
any insurance policy. "Affordable" is what it is, it is not free,
people will still have to participate within the economy and pay their way.
Facilitate them to do so.
Landlords should get interest free loans to change expand their
properties into lofts to create an extra floor - as long as they put an
external fire escape on. The government’s policies on housing are nothing but
another sly austerity measure, and deliberately planned creator of large
numbers of suicides and homeless people.
The accepted model is a vibrant
world city with a constantly mobile population. Plenty of people rent long-term and wish to continue to do so. What is
the problem in that? Why such opposition to established communities? As it
stands the policy trend has been to favour homelessness over housing.
A measure which would both improve social justice and save enormous sums
in welfare payments would be to legislate for rent control, thus enabling
thousands of people to rent homes at rents they could genuinely afford and also
end a system whereby the state subsidises private landlords who make a killing
out of renting out homes which are paid for (entirely or in part) by benefits. The
government must also use a big part of the taxes to build new social housing.
All good but development costs are sometimes double the cost of the
proceeds from the property sold. This is because of the cost of land to build
on, costs associated with infrastructure & planning, and all this before a
single shovel goes in the ground.
Right to aspire to own a property must be extended and maintained for all
our citizens able to do so. The house affordability issue is peculiar where
customers exceed supply forcing and maintaining high prices.
There are two solutions that need to be operated. Building decent not
'executive' homes of three and four bedrooms until supply exceeds demand when
prices will adjust downwards or will level and to continue building to end the
exponential annual increases in land and property prices. This must be done by
large developers, housing associations, local authorities, the refinancing of
smaller independent house builders and accessibility to low cost land for self
build groups and individuals.
Not everyone wants to own their own homes. There are plenty who'd prefer
to rent, a bit like those who never want to own their car preferring to leave
maintenance worry etc. to the manufacturer. Too many people chasing housing. Is
it because of too much migration? How on earth can you tackle the problem? How
many houses, schools, hospitals need to be built just to deal with an annual
influx of a new major city?
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