Lewisham Council are just about to give my brother and his wife £26000, TWENTY SIX GRAND... To give up the tenancy on their 4th floor 2 bed council flat in Sydenham. They have been there for over 25 years.
Can get a caravan in Dymchurch for that £26000
Or a 3-bed gaff in Plymouth.
Get away from London & SE plus a few odd towns then property is much more affordable around the country even allowing for salary variations.
This thread seems to me to look at everything from the wrong end of the telescope.
In my opinion the journey ought to start from the perspective of street sleepers, the homeless, those young people leaving the care system, and those on the minimum wage (working about a 40 hour week).
The reason I say this is because the thread title mentions housing.
My starting point would be legislation to not leave properties empty beyond a certain period of time, if that happens eye watering punitive taxation and council tax. Rent controls related to the minimum wage and square feet. Heavy fines on landlords who neglect the properties, and tax rises in order to build loads more local authority homes.
I imagine there are those who can quadrille around details, and tell me how wrong I am in this or that aspect, but if the discussion is about housing what suggestion do others have about homes for the poor and dispossessed and homeless?
Different people have different points of view, as they are entitled to - there isn't just 'one end of the telescope!
Why can't housing or having a home be binary? You have somewhere or you don't. I don't know the absolute direction of travel, but only four days ago this report from Barnado's suggested that 700.000 children don't have their own bed to sleep in, let alone secure housing.
Because it doesn't work as you think it should. It is very complex and not just about 'greedy' landlords
I have not once accused landlords of being greedy.
My thesis has been about what to do about getting people housed. For example my suggestion about rent ceilings related to earnings is not one about landlords being greedy, it is approaching things from a different starting point.
Maybe it is a bit like part of the philosophy behind squatting, where an empty space is seen as an opportunity to benefit people in need and squatters have (or had) rights.
Certainly in the short term I would try to investigate ways to quickly change the boarded up empty shops everywhere into places for people to live.
There is a very distasteful irony seeing a homeless person huddled on cardboard under a grubby duvet in the doorway of an empty shop.
Agreed about any homeless person huddled on cardboard - why are they not being housed though as the council will house them somewhere. Their issues run deeper
Been seeing this steadily increasing over the past year, we easily have 50-100 for any property coming up. For all the noise around rent levels etc, the real damage is going to be there simply won't be enough rental properties in certain areas to go around.
There was an interesting programme on BBC this week called Britain's Housing Crisis: What Went Wrong. Very worthwhile watching to see how politicians meddling has just caused more and more problems and not solved anything. Quite infuriating as well as informative.
Episode 1 this week and a conclusion next week, or on iPlayer
I’ve been saying all of this for at least 18 months. it’s broken on so many levels. The LHA is a joke in most areas, not enough social housing and BTL landlords literally running for the hills for numerous reasons.
unless there are drastic changes this is all going to get much much worse.
We have just found out that Anchorage House in Medway is being used by a London Housing authority to home their homeless. Medway has a colossal housing shortage for those on its own books, Medway has also born a large amount of immigration which has taken up housing yet are now expected to swallow this. Already it is next to impossible to get a GP appointment in Medway, Medway hospital is not somewhere you want to find yourself, ever. School class sizes are way too big because more kids attend the schools than there are buildings or teachers to accommodate. For what its worth Medway council and all the councillors have opposed it but I guarantee this will still go ahead and anyone who complains or takes issue with the anti-social elements that go with something like this will be dismissed as a bigot/gammon/racist delete as appropriate not to mention the impact on the businesses in a area of Medway that have taken it upon themselves to get together and try and improve an area of Chatham/Rochester that has been in decline for decades.
Medway are always under threat of having the last few pockets of green space concreted over "to ease the housing crisis" but thats just code for developers wanting to maximise return whilst doing the legal bare minimum for social housing or the laughable affordable housing by building 1200 dwellings in the genuinely beautiful Capstone Valley with the ambition of linking the whole area to Hempstead as one massive modern slum. As opposed to the massive patches of brownfield land, sites in need of development as that would involve a hit to their margin by paying more for things that won't turn a profit, like roads, joining up with utilities. Then we come full circle and ask where on this green earth do all of these people go for a GP appointment, a dentist, where do their kids go to school, all those additional vehicles on the roads in an area that is genuinely appalling for public transport to the point I could not rely on it to do a journey from where I live to Chatham town centre. Medway also is another authority that needs to find somewhere in the region of £17 million pounds to avoid declaring bankruptcy, so rock and a hard place. Developers have no intention of widening roads, paying for utility diversions, providing schools, doctor surgeries, public transport infrastructure, or even roads on their modern slum estates that can handle more than one vehicle per house or god forbid a ghastly liveried van which a lot of new build estates now won't allow to be parked there overnight.
If Starmer is serious he could make a massive difference by green lighting infrastructure projects which would then encourage the developers to build rather than sit on land they have purchased waiting for this to happen but at least that way the roads would have a chance of coping until our archaic public transport network gets out of the victorian age.
London Boroughs are also buying up a lot of accommodation in Maidstone and this has created a lot of problems with increasing anti-social behaviour in the town.
Far too many houses have been built on the southern side of Maidstone without the infrastructure to cope with all the extra traffic this has created. Most of the travel is north, towards the M20, through the town or other residential roads which are incapable of coping with the amount of traffic. New schools have been built on the north side of the town, so this has created even more traffic during the school run. Public transport is slow and park and ride schemes have been discontinued, so travelling through the Maidstone area is very slow and getting worse.
The Lidsing 'Garden' village development is in the Maidstone Borough Council area, but is adjacent to Lordswood and Hempstead in Medway and so will add to the pressure on Medway's services. It is also adjacent to the Norths Downs Area of Outstanding National Beauty.
We do need more housing, but the infrastructure MUST be built at the same time, on too many occasions any infrastructure improvements are quietly dropped when planning permission is granted.
With an ever increasing population the problem will only get worse. It's easy to say build more schools, hospitals, doctors surgeries, roads etc. Plus improvements to public transport but all of this takes time and money. There is no simple answer.
With an ever increasing population the problem will only get worse. It's easy to say build more schools, hospitals, doctors surgeries, roads etc. Plus improvements to public transport but all of this takes time and money. There is no simple answer.
If you look at housing statistics there is ample housing stock (currently), the issue lies where people want to live (due to available work etc). Unfortunately that is getting worse as Landlords sell up in their droves, the lack of rental stock in those areas is already a big issue and continuing to get worse along with rent levels.
We've just refurbished a house in Dartford, nothing special, 2/3 bed terraced 1900's house (all be it like new inside, new windows, kitchen, bathroom, heating, plastering, flooring etc), we've had over 100 applicants and it didn't even go on the internet, just the window of the estate agents and their waiting list.
There are currently only 60 properties (of all shapes and sizes) advertised on Rightmove in a town the size of Dartford.
If I look down in Southsea where I used to have a BTL, Naval maisonettes where almost all of them were BTL's, in the past 18 months at least 40 of them have been for sale.
It feels to me that there needs to be a lot of investment away from the SE, probably all new towns built for the future but that's only any good if there is work in those areas and the infrastructure built.
Any future government needs a long term plan and an awful lot of investment.
With an ever increasing population the problem will only get worse. It's easy to say build more schools, hospitals, doctors surgeries, roads etc. Plus improvements to public transport but all of this takes time and money. There is no simple answer.
If you look at housing statistics there is ample housing stock (currently), the issue lies where people want to live (due to available work etc). Unfortunately that is getting worse as Landlords sell up in their droves, the lack of rental stock in those areas is already a big issue and continuing to get worse along with rent levels.
We've just refurbished a house in Dartford, nothing special, 2/3 bed terraced 1900's house (all be it like new inside, new windows, kitchen, bathroom, heating, plastering, flooring etc), we've had over 100 applicants and it didn't even go on the internet, just the window of the estate agents and their waiting list.
There are currently only 60 properties (of all shapes and sizes) advertised on Rightmove in a town the size of Dartford.
If I look down in Southsea where I used to have a BTL, Naval maisonettes where almost all of them were BTL's, in the past 18 months at least 40 of them have been for sale.
It feels to me that there needs to be a lot of investment away from the SE, probably all new towns built for the future but that's only any good if there is work in those areas and the infrastructure built.
Any future government needs a long term plan and an awful lot of investment.
I probably said in one of the covid threads tons of office workers capable of working unsupervised could have been given the opportunity to move to places that don't feel like a hamster wheel every morning.
I get that big infrastructure comes with a fat price tag but it pays for itself very quickly and enables social mobility.
Some places I've worked when working away for my employers I've looked at and thought "yeah, I could live here" but the reality is my wife wouldn't necessarily walk into a job there, coupled with how far we'd be from Charlton and our families I know its probably not going to happen. I have also worked in places that are shitholes in the truest sense
One thing I do know is we are actively looking to get out of Medway, if that development on Capstone Valley and Lidsing gets the green light we are gone. There is positive investment but the sucker is so few of the new properties, flats whatever are not taken up by people already living in Medway. The police have given up arresting and dealing with shoplifting, antisocial behaviour, foot patrols. Medway hospital is a truly harrowing experience if you are unlucky enough to be admitted there.
Comments
Renting: Average home now has 25 tenants wanting to view
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67006468
Been seeing this steadily increasing over the past year, we easily have 50-100 for any property coming up. For all the noise around rent levels etc, the real damage is going to be there simply won't be enough rental properties in certain areas to go around.
Episode 1 this week and a conclusion next week, or on iPlayer
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001rkn5/britains-housing-crisis-what-went-wrong
it’s broken on so many levels. The LHA is a joke in most areas, not enough social housing and BTL landlords literally running for the hills for numerous reasons.
unless there are drastic changes this is all going to get much much worse.
Medway are always under threat of having the last few pockets of green space concreted over "to ease the housing crisis" but thats just code for developers wanting to maximise return whilst doing the legal bare minimum for social housing or the laughable affordable housing by building 1200 dwellings in the genuinely beautiful Capstone Valley with the ambition of linking the whole area to Hempstead as one massive modern slum. As opposed to the massive patches of brownfield land, sites in need of development as that would involve a hit to their margin by paying more for things that won't turn a profit, like roads, joining up with utilities. Then we come full circle and ask where on this green earth do all of these people go for a GP appointment, a dentist, where do their kids go to school, all those additional vehicles on the roads in an area that is genuinely appalling for public transport to the point I could not rely on it to do a journey from where I live to Chatham town centre. Medway also is another authority that needs to find somewhere in the region of £17 million pounds to avoid declaring bankruptcy, so rock and a hard place. Developers have no intention of widening roads, paying for utility diversions, providing schools, doctor surgeries, public transport infrastructure, or even roads on their modern slum estates that can handle more than one vehicle per house or god forbid a ghastly liveried van which a lot of new build estates now won't allow to be parked there overnight.
If Starmer is serious he could make a massive difference by green lighting infrastructure projects which would then encourage the developers to build rather than sit on land they have purchased waiting for this to happen but at least that way the roads would have a chance of coping until our archaic public transport network gets out of the victorian age.
Far too many houses have been built on the southern side of Maidstone without the infrastructure to cope with all the extra traffic this has created. Most of the travel is north, towards the M20, through the town or other residential roads which are incapable of coping with the amount of traffic. New schools have been built on the north side of the town, so this has created even more traffic during the school run. Public transport is slow and park and ride schemes have been discontinued, so travelling through the Maidstone area is very slow and getting worse.
The Lidsing 'Garden' village development is in the Maidstone Borough Council area, but is adjacent to Lordswood and Hempstead in Medway and so will add to the pressure on Medway's services. It is also adjacent to the Norths Downs Area of Outstanding National Beauty.
We do need more housing, but the infrastructure MUST be built at the same time, on too many occasions any infrastructure improvements are quietly dropped when planning permission is granted.
It's easy to say build more schools, hospitals, doctors surgeries, roads etc.
Plus improvements to public transport but all of this takes time and money.
There is no simple answer.
We've just refurbished a house in Dartford, nothing special, 2/3 bed terraced 1900's house (all be it like new inside, new windows, kitchen, bathroom, heating, plastering, flooring etc), we've had over 100 applicants and it didn't even go on the internet, just the window of the estate agents and their waiting list.
There are currently only 60 properties (of all shapes and sizes) advertised on Rightmove in a town the size of Dartford.
If I look down in Southsea where I used to have a BTL, Naval maisonettes where almost all of them were BTL's, in the past 18 months at least 40 of them have been for sale.
It feels to me that there needs to be a lot of investment away from the SE, probably all new towns built for the future but that's only any good if there is work in those areas and the infrastructure built.
Any future government needs a long term plan and an awful lot of investment.
I get that big infrastructure comes with a fat price tag but it pays for itself very quickly and enables social mobility.
Some places I've worked when working away for my employers I've looked at and thought "yeah, I could live here" but the reality is my wife wouldn't necessarily walk into a job there, coupled with how far we'd be from Charlton and our families I know its probably not going to happen. I have also worked in places that are shitholes in the truest sense
One thing I do know is we are actively looking to get out of Medway, if that development on Capstone Valley and Lidsing gets the green light we are gone. There is positive investment but the sucker is so few of the new properties, flats whatever are not taken up by people already living in Medway. The police have given up arresting and dealing with shoplifting, antisocial behaviour, foot patrols. Medway hospital is a truly harrowing experience if you are unlucky enough to be admitted there.