Vocal Voices

Or "ghettoisation" as a new report funded by Legal and General prefers to call it.

Apparently the young and young families are slumming it in expensive inner city rented accommodation whilst my generation lives it up in the leafy suburbs. So the cry goes out "build more houses".

OK, let us build more houses, but let us make 90% of them starter homes for genuine 'first time' buyers and not 'buy to let' properties for private landlords. If they have to be rented put them in the hands of councils and housing associations and cap the rents.

Then, whilst we are in this house building frenzy, we have to do what these reports never mention and that is stabilise the size of the population. We cannot go on building houses forever, so at some time we are going to have to grab the bull's horns. We either do it soon or we wait for the inevitable collapse of society as we know it. I know which option I would go for even if it is not the politically correct one.

Workingman wrote:OK, let us build more houses, but let us make 90% of them starter homes for genuine 'first time' buyers and not 'buy to let' properties for private landlords. If they have to be rented put them in the hands of councils and housing associations and cap the rents.

Then, whilst we are in this house building frenzy, we have to do what these reports never mention and that is stabilise the size of the population.

Agree 100%. Most of the houses being built seem to be three or four bed detached houses. What wrong with building some terraces, or low rise flats?

And yes, we can't keep on taking a net influx of 300,000 every year. It wouldn't be so bad if brownfield sites were used as first option, but they just keep on concreting over fields as the first option, and I hate that.

I was saying almost exactly this earlier today, when Mick and I drove past some new housing - I'll bet it will be all families already on the housing ladder or buy to let!