More, more and more houses.....

[Workingman]

How Many? Well according to Communities Minister Sajid Javid it is something between 275,000 - 300,000 a year in England alone. To put that into perspective both figures are greater than the housing stock of Sheffield.

For how many years will this need to be kept up? Err, good question.

What type of households? Affordable ones, absolutely, of course, definitely.

What are affordable homes? Oh, you know, houses that people can afford. Doh!

How will their building be paid for? Borrowing, that's how.

Where will the land to build them on come from? Brownfield sites, or maybe greenfield sites, or perhaps the land faeries will magic some up from all the Unicorn droppings. Poof! and there was land.

It's frightening.

[TheOstrich]

I think they have to do something about the housing situation, because it can't be denied the demand for affordable housing is there. The key word is affordable, though. The cartel of big house-building companies need looking at - they sit on land which increases in value and then eventually build poor-quality up-market houses to sell at inflated values, or in inner city areas poor-quality up-market apartments, at just the right number to maximise their income.

I wonder if there isn't a case for a publically run and Government controlled national housebuilding initiative. It's hardly rocket science but capitalism always wins the day. Plus ca change - this from Hansard, 1985:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lord ... orporation

[Workingman]

Can't argue with that, Ossie, land banks do exist and private building companies do build for profit. I would go for 'use them or lose them' as a prompt... I also agree with some form of National House Building Council. There are things in life where the government has to take the lead and national housing stock should be one of them. A good start would be to allow local councils to start building social housing again, but on brownfield sites within their boundaries.

Another thing to be looked at is the number of vacant dwellings up and down the country. Estimates vary, depending upon the leanings of the researchers, at anything between 200,000 and 1.4 million of them. I would also look at empty spaces above shops. There are plenty of them knocking about. Maybe some sort of low or no interest loans to allow for conversions would help - there are rents to be had once they are done.

[cromwell]

I could cry about this. If you let 250,000 nett into the country every year, too damn right you are going to need lots of houses.
So why are we letting 250,000 plus in every year? Because big business makes big money out of a bigger population.
So we destroy much of what makes England England. Beautiful countryside, habitat for wildlife, peaceful villages, all ruined forever by greed.
This country is being ruined; we are already the most crowded country on Europe and we are going to end up like a bigger version of Hong Kong.
Dirty, overcrowded, noisy and hellish. And all because of greed.

[Kaz]

We need more social housing. Rentable, decent, regulated and not in the hands of private landlords.

[Workingman]

We need more social housing. Rentable, decent, regulated and not in the hands of private landlords.

Exactly!

I can only speak for Leeds but I bet most former industrial cities, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham etc. are much the same. The city centre is thriving yet all around it there are former factory sites and obsolete light industrial units sitting there covered in bushes, shrubs and weeds doing nothing. Well I say nothing, they are more like fly-tipping central. The thing is that all major utilities are already there if only there was the will...

The other side of the coin is that I live right on the edge, on the A660. Bramhope lies just a few kilometres away and at its end there are approved strip developments for 319 and 425 homes, respectively. At my end we have seen some 180 of these over the last two years. The homes? Three, four and five bed detached houses all at eye watering prices. Go figure.

[Suff]

In fact we need a change to the act which forced the sale of council houses to ensure that no council house can be sold off to a tenant until it has earned the current build price in rent, also that the sale price will go to the council "exclusively" for new property builds. In that way Councils will recoup their investment and make some more out of selling them which will go back into new housing stock.

That, to me, makes sense. Maggie may have started the ball rolling and created the situation. But Blair and Brown took a situation in need of attention and applied rocket propelled idiocy to it.

[AliasAggers]

I could cry about this. If you let 250,000 nett into the country every year, too damn right you are going to need lots of houses.
So why are we letting 250,000 plus in every year? Because big business makes big money out of a bigger population.
So we destroy much of what makes England England. Beautiful countryside, habitat for wildlife, peaceful villages, all ruined forever by greed.
This country is being ruined; we are already the most crowded country on Europe and we are going to end up like a bigger version of Hong Kong.
Dirty, overcrowded, noisy and hellish. And all because of greed.

I quite agree, Cromwell. Those are my views exactly.

[cromwell]

We need more social housing. Rentable, decent, regulated and not in the hands of private landlords.

Exactly!

I can only speak for Leeds but I bet most former industrial cities, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham etc. are much the same. The city centre is thriving yet all around it there are former factory sites and obsolete light industrial units sitting there covered in bushes, shrubs and weeds doing nothing. Well I say nothing, they are more like fly-tipping central. The thing is that all major utilities are already there if only there was the will...

The other side of the coin is that I live right on the edge, on the A660. Bramhope lies just a few kilometres away and at its end there are approved strip developments for 319 and 425 homes, respectively. At my end we have seen some 180 of these over the last two years. The homes? Three, four and five bed detached houses all at eye watering prices. Go figure.

Well, this is certainly part of it. Liverpool in 2014 had a population of 467,000. In 1931 it was 856,00, in 1961 747,000. The population has dropped, there is room for houses.
http://www.demographia.com/db-ukcities.htm

There are a lot of derelict properties in Liverpool, a lot of ex-industrial units standing empty. So you could build houses in Liverpool, or Leeds, or Middlesboro. But it's not happening. Maybe because people want to go where the jobs are, where there is a reason to go.

What is happening is that especially in Kaz's part of the world, people are tacking on large numbers of houses at the edge of nice areas and charging eye-watering prices for them.

[AliasAggers]

I think there should be more Council Houses.

That would solve a lot of problems.