Single Aspect Blog

I have rarely heard so much truth about the present housing situation spoken in so few words, in one place.  I wasn’t there but transcribed this from the Guardian video.

The housing crisis is personal to me because the first job I had after University was to work in a day centre for homeless and vulnerable young people sort of 16 to 21, and I’m still the chairman of the project now, 40 years on.

There’s far more sleeping in doorways in London and in Manchester and in Birmingham than I can remember, we’re back somewhere in the late 1960s.

The problem is that all provision for people rests upon them being housed. Once they’re not housed, then access to healthcare, mental health care in particular, but all sorts of other services, benefits even, particularly if you’re very young, sort of fall apart.

The ability to buy your council house or buy any other public housing, and it not being renewed, has caused the crisis that we’re in. Now we’re talking about the building of 100,000 units, well the problem is, we need two million.

In a sense we need to regard ourselves as being at the end of a third world war, and having to rebuild on that basis, and that will involve lots of painful decisions about building on, certainly brownfield sites and maybe some greenfield sites.

You know, there was a big push, in the very early days, sort of 40 years ago, to try and build some more council housing, and then because of the sell off of council housing there was then a very serious dip, and to be honest the dip has gone on dipping.

You could save a lot of money by building a lot of houses.   That in the end is the key message.  You save money, by building houses.

https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2012/mar/30/jon-snow-houses-video

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/home/snow-storm-18433

Old link

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/snow-storm/6508427.article