Guardian housing articles
November 22nd, 2011
UPDATE: – Jules Birch has written a much better article on this subject.
The Guardian has a couple of good articles on housing today with the usual range of comments from which I’m picking out a few. Rob Williams has been good enough to link to my pages on the Parker Morris tables which has pulled in a few hits.
How would you like to live in a hobbit home, Grant Shapps?
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/22/grant-shapps-new-build-homes
“They look, very much, like the slums of the future.”
Manterik
22 November 2011 9:44AM
The Housing Minister has not really forced these properties on us, they have not just suddenly appeared. So to blame Shapps for a largely inherited problem is rather disingenuous however I think your core point is a good one and Shapps is certainly the person who can do something about it and he should do. Problem is politicians, of all persuasions, seem to change their perspective when they get into power and are under the influence of various lobbying groups.
Councils like smaller properties as it can mean increases in revenue in council tax.
A lot of the new build flats I see in Newcastle, built over the last decade and very shiny and glossy at the time now have a tired look about them.
They look, very much, like the slums of the future.
I remember Birmingham council, a couple of years ago, looked at buying some flats in the Jewelry quarter for social housing when a developer was in trouble and they were rejected too.
Something does need to be done. Let us hope Shapps does the right thing. Don’t hold your breath.
22 November 2011 12:23PM
I agree with the Hobbit comment entirely, and it is not confined to London. I have looked seriously at buying in two new developments in the last 18 months (because they had deposit support schemes). I am glad that I did not.
When you view flats they are either empty or have two-thirds size show-flat furniture which fools you into thinking you could live there. I have since gone back to visit people I know who did buy in these schemes and their stories are not happy ones. The main issues are:
- rooms that are too small to live in e.g. no room for storage of any sort in the living room, a bedroom where the door cannot close if there is a bed in it, a kitchen with cupboards that will not take a frying pan
- no built in storage and no room for free standing unless to give up a bedroom for it
- no sound insulation so you can hear everything that goes on in the house – including the toilet!
- inadequate plumbing, so that it blocks frequently
- parking arrangements that seemed designed for neighbour conflict
- walls that need special fixings to hang anything
- walls that dent too easily – a nightmare for anyone with kids.
The problem is that people get too desperate to buy, so lower their standards and lose their common sense with every viewing. Rising rents is pushing people over the edge and allowing builders to sell anything.
That said, both developments are about a third empty, which causes its own problems. One friend feels very isolated at their end of the estate.
No Alcoves
22 November 2011 2:40PM
Never mind small houses. Where’s the storage space? No cupboards even for an ironing board or Hoover. Even my old nan’s two-up two-down had a ‘glory hole’, a cellar and alcoves with built in cupboards.
Now of course, with central heating, no alcoves even. The builders cite the cost of land. Well, I’d rather have less garden and more storage. Even my airing cupboard is only half-sized! Can’t afford anything bigger.
22 November 2011 2:46PM
Fancy asking Shapps, nice enough chap though he appears to be, to even dream of following in Nye Bevans footsteps!
Parker Morris only asked for 72 Sqm’s floor area and Nye’s earlier spacing of houses at 12 per acre at 98 Sqm with decent standards of construction has never been bettered. Harold Macmillan did build more houses but of cheaper and shoddier construction more crammed in together.
Maggie was merely continuing Tory housing policy of reductio ad disgraceful as seen in all parts of public service. Fair enough to the housebuilders of the eighties they paid the bribes, they got their way. Right-to-buy also may well see a renewal with Cameron bribing people in Shirley Porter style attempts at electoral corruption but it probably will not work as well this time.
I have no sympathy with home-owners who fall for the scam about to be perpetrated by cynical, slime-balls like this government, if they buy into it then tough. Whatever happens the poor will suffer and taxpayers who cannot fiddle the books will pay.
Cuts: the strange death of social housing
AndrewJB
22 November 2011 3:43PM
Build and rent out council houses.
Does anything more really need to be said?
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Today the 23rd I read a comment under a new article that appears at first sight to explain why housing benefit has reached the level it has.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2011/nov/22/housing-crisis-not-solved
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Then there’s Simon Jenkins well known fan of council housing writing in the Guardian on Tuesday
Only builders will profit from Cameron’s sub-prime homes
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/22/cameron-sub-prime-homes-kick-start
to which the venerable Bernard Crofton has pointed out that we are losing even so called “affordable” (unaffordable) housing if the present pattern continues.
24 November 2011 10:51AM
And by the way how about taking some notice of what’s actually happening in housing construction
New housing starts april to September 2011 are down to 1,746 from 18,527 in the same period last year.
No I haven’t missed out a digit, it is down to under two thousand from nearly twenty thousand in the same six months last year.“Affordable homes” made up only 454 (26% of the total), when last year it was 13,626 of the eighteen thousand (74%).
How come not a single journalist seems to have asked Cameron about these figures.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/22/cameron-sub-prime-homes-kick-start
“…the coalition government inherited a system in need of reform”.
The coalition (a Con. Gov nobody voted for) inherited back the mess THEY created in the late 70s / through their sell / not-invest / light-touch (no problem there then) 80s.
Back then William Waldegrave was TOLD REPEATEDLY his move to cut social housing grants / deregulate rents and let, as he said “Housing Benefit… take the strain” would mean an unstoppable exponential Housing Benefit bill rise forever into the future following his / their decision at that time.
If the monies Waldegrave wasted in that decision which massively inflated the Housing Benefit bill had gone into bricks & mortar instead of rents (as it had before Thatcher) we would not have the housing shortage we do now.
Chickens / home / roost.
But what does he care? Where is he now? Where do you think? House of Lords – comfy red seats… lovely.
Like ALL politicians they are in it for minutes / whatever wins the ‘game’ on that day / feather their nests and f* the rest / take a few cabinet notes for the book deals later – so the idea that Cameron has woken up to England’s housing crises is laughable: its just what he is being told to bark about this week.