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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#261

Post by parthdesai »

prottog wrote: post #177
parthdesai wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least in North America, younger people don't want to live in soulless suburbs where there's literally nothing to do apart from visiting the same big box stores, chain restaurants and bars in exactly same looking plaza.

Real estate isn't immune to the law of supply and demand, which mandate that you can only pick at most two out of size (or quality) of the housing unit, location (and the quality thereof), and price. Most places in the US are either affordable and boring or the other way around. > soulless suburbs where there's literally nothing This is a bit of a reductionist take on those younger people's part. You can have just as…

> This is a bit of a reductionist take on those younger people's part. You can have just as much fun at the TGI Friday's at your local strip mall as you can at the hippest restaurant no one else has ever heard of in Brooklyn.

I'm one of those younger people. The main difference here is, "the hip" restaurant in Brooklyn will have vastly different food than a hip restaurant in SF. Can't say that about TGIFs

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#262

Post by dionidium »

bluescrn wrote: post #21
jamespo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The graphs in the article indicate there aren't loads of houses being built.

Depends on the definition of 'loads'. For residents of small to medium sized towns and villages (where there's plenty of land available), the rapid sprawl and worstening traffic is incredibly visible.

If your definition of "loads" is based entirely on whether you're being personally impacted, divorced from the broader context, then even small amounts of housing construction can seem like a lot. If one house goes up on my block it might be disruptive enough to make me think there's a lot of construction going on.

But by no objective measure is the UK building "loads" of housing.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#263

Post by ClumsyPilot »

robertlagrant wrote: post #10
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

Note: I originally said Britain built 30k houses last year, which commenters have corrected. Thank you! I don't really understand all this. Surely the main reason for a lack of housing is the difference between house demand (e.g. Britain took in 606k people in net immigration last year) compared to house supply (Britain built I think around 200k houses last year). The state shouldn't need to build houses (in fact it…

> The state shouldn't need to build houses

What is the basis for this belief?

Every country that got people out of poverty, India, China and Singapore, has a massive state housing program. They work. We have results.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#264

Post by parthdesai »

nervousvarun wrote: post #205
parthdesai wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least in North America, younger people don't want to live in soulless suburbs where there's literally nothing to do apart from visiting the same big box stores, chain restaurants and bars in exactly same looking plaza.

Until they get married/have kids and do the same thing their parents and their parent's parents did...move to the suburbs. One difference with "younger" kids now is they're getting married later...but once you have kids the suburbs look completely different and it's been that way for as long as there have been suburbs.

This often comes up, and I'm genuinely curious, is space really that much more important when it comes to kids? I grew up in an apartment sharing a bedroom with my sister, and tons and tons of kids grow up in an apartment all over the world; all the older European cities, Asian cities (Mumbai, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc).

Netherlands has the happiest kids in the world, where in Amsterdam a lot of kids would be growing up in an apartment. The flip side is, they get their freedom where they can go to places without needing their parents to drive them everywhere.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#265

Post by tmnvix »

alistairSH wrote: post #257
lmm wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners". > Sounds like democracy? Young people might get their first chance to vote at age 23 - assuming they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats to get the mythical free ID. And if they manage to get off work on election day. Meanwhile the elderly are reliably on the register (because t…

Does the UK not have any equivalent of the US “motor voter” system? When we update our info at the department of motor vehicles, there’s a checkbox on the form to automatically register to vote. So getting on the register is mostly automatic once you have the paperwork in order to get a driver’s license (which is a necessity to function as an adult in most of the US).

I would guess that few countries have the type of situation that exists in the US where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life.

Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. It can be prohibitively expensive when you consider the costs of lessons, a vehicle, and of the licence itself.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#266

Post by ClumsyPilot »

robertlagrant wrote: post #142
Jochim wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Space is limited by regulation and zoning. 90% of the UK is rural. Market rates are high because of the supply not matching the demand, or being allowed to match it. This does not square with the fact that private builders are leaving nearly half of approved developments unbuilt. It's almost like private builders are incentivised to squeeze the market rather than bring prices down. > The same number of people would…

> It's almost like private builders are incentivised to squeeze the market rather than bring prices down. Yes - incentivised by government regulations to do so, and moreover too disincentivised to build. If you can't make money by building, it's better to wait. No builder wants to stop building - money now is much better than money in the future - but enough government and local intervention will cause this. The hous…

> No builder wants to stop building - money now is much better than money in the future

This is plainly false in every way. Firstly, buildijg is an expense - why would you build now if you can put off the expense? Seocndly, market manipulation is as old as markets themselves.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#267

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Jochim wrote: post #102
tsukikage wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a limited amount of space So build denser, taller housing. We sprawl massively compared to developments on the continent. > a non-negligible portion of society are unable to afford market rates If we increase supply, market rates will fall. That's how markets work. Therein lies the real problem, of course: real estate investors with existing holdings don't want the rates to fall, and they have influence ove…

> To be clear, the failure was not in the act of selling itself, but in the decision to not reinvest the proceeds into new housing stock. This is the part that made the housing problem worse instead of better. The kind of mass sell-off that occurred could only be considered a massive failure. Selling individual properties at market value when the intention is to reinvest that money is clearly without objection. But t…

water companies have build Zero new water reservoirs in the entire 50 years of their existance. In 10 yeats London will start running out of water and we will have to bail them out like we bailed out the banks.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#268

Post by throwaway2037 »

prottog wrote: post #177
parthdesai wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least in North America, younger people don't want to live in soulless suburbs where there's literally nothing to do apart from visiting the same big box stores, chain restaurants and bars in exactly same looking plaza.

Real estate isn't immune to the law of supply and demand, which mandate that you can only pick at most two out of size (or quality) of the housing unit, location (and the quality thereof), and price. Most places in the US are either affordable and boring or the other way around. > soulless suburbs where there's literally nothing This is a bit of a reductionist take on those younger people's part. You can have just as…

    Most places in the US are either affordable and boring or the other way around.
This isn't saying much. Isn't this true in all highly developed countries?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#269

Post by throwaway894345 »

asdff wrote: post #181
throwaway894345 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> less blind forces, more "well, what would you do in their situation": the people who first paid money for a given square of land were also the first to try to convince someone else to pay them more for that same land It seems a bit silly to argue that increasing land prices is principally a result of marketing. The amount of earth on the planet in the last 10k years essentially hasn't changed but the number of huma…

The thing is, we used to respond to such growth easily in a way that prevented land prices from being so out of reach for average workers. Here is the population of Los Angeles over the years: 1850 1,610 — 1860 4,385 172.4% 1870 5,728 30.6% 1880 11,183 95.2% 1890 50,395 350.6% 1900 102,479 103.4% 1910 319,198 211.5% 1920 576,673 80.7% 1930 1,238,048 114.7% 1940 1,504,277 21.5% 1950 1,970,358 31.0% 1960 2,479,015 25.8…

Sure, I was remarking narrowly about the “forces vs marketing” claims. I don’t have a position on land prices have adapted with population growth (although I’m not sure looking narrowly at a single city is particularly compelling).

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#270

Post by throwaway2037 »

tmnvix wrote: post #265
alistairSH wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the UK not have any equivalent of the US “motor voter” system? When we update our info at the department of motor vehicles, there’s a checkbox on the form to automatically register to vote. So getting on the register is mostly automatic once you have the paperwork in order to get a driver’s license (which is a necessity to function as an adult in most of the US).

I would guess that few countries have the type of situation that exists in the US where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life. Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. It can be prohibitively expensive when you consider the costs of lessons, a vehicle, and of the licence itself.

    Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence.
Eh. "Many" is such a vague term. Like, 5% could be considered many. UK is a driving country, period.

    where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life.
This is true in all highly developed countries if you live outside the largest cities. You need to drive. It is baked in the cost of your life. Renting is much cheaper outside of the city, but somewhat offset by the cost of driving.
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