Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery • Hacker News Board

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#31

Post by djmobley » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 8:13 AM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #22

djmobley wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't want to live in the London green belt? Let's lift the restrictions and see if that holds true, shall we? I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring as a result of the housing crisis, and the range of alternatives that would be considered an improvement for those people.

>People don't want to live in the London green belt? I'd rather live centrally. If height restrictions were eliminated and councils started building pretty much everybody who wanted to, could. The housing crisis was entirely a deliberate creation of both the Tories (and to an extent, New Labour). >I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring I think you're vastly overestima…

> I'd rather live centrally. If height restrictions were eliminated and councils started building pretty much everybody who wanted to, could.

High-rise buildings are a hugely inefficient use of land and energy. 5-6 storey mansion blocks would be the optimum.

But it is not height restrictions that preclude that kind of development in central London. The foremost problem is a lack of available land.

We could build millions and millions of houses in the green belt. In a country of ~20m homes, that will necessarily have a huge effect.

If we can break free of the notion of UK property as an ever-appreciating safe investment, we may also deter some speculators and crater prices entirely.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#32

Post by tsukikage » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 9:27 AM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #13

stupidcar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's this "we" you speak of? I guess it's Fuck-You-Got-Mine baby-boomer Tory brigade, who bought cheap suburban houses in the 1970s and 80s and have watched them rocket in value ever since. Because it certainly isn't the rest of us, who have no prospect of ever buying a home, or getting a pension, but are still expected to pay hundreds of thousands in taxes to subsidise over our lifetime the retirement of the aforem…

>are still expected to pay hundreds of thousands in taxes to subsidise over our lifetime the retirement of the aforementioned baby-boomers It's curious how the 0.1% can mysteriously grow fabulously wealthy, cut pensions that older people rely upon, cut NHS funding which older people rely upon, jack up tuition fees, jack up rail prices, trigger the largest financial crisis in decades, price younger people out of the h…

So, "why do we need green belts? My mansion has gardens!"

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#33

Post by crdoconnor » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 10:45 AM UTC

mrec wrote: post #29

crdoconnor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People don't want to live in the London green belt? I'd rather live centrally. If height restrictions were eliminated and councils started building pretty much everybody who wanted to, could. The housing crisis was entirely a deliberate creation of both the Tories (and to an extent, New Labour). >I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring I think you're vastly overestima…

> Corbyn's approach (let councils start building again) is a far more rational approach than this. Leaving aside the question of where the money and land comes from (both main parties have announced impressive housebuilding targets at the last few GEs, and nobody's even come close to hitting them), doesn't this run afoul of parliamentary sovereignty? If "no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot chan…

>Leaving aside the question of where the money and land comes

The money would come from "people's QE" and lifting the housing revenue account cap.

Building UP, as I mentioned before, is a better way of packing more people in than creating sprawling suburbs in the green belt. For a city its size London's density has been ridiculously restrained.

>both main parties have announced impressive housebuilding targets at the last few GEs, and nobody's even come close to hitting them

Neither Blair's government nor the Tories have ever had any intention of building council housing, instead setting targets for the private sector.

>If "no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change", then even if under the current government councils manage to build a zillion new homes, won't the next Osbornean Tory or Blairite Labour government just give them all away again as electoral bribes

Would you prefer people didn't have homes? Just say it if that's what you want.

>My gut feeling is that the #1 problem is excessive lending on housing and way too much tolerance for housing as a speculative investment.

The financialization of housing exacerbated the problems caused by the shortage of housing, they obviously didn't create them.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#34

Post by crdoconnor » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 10:55 AM UTC

djmobley wrote: post #31

crdoconnor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People don't want to live in the London green belt? I'd rather live centrally. If height restrictions were eliminated and councils started building pretty much everybody who wanted to, could. The housing crisis was entirely a deliberate creation of both the Tories (and to an extent, New Labour). >I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring I think you're vastly overestima…

> I'd rather live centrally. If height restrictions were eliminated and councils started building pretty much everybody who wanted to, could. High-rise buildings are a hugely inefficient use of land and energy. 5-6 storey mansion blocks would be the optimum. But it is not height restrictions that preclude that kind of development in central London. The foremost problem is a lack of available land. We could build mill…

>High-rise buildings are a hugely inefficient use of land and energy.

High rise buildings are MORE efficient, not less. The more dense the city, the more energy efficient it is: http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/04/why-bigger-cities-are-gr...

>But it is not height restrictions that preclude that kind of development in central London. The foremost problem is a lack of available land.

You just have to look at the number of people packed into a smaller area in Manhattan to see that that isn't true.

>We could build millions and millions of houses in the green belt.

You could also build millions of apartments inside it and then maybe people wouldn't have to live in Uxbridge and Barnet AND you wouldn't have to make air quality in London even worse.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#35

Post by crdoconnor » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 11:05 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #24

Paul_S wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work. If they have to live in a village 20 miles down the road they have to drive to work - longer distances equals more pollution. You want to breathe less fumes? Stop creating a false scarcity of houses in cycle-able distances. Hectares of barren grassland don't magically cleanse the fumes.

> If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work. You can already build in the city. In fact, New Labour put in subsidies and incentives to build multi-storey houses, which are probably still in place. So why don't developers just go and replace low-rise with high-rise? Because nobody really wants to live in flats in England if they can avoid it. It's a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with la…

>You can already build in the city. In fact, New Labour put in subsidies and incentives to build multi-storey houses, which are probably still in place. So why don't developers just go and replace low-rise with high-rise? Because nobody really wants to live in flats in England if they can avoid it. It's a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with land scarcity, it's probably a result of the failed '70s projects mixed with the hardcore individualism that emerged since then.

I live in London and this is just about the most ridiculous thing I've ever read about it.

You only have to look at the prices to see that people want to live here.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#36

Post by mrec » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 11:34 AM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #33

mrec wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corbyn's approach (let councils start building again) is a far more rational approach than this. Leaving aside the question of where the money and land comes from (both main parties have announced impressive housebuilding targets at the last few GEs, and nobody's even come close to hitting them), doesn't this run afoul of parliamentary sovereignty? If "no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot chan…

>Leaving aside the question of where the money and land comes The money would come from "people's QE" and lifting the housing revenue account cap. Building UP, as I mentioned before, is a better way of packing more people in than creating sprawling suburbs in the green belt. For a city its size London's density has been ridiculously restrained. >both main parties have announced impressive housebuilding targets at the…

> The money would come from "people's QE"

Oh, yet more printy printy. Wonderful.

> Would you prefer people didn't have homes? Just say it if that's what you want.

No, I wouldn't prefer that. I'd quite like an affordable home of my own at some point before I die, thank you very much. I believe social housing - free from the inflationary incentives of the PRS - has an important role to play in keeping the PRS honest, much like (AUIU) the NHS does a lot to keep the UK's private health sector honest compared to the situation in the US. But after the past few decades I don't trust uk.gov to treat social housing as an asset in the long term.

> The financialization of housing exacerbated the problems caused by the shortage of housing, they obviously didn't create them.

I don't think that's at all obvious. When some "investors" are buying houses and leaving them empty while they appreciate, that seems to demonstrate that this is at least as much a demand-side problem as a supply-side one. Where I live, new high-rise housing is going up everywhere you look, and prices for a 1-bed are still stuck at around 15x average earnings.

I know I sound negative. 20 years of watching this madness unfold will do that to you. I have a kneejerk suspicion of "just build on brownfield land" - it's the housing equivalent of "we'll improve services and reduce taxes by cutting red tape and reducing government waste" - sounds nice, doesn't frighten anyone, but if it were really that easy you'd think it would have actually happened the last 20 times someone said it.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#37

Post by toyg » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 11:43 AM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #35

toyg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you let people build in the city then they can cycle to work. You can already build in the city. In fact, New Labour put in subsidies and incentives to build multi-storey houses, which are probably still in place. So why don't developers just go and replace low-rise with high-rise? Because nobody really wants to live in flats in England if they can avoid it. It's a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with la…

>You can already build in the city. In fact, New Labour put in subsidies and incentives to build multi-storey houses, which are probably still in place. So why don't developers just go and replace low-rise with high-rise? Because nobody really wants to live in flats in England if they can avoid it. It's a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with land scarcity, it's probably a result of the failed '70s projects mi…

Yes, but only in London. Most of "urban Britain" elsewhere is still considered very much undesirable. Price dynamics outside London are extremely different.

This is the problem with housing policies in England: they are all designed around London and the South West, with little regard for the rest of the country.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#38

Post by lhopki01 » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 12:05 PM UTC

djmobley wrote: post #18

glomph wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. What we need is for money to be put into affordable housing on brownfield sites in and around the cities. People don't want to live miles away from anything. Why ruin undeveloped land when there is an abundance of land (and buildings) that sits unused. The reason is because the real estate companies don't want to lose out on profit by building affordable homes on high value land. If the government actually e…

People don't want to live in the London green belt? Let's lift the restrictions and see if that holds true, shall we? I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring as a result of the housing crisis, and the range of alternatives that would be considered an improvement for those people.

No I'm just realistic about what the private sector will do. If you look at the long running trend in house building since the second world war private companies have built roughly 200,000 units a year varying by about 50,000 units a year. Significantly this held true when the government also built 200,000 units a year and also when the government stopped building too. The private sector will only ever build for the top end of the market and never in the quantities actually needed to reduce house prices.

So yes if we opened up the green belt it would be built on but it wouldn't achieve anything to alleviate the housing crisis.

And before you say anything I am a late 20s person living in London without any hope of owning my own house.

Finally sprawl is a massive issue and encouraging sprawl over densification will only make the situation worse.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#39

Post by lhopki01 » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 12:10 PM UTC

mrec wrote: post #29

crdoconnor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People don't want to live in the London green belt? I'd rather live centrally. If height restrictions were eliminated and councils started building pretty much everybody who wanted to, could. The housing crisis was entirely a deliberate creation of both the Tories (and to an extent, New Labour). >I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring I think you're vastly overestima…

> Corbyn's approach (let councils start building again) is a far more rational approach than this. Leaving aside the question of where the money and land comes from (both main parties have announced impressive housebuilding targets at the last few GEs, and nobody's even come close to hitting them), doesn't this run afoul of parliamentary sovereignty? If "no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot chan…

> My gut feeling is that the #1 problem is excessive lending on housing and way too much tolerance for housing as a speculative investment.

Does this mean you think that supply is adequate and the only issue is that? We have been running a deficit of 200,000 units of housing a year for over 30 years. The shortfall has been made up, in London at least, by turning flat living rooms into bedrooms and splitting up housing into smaller and smaller units.

Also 200,000 units over 5 years is not impressive it's downright pathetic. We used to build 200,000 units of council housing a year as well as 200,000 units of private housing a year.

I don't care if a party gives away the housing as an electoral bribe down the line I just want the housing to be built now and continue to be built to keep house prices from ever going up.

Re: Britain’s delusions about the green belt cause untold misery

#40

Post by lhopki01 » Mon, Feb 13, 2017, 12:14 PM UTC

djmobley wrote: post #16

lhopki01 wrote: post #11

The utility of building on the green belt is questionable. The London green belt is so far away from the city center that you'd be better of living in Birmigham and taking the train than trying to get in from there. The UK's biggest issue that the government housing stopped being built in the early 1980s and the number of privately built housing never increased. There has been a deficit of 200,000 housing units a yea…

> The London green belt is so far away from the city center that you'd be better of living in Birmigham and taking the train than trying to get in from there. Utter nonsense. Vast swathes of the green belt around London are within walking -- or a short bus journey -- distance of rail stations providing very reasonable commute times into central London. You mention the failure of private builders to meet demand for ne…

> You mention the failure of private builders to meet demand for new houses. Why do you think that is?

No I don't think that's true. If you look at the number of privately built units of housing it has been remarkably consistent at about 200,000 units a year since the second world war. Now are you going to tell me that the regulatory regime has been the same the entire time?

I'd have more sympathy for your arguments if the biggest complaint from councils about new housing was that they give planning permissions and then developers just sit on the land and send in further speculative planning applications.