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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#341

Post by brnt »

bluescrn wrote: post #2

There's loads of houses being built in the UK (often of questionable quality, built for maximum profit, packed into minimal amounts of space). It may still not be enough to match the demand, but the real problem is we don't seem to be building any infrastructure to support these homes. More people and more homes requires more roads, railways, hospitals, police stations, power stations, sewer capacity, even reservoirs…

UK's housing stock is the oldest in Europe [1], so the rate of new construction is definitely not high enough to be able to say there's loads of new construction. Compared to demand, and compared to total housing stock.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/02e104fa-5959-4723-8da0-7b2b072b6...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#342

Post by steve_gh »

asdff wrote: post #161
lll-o-lll wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the whole western world at the same time. The same policies, the same social outcomes. It makes me question whether there is any real democracy; did we all just happen to make the exact same decisions in lock step since the 70s by incredible coincidence? And it’s not as if the eventual negative outcomes of housing costs continually outstripping wage growth weren’t obvious and growing year on year. Who is actuall…

In all these systems where "the world over" we have the same end result, what do we have in common? Shareholders, for profit companies, consultancies, an entire sector of the economy is just consultancies. Its death by a thousand cuts set up by the incentives. You don't know what the hell you are doing, so hey lets act like you do by bringing in a consultancy who does know what they are doing because that's their job…

Disclosure: I am a very senior data science consultant in an infrastructure management consultancy

Consultancy can be a good thing - or a bad thing, depending on which consultants are brought in, and why.

It is one of the oldest tropes that consultants are brought in to tell people what they already know - and there is some truth in it. But when it comes down to it, consultants are asked to do this job because they are external - and they can tell truth to power without being seen as having an internal political agenda.

As consultants, we are brought in by clients to provide skills that they don't have in house. There tend to be two reasons for this. Either they want us for a short period to do a specific task which wouldn't be worth them recruiting for, or they are looking for a longer term relationship - in which case we can offer them access to a wider pool of talent than they would get by recruiting in.

Finally, I have worked with a great number of talented folks at all stages of their careers. Almost without exception, every one of them has been passionate about their work, and determined to do the best job possible for the clients. And a number of them have left us to work directly for clients.

[edited for typos]

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#343

Post by pcdevils »

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…

Thatcher was a disease we've never recovered from. Shit, just look at water privatisation... Going sooo well. Or the utilities that have left us privatising profits and socialising losses

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#344

Post by ExoticPearTree »

danem wrote: post #259
lucideer wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you arguing that zoning, red-tape, and generally anti-development politicians and voters aren't the fundamental problem here? Minus the leading language (as I presume these so-called "anti-development" politicians don't self-define as such), yes, this is what I'm arguing. > Do you think voters who fight relentlessly to block development feel differently about public housing? I believe the tales of such voters a…

> I believe the tales of such voters are highly overstated, a really common red-herring used by advocates of private developer subsidy to deflect criticism. I'm not familiar with Ireland or the UK, but for the US at least, this is absolutely false. I'm most familiar with San Francisco so let's look at that as an example. Why do you think it takes nearly 2 years to get permitting done for housing here? Why do you thin…

> Hell, why do you think California literally has an amendment to their constitution (article 34) prohibiting the construction of low-income housing without explicit approval from local residents? These aren't the demands of private developers, but the demands of influential neighborhood associations, unions (SEIU, CBTC, etc), and average homeowners who like their neighborhood as it is and don't want it to change.

I may get downvoted for this, but if I were to live in a nice neighborhood with a nice view I will be damned if I would say yes to any construction that I see it could ruin my neighborhood or take my view away. Yes, NIMBY attitude, but a lot of people desire to live in nice places.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#345

Post by [deleted] »

mmarq wrote: post #334
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theresa May tried to sell this as part of her election campaign. It was a disaster. No one wants to be forced to give up some of their personal wealth to pay more for an NHS they've already paid into. That may not be fair, but when most voters are property owners you're not going to get a different outcome. This is an interesting topic because it highlights how the political and economic culture is broken and incapab…

> Theresa May tried to sell this as part of her election campaign. It was a disaster. No one wants to be forced to give up some of their personal wealth to pay more for an NHS they've already paid into. It's not as simple as "give up some of their personal wealth to pay more for an NHS they've already paid into". If you have 20K in your bank account and no property, you have to pay for your care. If you own 2 flats w…

[deleted]

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#346

Post by esskay »

danjac wrote: post #26

This is an interesting political trap for the ruling Conservatives that they have made for themselves. The traditional Conservative voter is a home-owner. So you might be a rabid socialist in your youth, but once you get a job, save up for a deposit, and buy your own home, you eventually transition to become yet another middle-aged Tory voter. That pipeline is now broken - young people are unable to save up for their…

> The traditional Conservative voter is a home-owner. So you might be a rabid socialist in your youth, but once you get a job, save up for a deposit, and buy your own home, you eventually transition to become yet another middle-aged Tory voter.

I think we're seeing that trend break now. Even those that can afford to buy (I count myself as one of those lucky folks, although the costs have been astronomical) I dont think the Millenial generation aren likely to switch to being Tory's, at least not to the same degree as previous generations.

Unlike previous generations where once you had your home you were 'done' Millenials have by far and wide had a worse deal, and will spend most of their lives struggling.

It's not lost on me or my peers that we as a group will struggle as we get older, with retirement age likely being in the late 70s by the time we get there, and the pension pot being significantly lower than previous generations.

Not to mention Millenials seem to have been the first group to actually question the whole 'working to die' situation we find ourselves in.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#347

Post by youngtaff »

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).

Every household gets sent a form once a year to register those people who are eligible to vote - ours is pre-populated with details of the current registrants

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#348

Post by [deleted] »

bradleyjg wrote: post #247
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Politicians and the bureaucratic class have deep investments in real estate 2. Foreign money keeps flooding into western economies to find a safe haven and lack of capital controls. A bulk of it goes into real estate. 3. Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners. The entire system is rigged against anything that would impact home prices - such as an increase in supply or ch…

Greed is exactly the right word. There is a flat unwillingness to acknowledge or reason from the fact by so many homeowners that they are sitting on giant, completely unearned windfalls. There’s a huge sense of entitlement around these inflated prices.

[deleted]

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#349

Post by candiodari »

joebob42 wrote: post #332
aetherson wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time the United States had a draft was 1973. The last time the UK had a draft was 1960. Who is the 18 year old who is drafted into the army and sent to fight a war and getting sent to a faraway land to die? I mean. Russians, for at least some value of faraway. But I don't think they're the central example that you're thinking of.

That's 50 years ago. It's literally not even one lifetime ago.

Given that you'd have to be 18 to be drafted (maybe 16), the minimum age of those people would be 68.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#350

Post by com2kid »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #338
Grimburger wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how it should be. Housing is a consumable, not an investment.

Why would you think that? A well built house can last hundreds of years. Why should it not be an investment? It makes absolutely no sense to put any kind of money into something that one day will be worthless - like I read that it happens in Japan that on average a house is worthless after about 40 years.

> It makes absolutely no sense to put any kind of money into something that one day will be worthless

Cars, TVs, bicycles, the vast majority of furniture.

> like I read that it happens in Japan that on average a house is worthless after about 40 years.

And if you rent a place you "lose" all your money the moment you move out of it.

If my mortgage payment was cut in half but in return my house didn't appreciate in value, that would be a net win for me since I could dump more money into other investment vehicles.

Heck, just reducing the amount of friction of moving would introduce huge positive changes.

If houses in nice cities didn't cost over a million, people could move away from bad lawmakers!

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