Why Britain doesn’t build • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#491

Post by dignick » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 6:09 AM UTC

tsukikage wrote: post #16

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…

We need to build houses at least as fast as the population grows. Because this has not happened for decades, we need to build houses even faster than that, to clear the backlog. This is not happening. Meanwhile, no-one will build infrastructure for settlements that do not yet exist, and we consistently elect a party that believes in less, rather than more, infrastructure in general. Rather than an investment, Tories…

We actually have excess housing in the UK: https://positivemoney.org/2023/01/more-than-building-new-hou...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#492

Post by dignick » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 6:15 AM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #84

So the article claims that the housing construction boom that ended at the second WW led to a massive stock of housing, which has since declined due to planning issues, leading to a shortage of housing and therefore a rise in prices. This does not hold up statistically. 1939: 11.3 million dwellings in the UK, population 47.9 million people = 4.2 people per dwelling today: 27 million dwellings in the UK, population 67…

Housing stock is growing faster than population. There are other more complex issues behind our inflating housing market than just ‘not enough homes’, but nobody seems to want to talk about them: https://positivemoney.org/2023/01/more-than-building-new-hou...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#493

Post by roenxi » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 8:17 AM UTC

ricardo81 wrote: post #486

roenxi wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't even guess at orders of magnitude. Probably because if you had you'd be nervous. > Efficiency gains. Transport... Picking on this first one, population in the UK has gone from 50 to ~70 million since the 1950s. Transport energy use has risen from Ironically, thanks to the logic of Jevon's Paradox, transport probably is much more efficient. That is why it is consuming more energy per-capita than it did befo…

Did you factor in that China makes a lot of the products that were once created in the UK for UK use?

How much impact do you think that makes, order of magnitude? & why do you think that?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#494

Post by brigandish » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 8:42 AM UTC

okeuro49 wrote: post #435

brigandish wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Migration is not a new phenomenon; citing it as an excuse for the utter failure of modern housing policy is disingenuous. You say it's a failure but for those who own land or have tenants - including the average homeowner, it's a success. It's also a success for house builders, of course. From [1]: > In total 115 MPs across all parties are landlords, accounting for 18 per cent of the House of Commons. This compares…

> It's in their interests. More complicated than that. You should try reading Isabel Hardman's book "Why we get the politicians we deserve". Running for MP can bankrupt you if you haven't got a passive source of income.

> More complicated than that. You should try reading Isabel Hardman's book "Why we get the politicians we deserve".

I'm left thinking "why?"

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#495

Post by tsukikage » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 8:52 AM UTC

dignick wrote: post #491

tsukikage wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to build houses at least as fast as the population grows. Because this has not happened for decades, we need to build houses even faster than that, to clear the backlog. This is not happening. Meanwhile, no-one will build infrastructure for settlements that do not yet exist, and we consistently elect a party that believes in less, rather than more, infrastructure in general. Rather than an investment, Tories…

We actually have excess housing in the UK: https://positivemoney.org/2023/01/more-than-building-new-hou...

> "Home ownership has increasingly become the preserve of the wealthy, with billions pumped into property purchases by overseas investors, landlords and retail banks."

So the UK population is not the complete set of entities that want to buy housing stock, and measuring population alone is not sufficient to capture the entirety of the demand. This means we need to build even faster! Saturate these markets. Those folks are giving us money to build empty houses; use it! Once supply outstrips all demand, prices fall - that's how markets work. Let the invisible hand of the free market inform the foreign investors that housing bubbles are a bad bet. Certainly nothing else has worked.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#496

Post by nsteel » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 8:53 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #426

cbeach wrote: post #362

In the UK, property developers are forced by the govt to build a certain proportion of social housing into their developments, or to subsidise the building of social housing elsewhere. Obviously, this means the high end property is less desirable (because big spenders are forced to live next-door to social housing tenants). And the social housing built will be boxy and low standard, so again, less desirable, and unpr…

Social housing doesn't have to be bad. It has a (justified) bad reputation because of the crime and antisocial behavior it brings along, which it can do because law enforcement has completely dropped the ball. Social housing can be fine as long as any antisocial behavior is properly addressed by criminal prosecution and evicting problematic tenants. The problem is that isn't happening in practice, and property manage…

This is bang on the money. And exactly describes the state of my building in London, perhaps you are my neighbour. In my case, we've just been given the option to vote (cause that always works so well) to take on a private security service to do the job the police are not able - control the drug dealing and ASB that's ruining the area. It strikes me as pretty odd that since a chunk of the development is social housing, is the state essentially paying for part of the private security?

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#497

Post by dumpsterdiver » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:53 AM UTC

beisner wrote: post #113

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something cannot both be a good investment and accessible to all. Roads are a perfect example of a good investment that is accessible to all. It's called a "common good", and it exists.

OP means something more like "a security which appreciates on average faster than inflation", AKA an asset I can purchase and hold and sell later for more than I paid for it+improvements in real terms.

I don't mean to be a jerk, and this isn't directed at the parent poster, but when someone makes an argument that contains an unsound point that in a vacuum cannot hold up, that unsound point critically degrades the entire argument.

When someone includes statements in an argument that can be trivially disputed, they should fully expect those weak points to be disputed. The rest of the argument, imo, does not deserve critique until the trivially disputable points are resolved.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#498

Post by okeuro49 » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:54 AM UTC

brigandish wrote: post #494

okeuro49 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's in their interests. More complicated than that. You should try reading Isabel Hardman's book "Why we get the politicians we deserve". Running for MP can bankrupt you if you haven't got a passive source of income.

> More complicated than that. You should try reading Isabel Hardman's book "Why we get the politicians we deserve". I'm left thinking "why?"

The book covers what is necessary economically to run to be an MP.

> Running for MP can bankrupt you if you haven't got a passive source of income.

MPs become landlords for the passive income that is necessary given that running to be an MP can leave you destitute.

Landlords aren't (usually) becoming MPs in order to vote for more favourable conditions for landlords. Indeed, there have been many policies detrimental to landlords e.g. removal of mortgage interest income tax relief.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#499

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 10:53 AM UTC

dahwolf wrote: post #194

In the Netherlands we don't really have a big NIMBY issue and we still can't keep up supply with demand. Supply is complicated and not just restricted by zoning. One key thing to understand is that private companies build homes, not governments. And if it's not profitable to do so, it will simply stop. And if not at least 75% of the project is sold beforehand, the project is stopped altogether. And this is how our go…

[deleted]

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#500

Post by falloutx » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 10:55 AM UTC

dahwolf wrote: post #194

In the Netherlands we don't really have a big NIMBY issue and we still can't keep up supply with demand. Supply is complicated and not just restricted by zoning. One key thing to understand is that private companies build homes, not governments. And if it's not profitable to do so, it will simply stop. And if not at least 75% of the project is sold beforehand, the project is stopped altogether. And this is how our go…

So these are few basics reasons why people don't want new houses to be built in their neighbourhood in NL/BE: 1) New houses these days are mostly bought by immigrants, so they don't want to have more immigrants in their neighbourhood than before. 2) It decreases value of their property. 3) Resources get scarce quickly, one friend told me once the new building was sufficiently occupied, their nearest AH/Jumbo couldn't keep up with demand, and it caused very basic issues for all residents until new shops opened up about a year later. 4) More noise due to construction, dust and any other kind small issue. 5) A visual eye-sore, most new construction is tall, unappealing and borderline disgusting as it doesn't fit most post-war neighbourhoods.

As an immigrant myself, I feel disappointed looking at the state of new construction, but also I don't see how the government can fix this. If everyone complains not to build near their home then there are no new places to build houses.