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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#61

Post by vidarh »

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…

The irony is that historically, a lot of rail was built for settlements that, while they may have existed, did not support the cost of rail, and this has driven a lot of development.

And this is both how it ought to work and means that the UK has a lot of existing rail that could help solve this problem if the government would just commit to streamline planning processes and to increasing routes and frequency to stations where there is a potential for density increases at lower cost.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#62

Post by blitzar »

easytiger wrote: post #33
thesaintlives wrote: post #25

One word - corruption. Britain builds plenty but not on a social basis. Profit is king. To get planning permission costs money. Appeal committees must be bought. Britain is the most corrupt country not in Europe..

> Appeal committees must be bought. Britain is the most corrupt country not in Europe.. Local authorities refusing planning isn't corruption. And if you think Britain is corrupt I assume you have no familiarity with other countries.

Local authorities refusing planning, then granting it when you write a cheque for 10k for the planning officer is corruption.

It wasnt a cheque, but a pair of first class tickets to the bahamas for the planning officer and their wife, totally worth it thought.

Its not even an open secret, its a known fact. https://www.theplanner.co.uk/2020/08/03/local-authorities-ar...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#63

Post by notahacker »

blakblakarak wrote: post #17
robertlagrant wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 does need to make houses to provide for lower paid people who do critical jobs.

Yep, and people who don't do critical jobs or earn much at all tend to want somewhere to live too (and subsidising their private sector housing costs in areas with housing shortages usually costs more in the long run)

Not really discussing the slowdown of building and mass-selloff of council owned housing since 1979 is a curious omission from an otherwise detailed description of public policy on housing. Private sector housebuilders have different incentives from public authorities, and maximising the profit from a site need not mean maximising the number of available homes (especially not given Britons with purchasing power were the original suburbanites). Nor does it mean building on all the limited supply of local land suitable for development at once, when it can be released in tranches (homebuilders have several years worth of plots with planning permission for every home they build in a year)

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#64

Post by dan-robertson »

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…

You can look up the numbers here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/...

About 120-200k per year, about 0.2% of the population. Though those numbers don’t include houses being destroyed or eg conversions from a large house to flats.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#65

Post by Jochim »

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…

There's a limited amount of space and a non-negligible portion of society are unable to afford market rates. When the state doesn't build accommodation, citizens end up transferring ludicrous amounts to private landlords to house foster children, asylum seekers, the poor, or the disabled.

The UK experimented with selling off it's social housing in the 70s. It was a colossal failure that has lead to the country having some of the worst housing stock in Europe, with renters paying more for less. Private landlords have been enriched at the expense of the wider society.

Without state intervention in housing regulation/supply we'd see shanty towns spring up fairly quickly, followed by violence. Refer to Champlain Towers, Grenfell Tower, or the collapsed luxury apartments in the Turkey earthquake to see what happens when the state does not do enough to ensure builders aren't building death traps.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#66

Post by nerdawson »

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…

> current home owners - their ageing voting base - are NIMBYs who don't want the wrong sort of people living near them and any reduction in demand that would reduce their value of their homes

New housing is directly against the interests of existing homeowners. Any plan that relies on people seriously disadvantaging themselves in order to benefit other people they don’t know is doomed to failure.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#67

Post by robertlagrant »

Jochim wrote: post #65
robertlagrant wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a limited amount of space and a non-negligible portion of society are unable to afford market rates. When the state doesn't build accommodation, citizens end up transferring ludicrous amounts to private landlords to house foster children, asylum seekers, the poor, or the disabled. The UK experimented with selling off it's social housing in the 70s. It was a colossal failure that has lead to the country having…

> There's a limited amount of space and a non-negligible portion of society are unable to afford market rates. When the state doesn't build accommodation, citizens end up transferring ludicrous amounts to private landlords to house foster children, asylum seekers, the poor, or the disabled.

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. Asulym seekers make up a small amount (3%?) of the people who we take in - e.g. in 2022 we took in 606k people, but under 20k of them were asulum seekers.

> The UK experimented with selling off it's social housing in the 70s. It was a colossal failure that has lead to the country having some of the worst housing stock in Europe, with renters paying more for less.

The same number of people would need housing, regardless of whether the houses were privately owned or state owned.

> Without state intervention in housing regulation/supply we'd see shanty towns spring up fairly quickly, followed by violence. Refer to Champlain Towers, Grenfell Tower, or the collapsed luxury apartments in the Turkey earthquake to see what happens when the state does not do enough to ensure builders aren't building death traps.

I don't understand this. I didn't say no regulation. But there's a huge gap between that and making it incredibly difficult to build. Citing some basic anti-zero regulation argument in response to what I said is disheartening.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#68

Post by bryanlarsen »

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…

For comparison, Canada which has a population of 40M vs Britain's 86M built 286k homes in 2021. We took in 400K immigrants and 630K non-permanent residents in 2022. Not sure if those two numbers are additive, since I presume many non-permanent residents eventually become immigrants.

The average price of a house in Canada is CAD716K vs £285K (=CAD480K) in the UK.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#69

Post by 88 »

muteor wrote: post #12
dairylee wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The infrastructure is often insufficient for existing homes nevermind for any expansion. I've recently moved house but I'm having to stay registered to my Dentist & Doctors 30 miles away because the wait list to get registered in my new town is months.

They just built over 1000 homes near me, but not one dentist or doctors. Now the small local surgeries are expected to take these new households on. Again government policy not holding up to community needs.

The average fully-qualified GP has something like 2,300 patients registered to them.

If you assume 2.5 people per household for those new homes, their needs would be met by the addition of a single GP to an existing surgery.

Then consider that the typical buyers of new builds will be younger and healthier than average.

And that of those ~2,500 new residents, some are likely to be doctors themselves who would otherwise be unable to live in the area.

And that GP surgeries are private for-profit businesses.

And you realise the issues are more complex than they might at first seem.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#70

Post by tsukikage »

blitzar wrote: post #30
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 need to build houses at least as fast as the population grows. Because this has not happened for decades. Over those decades UK population growth [1] is lower than the new house building rate [see chart in article]. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/pop...

The graph shows building rate as a proportion of the size of existing stock. But the existing stock is grossly insufficient to our needs.

We've been building around 200k houses a year for decades, much less than that during most years of Conservative rule: https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new...

This is around 0.3% of the population. The population increase year on year is consistently larger than this.

We need to be building new houses much faster than we are. We need to build at 1960s rates or faster at least until it is possible for people on median wages to have somewhere sane to live again.

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