Housing.
An article in a local free magazine(surprisingly)....
" You don`t need to look far beyond your bank app to know there is a housing crisis. You may be spending some eye-watering proportion of your income on rent or mortgage repayments, or, if you`re lucky, you`re looking at your account swell with rent payments you`re collecting.
Homelessness is everywhere, and local authorities are buckling under the pressure of a statutory duty to house their people while their income is squeezed.
What is the proposed solution? "Build, baby, build!" The Labour government has undertaken to build 1.5 million homes over five years. As if the problem were amenable to one of those benign, O-Level market mechanisms of supply/demand.
"I mean," Alf Garnett might holler, "It stands to reason, innit?"
Well, it don`t Alf. Sorry!
One startling fact is that Britain has a massive housing surplus! At least we have a higher ratio of bedrooms to population than ever before. A housing shortage is not exactly our problem.
So why have the costs gone up so high and why so much homelessness? You might agree with Nick Bano " that the problem is the dismantling of post-war rent controls and council housing alongside the creation of `assured shorthold tenancies`, which together with housing benefit have ratcheted up rents and transferred wealth from the public purse to private landlords at jaw-dropping rates. (Housing benefit accounts for more than £23 billion a year- dwarfing the budget of most government departments.Or you might agree with Gary Stevenson that the problem can be attributed to our society`s accelerating inequality that transfers wealth from the many to the few who have nothing to spend it on (having already filled their bellies and wardrobes and more) besides buying assets - shares, gold, and housing, inflating their prices.
Either way, it`s clear that building more houses alone will not solve the problem. The regime that encourages landlordism means that more housing gives more opportunities to `rinse` renters and offers the rich more opportunities to invest for guaranteed returns. Who else benefits? The developers. All these powerful interests make their voices heard in the lugholes of power.
And thus, ladies and gentlemen, we out here in the suburbs are facing plans to plant incongruous, high-rise, high-density blocks on top of tube stations, in town centres, and on Green Belt, which threaten to alter forever the environs of our communal lives. It will, make no mistake, also alter the way we feel, and the way we interact with each other in our public places. The dislocation this represents is not measurable and not easily overcome.
What to do? People are mobilising. A meeting to discuss the North Finchley plans took place last night where more than double the number expected showed up (I estimate 100 people came) to protest this wanton despoliation of our communities. I know it`s a rear-guard action but, until the next election, resistance is the only means left to us to prevent the misguided abominations being enacted in our neighbourhoods. " author AM Poppy
" You don`t need to look far beyond your bank app to know there is a housing crisis. You may be spending some eye-watering proportion of your income on rent or mortgage repayments, or, if you`re lucky, you`re looking at your account swell with rent payments you`re collecting.
Homelessness is everywhere, and local authorities are buckling under the pressure of a statutory duty to house their people while their income is squeezed.
What is the proposed solution? "Build, baby, build!" The Labour government has undertaken to build 1.5 million homes over five years. As if the problem were amenable to one of those benign, O-Level market mechanisms of supply/demand.
"I mean," Alf Garnett might holler, "It stands to reason, innit?"
Well, it don`t Alf. Sorry!
One startling fact is that Britain has a massive housing surplus! At least we have a higher ratio of bedrooms to population than ever before. A housing shortage is not exactly our problem.
So why have the costs gone up so high and why so much homelessness? You might agree with Nick Bano " that the problem is the dismantling of post-war rent controls and council housing alongside the creation of `assured shorthold tenancies`, which together with housing benefit have ratcheted up rents and transferred wealth from the public purse to private landlords at jaw-dropping rates. (Housing benefit accounts for more than £23 billion a year- dwarfing the budget of most government departments.Or you might agree with Gary Stevenson that the problem can be attributed to our society`s accelerating inequality that transfers wealth from the many to the few who have nothing to spend it on (having already filled their bellies and wardrobes and more) besides buying assets - shares, gold, and housing, inflating their prices.
Either way, it`s clear that building more houses alone will not solve the problem. The regime that encourages landlordism means that more housing gives more opportunities to `rinse` renters and offers the rich more opportunities to invest for guaranteed returns. Who else benefits? The developers. All these powerful interests make their voices heard in the lugholes of power.
And thus, ladies and gentlemen, we out here in the suburbs are facing plans to plant incongruous, high-rise, high-density blocks on top of tube stations, in town centres, and on Green Belt, which threaten to alter forever the environs of our communal lives. It will, make no mistake, also alter the way we feel, and the way we interact with each other in our public places. The dislocation this represents is not measurable and not easily overcome.
What to do? People are mobilising. A meeting to discuss the North Finchley plans took place last night where more than double the number expected showed up (I estimate 100 people came) to protest this wanton despoliation of our communities. I know it`s a rear-guard action but, until the next election, resistance is the only means left to us to prevent the misguided abominations being enacted in our neighbourhoods. " author AM Poppy
