Genuine Question - How would YOU solve the UK's housing crisis?

[sarahbell]

20 minutes ago, UmBongo said:

All rented council housing and Housing Association to be allocated on the basis of good character over need.

 

But people who've just turned up with nothing are higher up the NEED chain than people who are local.

[BoSon]

Re-introduce squatter's right style property occupation if a place is left empty for more than 3 months and no evidence of it being due to ongoing renovation. So anyone, homeless, students, travellers, ... can use them free of charge for shelter as long as they do no damage beyond normal wear and tear. Will stop all the property hoarding and force them back into proper use.

House price cap per area tied to council tax bandings for mass built properties, to stop housing being used as an investment so they're only ever worth the max cap value. The wealthy can still build their own 'grand design' to get around the rules.

Conscription of any adult males under 35 with no tax paying job unless in education or disabled (and properly assessed to stop the blaggers). Will stop the gimmigrants dead in their tracks if they end up being sent to Ukraine or whatever other war the west wants to back. The ruskies are winning in Ukraine as they put so little value on their cannon fodder, this solution to give the deadbeats the same low value will get them off their arses or fucking off back abroad.

Simple solutions but opposite of what the corrupt dumb fucks in government (at all levels) have the balls to do.

[Lightly Toasted]

It would require a complete ground-up re-design of the country, because...

"The UK is a housing market with an economy attached".

Here's my proposal.

1. evaluate how many people can actually live here, given the country's physical resources and the [achievable] quality of human resources -- their ability to exist as a harmonious society while also earning imports of essential resources that are not present in the UK.

2. design and implement policies [immigration/emigration/economic] to move the population toward that target.

3. borrowing to be minimised and sustainable.

3 is the key item that will eventually (but painfully) solve the rest. Too many people living (in decent housing whose availability and price is thus distorted) from the largesse of the state, which is funded by unsustainable borrowing. Also too many living from exploiting/leveraging unsustainable state/private borrowing in some way, i.e. their output is phantom production.

[PETR4]

Abolish planning permission, whilst maintaining building codes to stop shanty living.

Government built old age pensioner condominiums with at cost rents to free up family homes; help prevent oap loneliness and allow health / support services to be delivered at scale.

Pods in warehouses to house the homeless.

Abolish inheritance tax.

Decide the water resource carrying capacity of the country and manage immigration around that figure.

 

[Andersen]

Build a 100+ mile long tower block in an uninhabitable region? (Wales, Kent, Highlands..)  

Coming soon to a wasteland near you https://newatlas.com/architecture/line-saudi-arabia-neom-progress/ 

[Virgil Caine]

Make the country so shit that everyone emigrates. This potentially is going to be the end result of  current government policy anyway. 

 

[Guest]

Pass an Act of Parliament that takes all land within 1.5 miles of a train station out of the green belt.

Build a list of housing designs that are automatically pre-approved for planning purposes to prevent objections on aesthetic grounds.

Abolish all s106 payments, Affordable Housing requirements, nutrient neutrality rules, biodiversity net gain rules, embodied carbon rules etc etc so that builders can concentrate on actually building housing.

Edited March 6 by Guest

[Frank Hovis]

On 25/02/2024 at 14:21, Lightly Toasted said:

It would require a complete ground-up re-design of the country, because...

"The UK is a housing market with an economy attached".

Here's my proposal.

1. evaluate how many people can actually live here, given the country's physical resources and the [achievable] quality of human resources -- their ability to exist as a harmonious society while also earning imports of essential resources that are not present in the UK.

2. design and implement policies [immigration/emigration/economic] to move the population toward that target.

3. borrowing to be minimised and sustainable.

3 is the key item that will eventually (but painfully) solve the rest. Too many people living (in decent housing whose availability and price is thus distorted) from the largesse of the state, which is funded by unsustainable borrowing. Also too many living from exploiting/leveraging unsustainable state/private borrowing in some way, i.e. their output is phantom production.

 

Very sensible indeed.

My immediate fix would be that all visas, work, student, are revoked and with dependents then that's maybe five million people gone and homes for five million currently homeless or in temporary or substandard housing housed.

That's not a longer term fix but it does make the current crisis go away.

As I said on another thread this has become a genuine crisis within the last year or two, previously it was just a big problem which over-excitable journalists called a crisis.

Why I say this is that there are unprecedented numbers in council-funded temporary accommodation.  In previous years this was only ever a short term fix before they could be found somewhere but now there isn't anywhere for them to go and the numbers just build, and the bill for this EA, along with the escalating bill forAdult Social Care, is why councils are going bust all over the country.  Cornwall council has projected that it it is going bust in two years and so will a vast number of others.

[AlfredTheLittle]

1. A huge annual tax on any house not being used as somebody's main residence, would give a big incentive to anyone sitting on an empty / second home to use it. I'm not normally pro tax, but if the options are either use what we have or build over everywhere, we have to use what's already there.

2. Combine this with building high quality but not luxury flats, and lots of them (as @JoeDavola said), and let people rent them at cost. Definitely don't use the current big building companies for this as cost would end up extremely high and would include huge bonuses for the CEOs!! In fact a linked point would be to start dealing with corruption properly.

3. Scrap housing benefit.

 

[Spiney Norman]

How would YOU solve the UK's housing crisis?

1. Stop all immigration immediately including asylum seekers and students.

2. Deport all immigrants back to their original nation states.

Job done UK's housing crisis solved!

---

Edited March 6 by Spiney Norman
Typo

[Kendo]

There’s a new book out soon on this very question, and the answer for the author is pretty much death to landlordism.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis

[wherebee]

On 06/03/2024 at 22:36, AlfredTheLittle said:

1. A huge annual tax on any house not being used as somebody's main residence, would give a big incentive to anyone sitting on an empty / second home to use it. I'm not normally pro tax, but if the options are either use what we have or build over everywhere, we have to use what's already there.

2. Combine this with building high quality but not luxury flats, and lots of them (as @JoeDavola said), and let people rent them at cost. Definitely don't use the current big building companies for this as cost would end up extremely high and would include huge bonuses for the CEOs!! In fact a linked point would be to start dealing with corruption properly.

3. Scrap housing benefit.

 

How do you determine 'main residence'.  Can a husband and wife have one each?  If not, can they divorce on paper and have one each?  What about unmarried couples?  What if I own three houses and declare I live in one and my children each live in each other?

etc etc.

reduce population first, THEN worry about house hoarding.  Oh, also relax the squatter laws - that will bring many truely abandoned houses back into use.

[One percent]

1 minute ago, wherebee said:

How do you determine 'main residence'.  Can a husband and wife have one each?  If not, can they divorce on paper and have one each?  What about unmarried couples?  What if I own three houses and declare I live in one and my children each live in each other?

etc etc.

reduce population first, THEN worry about house hoarding.  Oh, also relax the squatter laws - that will bring many truely abandoned houses back into use.

Dunno but HMRC have rules around it for charging capital gains tax. I guess those rules will be adopted. 

[AVERAGEUKBLOB]

Get rid of suburbs is the correct answer

[Wight Flight]

2 hours ago, One percent said:

Dunno but HMRC have rules around it for charging capital gains tax. I guess those rules will be adopted. 

Not if you are a labour MP.

[Bill Car]

1. The first step is to send every illegal that came from France back there rather than house them in the UK. 

2. No benefits for foreigners unless they have worked in country for 5 consecutive years. 

3. Voluntary repatriation of foreigners.

4. No new visas issued for a minimum of 10 years. Skills shortage? Invest in your domestic population. 

5. No benefits or privileges for single mothers (see number 6). Children are for those who marry and plan ahead. If a marriage goes wrong then the parents need to pay....not the state. 

6. Build flats to house useless people cheaply. Akin to bedsit life, but building skywards means much better use of available land space. 

[goldbug9999]

1. Immediate ban on all immigration. All non citizens to be immediately evicted from social housing.
2. No recourse to public funds or services (e.g. NHS) for anyone until they have been a full British citizen for 10 years.
3. Government to build 2 million 3 bed houses to reestablish ubiquitous cheap decent quality social housing as the norm for low income families as per council housing in the 70s, rents would be set at 1/3rd mean take home pay. 10 years citizenship required to be eligible. For the benefit of the "thats just concreting over the whole country" brigade that would only add 1% total urbanisation of the UK land area - from 12% to 13%.
4. Removal of CGT exception for main residence (don't want to pay tax when you sell your house - sell it for what you paid for it).
5. Mortgages as such would be banned - you could take out a loan to buy property but the lender would not be able have a charge placed on the deeds as security, they would have to use standard bankruptcy proceedings to get any money owed back.
6. There would be a tax of 5% per annum on all outstanding loan and credit balances except for business investment. Phased in on all existing loans and mortgages at the rate of 1% a year.
7. Property including main residence would count as savings/investments for means testing purposes - now the home owners responsibility to have savings and/or insurance to cover job loss illness etc.

Channel dinghy's would would sorted by ordering the SAS to do regular covert sorties to the french coast to sabotage any dinghy's obviously in use by people traffickers they find. Border patrol would take anyone crossing the channel mid point back to french coast, with navy escort if needed authorised to used force if the French navy tried to interfere.

Edited March 23 by goldbug9999

[Castlevania]

1. Abolish the Town & Country Planning Act 1947 - ie. Build on the Green Belt

2. Abolish the Land Compensation Act 1961 ie allow the government to compulsory purchase agricultural land to build houses at agricultural land prices

3. Abolish stamp duty

4. Replace council tax with a tax directly correlated with the value of the house. Set this at 1% with tax relief available against earned income.

5. Build social housing

6. Cut LHA

7. Reduce the maximum multiple of loan to income for a mortgage to 4.

8. Reduce migration numbers.

Done. Easy. 

[MrXxxx]

1. Take planning decisions away from Local Authorities and make it central..far too many 'variations' occur locally for whatever reasons i.e 'Backhanders', Nimbys etc.

2. Repurpose Office/Industrial building...far too many of these sitting empty.

3. Stipulate to House builders that houses/estates need to be completed within a specific time period otherwise planning permission process has to be gone through from beginning, this would stop current nonsense/practice where rudimentary foundations are poured to enact building start and then left as a land bank.

4. Abolish 'Right to buy'..if you can afford to buy your Council House you don't need this support.

5. Govt/local college building scheme where a) students get a free training stipendium/grant equivalent to student loan or minimum wage [whichever is the higher], and college gets equivalent sum. As part of this scheme every student does 3 days on-site salary free, and 2 days at college.As a result student is still getting paid, and college is actually getting more than 2 times the equivalent student funding.

6. Land tax on second homes in addition to council tax, two-tiered for those resident/non-resident in UK.

7. Ownership restricted to UK citizens?

8. Rent controls on all non-commercial residential property including HMO's, holiday homes, and Air B&B.

9. Set a minimum number of 'affordable' houses as part of a developments planning permission [as currently happens] BUT make the 'affordable' houses affordable i.e. 3-4 x minimum wage [or local living wage].

 

Edited March 23 by MrXxxx

[MrXxxx]

On 24/02/2024 at 15:27, Pip321 said:

There has always been demand...there always will be. In 1986 (at 18) I bought and would have given everything...everything to buy. At the time this was demonstrated because we had no tv for 2 years, no phone line, no holidays, no spending and we struggled for 7 years until we were 25 years old. (with 2 kids) 

So with such enthusiasm for buying why then weren't prices higher.....the reason was finance. No daft multiples and no daft interest only loans...IO was unthinkable. 

Not the case me 'ol mucker'...during this period Endowment mortgages were a popular way to reduce monthly payments, and we all know what happened/is currently happening with that 'great idea'!

[MrXxxx]

On 24/02/2024 at 20:59, GTM said:

I'd get rid of housing benefit entirely. One payment of X amount depending on circumstances and previous NI payments. None of this housing benefit, universal credit, DLA, PIP, council tax benefit, free school meals and all the other hidden extras that make it difficult to calculate what somebody actually gets. You pay your rent out of the money you get. You pay your kids meals at school out of the money you get.

There would be a serious appetite for benefit reform if people became aware just how much many are really getting on bennies.

This is 'all well and good' if you were dealing with financially responsible adults on beefits, but when you are dealing with the equivalent of children who see 'shiny, shiny' [scratchcards, latest iPhone, other worthless consumer $hit] and money 'burning a hole in their pockets', they buy the aforementioned 'shiney', and then find themselves without this month rental payment....OK you could say "Well £uck em, they can learn the hard way", but is usually the rest of society that suffers when they start housebreaking, mugging, dealing drugs, or prostitution. Better to give them vouchers; [redeemable at the PO?], and anyone who get caught dealing/trading in them gets prosecuted.

[MrXxxx]

On 24/02/2024 at 22:14, sarahbell said:

4m single mums. 

Where do the dads live? 

Old people in big houses. 

Too many migrants. Too many students. 

Er, the question was "How would YOU solve the UK's housing crisis?"...is your solution euthanasia of the 'offending' parties? :-)))

[Wight Flight]

49 minutes ago, MrXxxx said:

3. Stipulate to House builders that houses/estates need to be completed within a specific time period otherwise planning permission process has to be gone through from beginning, this would stop current nonsense/practice where rudimentary foundations are poured to enact building start and then left as a land bank.

Easier solution.

Charge council tax on every home from 12 months after planning is approved, whether built or not.

In some place you could charge x2 as it is clearly unoccupied.

[MrXxxx]

On 25/02/2024 at 12:19, BoSon said:

Conscription of any adult males under 35 with no tax paying job unless in education or disabled (and properly assessed to stop the blaggers). Will stop the gimmigrants dead in their tracks if they end up being sent to Ukraine or whatever other war the west wants to back.

You think so?...they will just 'adopt' conscientious objector principles [or cite PTSD from the situation they have run away from] in the same way that they have just 'Seen the light'/adopted Christianity.

[MrXxxx]

On 05/03/2024 at 16:24, Virgil Caine said:

Make the country so shit that everyone emigrates. This potentially is going to be the end result of  current government policy anyway. 

 

The problem is:

...most are in 'self-denial'/oblivious [and/or comparing their lot to those around them] until it is too late...at that stage you only have one option, to swallow your lot!