The housing crisis isn't new. A lot of it can be traced back to the 1980s when Mrs Thatcher gave massive discounts to social tenants and kept the cash rather than built new. Since then every Government has hoped that the private sector will fill the gap. However the only real growth in housing that the private sector seems interested in is executive homes for the exceedingly wealthy.
It is simply just not profitable enough to build for ordinary people.
With the private sector building very little and the public sector building only the occasional property for special needs such as the disabled the Government has a new idea. Do it yourself!
Government Minister Grant Shapps has now told people to build there own homes. He claims that for just £150,000 you can have a brand new 3/4 bedroom family home. Unfortunately this is not really an accurate picture. Unless you really could do all the work yourself average costs are more than £200,000. That is with no profit motivation.
If we assume that you can do the deal for something like the average then £200,000 is approximately 10 times the average salary in Gateshead. Even the "gold plated" salaries paid to local government workers in Gateshead means that 70% of the employees are below the average salary for Gateshead.
If the huddled masses of Gateshead were to meet the minister and say "we can't afford a basic home" I can only presume he would have Marie Antoinette moment and say "let them build there own 3/4 bedroom property". Of course the minister might, in the words of Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, "be a posh boy who doesn't know the price of milk".
Link
Channel 4 News Factheck
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Friday, May 18, 2012
New Homes Are Small Homes Says RIBA
RIBA is fairly influential in the world of building. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) are the people who really know about designing buildings. They are design professionals.
The latest RIBA report on British design for new homes can be summarised as; new build property is small.
RIBA have found that the average new build home is just 92% of the recommend minimum size. This uses the guidelines for new build property in London. This is itself the only place in the UK with new build guidelines on size. There are stories that you hear where new homes have no room for wardrobes and the family sofa is in the the garage because the sofa wont fit through the door and the car wont fit in the garage! RIBA finds the facts and discovers the stories seem to be true.
Here in Gateshead and across the north the defunct pathfinder programme wanted to demolish older homes and replace them with "modern" property. As if it was a logical proposition that new build was better. As the professionals delve into new build we find that they are often smaller than people need, more expensive, damaging to the environment and often not even heat efficient.
The fact is that the building industry would like to tell everyone that it is red tape and planning preventing them meeting housing need. We are building tiny homes at eye watering prices for only one reason - to enrich developers.
What we need is housing to meet need not to make excessive profits for private developers.
Link
Riba Homewise
The latest RIBA report on British design for new homes can be summarised as; new build property is small.
RIBA have found that the average new build home is just 92% of the recommend minimum size. This uses the guidelines for new build property in London. This is itself the only place in the UK with new build guidelines on size. There are stories that you hear where new homes have no room for wardrobes and the family sofa is in the the garage because the sofa wont fit through the door and the car wont fit in the garage! RIBA finds the facts and discovers the stories seem to be true.
Here in Gateshead and across the north the defunct pathfinder programme wanted to demolish older homes and replace them with "modern" property. As if it was a logical proposition that new build was better. As the professionals delve into new build we find that they are often smaller than people need, more expensive, damaging to the environment and often not even heat efficient.
The fact is that the building industry would like to tell everyone that it is red tape and planning preventing them meeting housing need. We are building tiny homes at eye watering prices for only one reason - to enrich developers.
What we need is housing to meet need not to make excessive profits for private developers.
Link
Riba Homewise
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Demolished 10,000 Built 1000 - Result According to Conservative Home
According to leading Conservative blogger the Pathfinder Housing Market Renewal programme demolished ten times more homes than it built.
The site is clearly politically loaded as all the demolitions happened in the north of England mostly controlled by Labour politicians. The scheme itself was John Prescott's big idea. The fact that all the schemes relied on massive private sector investment following the public sector money should make Conservatives pause for thought too.
Having said that, the key issue that should hit every northern politician wanting to re-ignite a demolition programme, is that the present government is not going to fund more demolition. So unless local authorities have a lot of spare cash the demolition agenda is off the table.
Link
Conservative Home
The site is clearly politically loaded as all the demolitions happened in the north of England mostly controlled by Labour politicians. The scheme itself was John Prescott's big idea. The fact that all the schemes relied on massive private sector investment following the public sector money should make Conservatives pause for thought too.
Having said that, the key issue that should hit every northern politician wanting to re-ignite a demolition programme, is that the present government is not going to fund more demolition. So unless local authorities have a lot of spare cash the demolition agenda is off the table.
Link
Conservative Home
Friday, April 06, 2012
Alexi Sayle and Comedy
BBC QuestionTime has never covered the scandal of pathfinder. Despite being labelled as "housing renewal" comedian, author and broadcaster Alexi Sayle nailed the idea on QuestionTime last week. Part of this is because pathfinder only hit "the north" and had no effect on the Westminister political bubble inhabited by political journalists.
Responding to a question of corporate greed, Sayle diverted his answer to include the idea that pathfinder was little more than supporting the largest private building companies in Britain. He said that thousands of perfectly good properties had been bulldozed in order to provide development space for the largest private house builders in Britain.
It's is somewhat ironic that the most vocal national criticism of pathfinder broadcast by the BBC has been by a comedian. Meanwhile, in what residents think is ongoing comedy, northern councils are still trying to proceed with demolitions at a time of austerity. Liverpool council has this week confirmed that "housing renewal" will continue and Gateshead Council has announced a new plan to build houses over 15 years. Yet another ambitious 15 year project. The last one was the aborted pathfinder programme itself.
Of course Gateshead Council won't be building anything. As usual there is a gapping hole between housing need and the market. House builder Galliford Try is to build 2,400 homes in a £347 million project over 15 years. In order to have a sense of the plan only 600 will be "affordable". No definition of the word affordable is provided by the builder but Galliford, as part of the "evolution" consortium, they have admitted in public that starting prices are likely to be £150,000. That was back in 2009. So the starting price is more than 7 times the average salary in Gateshead.
Jane Robinson, the Chief Executive of Gateshead Council, welcomed the project by saying; "This new partnership is about providing good quality homes and fantastic neighbourhoods that people want to live and grow up in."
So by 2027 there will be all these great homes. That should be the same year that that an average wage earner in Gateshead will have saved enough to put down a deposit for a mortgage provided he/she saves a few hundred a month starting now.
Link
Interactive Investor
Responding to a question of corporate greed, Sayle diverted his answer to include the idea that pathfinder was little more than supporting the largest private building companies in Britain. He said that thousands of perfectly good properties had been bulldozed in order to provide development space for the largest private house builders in Britain.
It's is somewhat ironic that the most vocal national criticism of pathfinder broadcast by the BBC has been by a comedian. Meanwhile, in what residents think is ongoing comedy, northern councils are still trying to proceed with demolitions at a time of austerity. Liverpool council has this week confirmed that "housing renewal" will continue and Gateshead Council has announced a new plan to build houses over 15 years. Yet another ambitious 15 year project. The last one was the aborted pathfinder programme itself.
Of course Gateshead Council won't be building anything. As usual there is a gapping hole between housing need and the market. House builder Galliford Try is to build 2,400 homes in a £347 million project over 15 years. In order to have a sense of the plan only 600 will be "affordable". No definition of the word affordable is provided by the builder but Galliford, as part of the "evolution" consortium, they have admitted in public that starting prices are likely to be £150,000. That was back in 2009. So the starting price is more than 7 times the average salary in Gateshead.
Jane Robinson, the Chief Executive of Gateshead Council, welcomed the project by saying; "This new partnership is about providing good quality homes and fantastic neighbourhoods that people want to live and grow up in."
So by 2027 there will be all these great homes. That should be the same year that that an average wage earner in Gateshead will have saved enough to put down a deposit for a mortgage provided he/she saves a few hundred a month starting now.
Link
Interactive Investor
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Localism
This weeks' Guardian newspaper has been considering the legacy of "regeneration" - as practised by the pathfinder programme. The Building and Social Foundation has written a report analysing the impact of pathfinder.
On the whole it agrees with the criticism of residents. These schemes judgementally prioritised a middle class vision of working class neighbourhoods. It was all about cleansing the urban working class and making neighbourhoods a friendly place for new middle class families. The Guardian paraphrases the renewal strategy;
"Bridging Newcastle Gateshead was criticised for placing the needs of future communities above those already living in the area. These future residents were often better-off middle-class groups, apparently seen to have a beneficial impact on the area simply by moving in."
Pathfinder has never been about housing. Instead it has been about a vision of communities created by planners, government and local government. Consultation was merely a task of designing questions that would provoke answers compatible with a top down vision. Opinions that conflicted with the vision were pushed to the margins.
The goal was too controversial to express. The goal of regeneration was to get rid of working class people. This could not be said openly so the homes had to be re-designated as undesirable or slums. Whole areas were designated as failed housing markets.
All of this happened under New Labour. The word "community" was used but the renewal institutions were top down undemocratic quangos. The Conservatives now have a localism agenda - this may well be as superficial as the New Labour concept of community.
Link
The Guardian (5th March 2012)
On the whole it agrees with the criticism of residents. These schemes judgementally prioritised a middle class vision of working class neighbourhoods. It was all about cleansing the urban working class and making neighbourhoods a friendly place for new middle class families. The Guardian paraphrases the renewal strategy;
"Bridging Newcastle Gateshead was criticised for placing the needs of future communities above those already living in the area. These future residents were often better-off middle-class groups, apparently seen to have a beneficial impact on the area simply by moving in."
Pathfinder has never been about housing. Instead it has been about a vision of communities created by planners, government and local government. Consultation was merely a task of designing questions that would provoke answers compatible with a top down vision. Opinions that conflicted with the vision were pushed to the margins.
The goal was too controversial to express. The goal of regeneration was to get rid of working class people. This could not be said openly so the homes had to be re-designated as undesirable or slums. Whole areas were designated as failed housing markets.
All of this happened under New Labour. The word "community" was used but the renewal institutions were top down undemocratic quangos. The Conservatives now have a localism agenda - this may well be as superficial as the New Labour concept of community.
Link
The Guardian (5th March 2012)
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