Home sweet home

In this area and perhaps it is everywhere, when a developer wants to build more than a certain number of houses they have to include a percentage of 'affordable homes' (whatever they are!). I would have thought that this would eventually have a knock on effect on the numbers needing social housing, although it would take a long time.

Some of the developers' ideas of what is "affordable" are a bit exotic, though. I think they do that to get planning permission through. There are never enough small and simple houses built - it probably costs the developers comparatively little to make them a bit bigger and glossier and then put up the prices to more than compensate for their outlay.

Does anyone know anything about the type of scheme where the buyer buys a share in their house? I believe they can increase that share if and when they have the wherewithal to do so. If the house is subsequently sold (by them) they can only take out of it the percentage they owned, and the developer takes the remainder. A young couple I know recently entered this scheme in Cumbria.

I think we should look to other countries where new houses can be built quickly and cheaply. Scandinavian, American and German pre-built parts are made in factories and erected onto foundations at a rapid rate. Their skill is different and regulated. - different materials are included, less brickwork, more woodwork, yet there seems to be a fear here in the UK about altering building regulations. Perhaps the mistakes of the 60s, the ugly concrete high-rises that had to be demolished a few years later, are hampering creative solutions to the housing problem. Prefabs and park homes can be an attractive part of the answer - cheap to build, low-rise, easily constructed in green areas without having too much of a negative impact on the environment.

Young couples and small families could afford to rent and buy such little properties as a first step.

Also, Stoke has 5000 empty properties, many of them council owned under some Pathway Partnership Scheme which was abandoned in 2010. Many of these are to be offered for £1 plus a £30,000 renovation lone which can be paid back at a low level of interest equivalent to just a bit more than a council house rent.
These are an excellent way for people to get on the 'housing ladder' BUT the scheme must be protected from property developers out to make a quick profit.
Other local authorities could follow suit surely.

'Loan'

This is too hard. On the face of it I think social housing should be used in the most practical way. And that is moving empty nest couples into smaller, easy to manage properties (wishful thinking I know) and moving a young family into the vacated family home. But it is n' t always that straightforward. My son needed to stay at home after uni much longer than my daughters did. Each case would have to be given very careful consideration individually.

I think it should be made clear, in these present times, that when someone moves into a council house they are being given the tenancy for as long as they have full need of that particular home. And that alternative accommodation would be given after that.

Yes aka that kind of scheme is commonly run by housing associations in this area - "shared ownership"
Also when planning was granted for big apartment block in town, council stipulated that some of the flats should, effectively, be "council flats" and the rest purchased.

Yes, I suspect that all the postwar prefabs have left an indelible image on British minds as being a useful answer to a pressing problem, but not aesthetically wonderful, and all prefabricated buildings are now tarred with the same brush.

Kevin McCloud's TV series has had some beautiful flat-pack houses, but they were all top-of-the-range ones. We could do with some programmes about smaller affordable ones - and a seminar for local authority housing departments on them.

I have noticed homes being created from shipping containers, quite quirky but if it is an affordable home it is better than a B&B.

JessM It sounds like a good idea to incorporate a few houses in each new development. If council housing were spread around more, and not confined to large estates, there would be less opportunity for them to become no-hope areas. No-one would know at a glance where a person lived, and applications for jobs giving the wrong postcode would not send the CV straight to the bottom of the pile.

Aka A notorious well-known high-rise block in this city had similar treatment, though I don't know the prices the flats were sold for. It is now rehabilitated and a nice place to live.

Shipping containers - thinking out of the box in more ways than one.

A very simple solution to part of the problem would be enact legislation to compel speculative developers to either use the land which they have acquired for building housing, to build within a year or sell to someone who will.

There is enough land with planning permission being sat on by speculators who are waiting for the price of housing to rise before they will build, to solve a significant part of the shortage.

Of course, they won't make the fancy profits which they had hoped for, but this retention of land designated for housing is scandalous.

Non-permanent contracts - not an easy thing to introduce, and certainly would be highly unpopular if applied retrospectively, but perhaps new contracts could be for a fixed term, renewable after ten years, say? It does come back to the same problem - there need to be enough properties of all sizes to suit all situations. Individual cases, as you say.

The prefabs weren't great to live in either.

Anything that is built should be built to last. Build cheap, build twice.

I read an article in the paper this morning about building companies who are given planning permission on the condition of x number of 'affordable' homes within the development. They are not going ahead as they won't make enough profit so the land is unused in the hope that the land ill increase in value and they can make a profit that way. Need to think of an incentive for builders.

Also lots of letters about affordable homes for younger people in more rural areas and also in 'retirement popular' market towns where city folk like me have moved to .. now I need to think if my move here to a 'family' sized home was morally justified.

I do think 0% loans to builders for small developments would stimulate some building in villages and small towns. I am not talking about Laing/ Barrett etc but the smaller local one man or small family companies that build one or two places at a time.
It would make the profit margin more attractive and sale price more affordable.

Yes, MiseElf If they got planning permission for housing it was presumably because they claimed that the houses were needed, so why have they not built them? Pure speculation.

Harrigran one of the Hairy Bikers (Dave Myers) lived in a converted shipping container in the London area for a while. Very bijou, too!

He could promote them!

Prefabs wouldn't be anything like the post-war ones this time round. In terms of being built to last, some prefabs still exist, done up of course

The other issue with building larger developments is the local infrastructure to support the new residents. There is a new development locally which looks absolutely fine :

"A superb development of 147 new homes at Catteshall Lane, Godalming, Surrey - 110 of which will be private 2, 3 and 4 bedroom houses as well as 2 bedroom apartments, some overlooking the picturesque River Wey and Meadows beyond."
The 4 beds have a guide price of £575k. Not yet released for sale so not sure what price the rest are going to cost. Local schools/doctors are already full/busy but there does not appear to be any attempt to extend these services. So short sighted! Any permission for 100+ new homes needs to go hand in hand with consideration of how the new residents' other 'social' needs will be met!

We had a lot of prefabs in our town, they seemed to be quite popular despite the fact they often suffered from a problem with dampness.

Do you remember when students commonly lived in digs, as a lodger in someone's house? That seems to have gone way out of fashion. In Manchester, there are many, modern blocks of flats dedicated to students, who now apparently prefer this even to sharing a run down house, another traditional student option. I have a lovely spare room, a house with all mod cons including 2 bathrooms, and I would happily share with a student lodger, at a very modest cost. It seems a shame that so much housing is purpose built for occupants who will only be there just over half the year, while there are many single occupants of large houses.