Today (15th October) the London Transport Museum has launched an exhibition about Suburbia. I think it is related to how the extending of some of London's tube lines during the twenties and thirties enabled London to grow outwards into the countryside. Some of the posters from that era announcing the completion of the lines and the associated house building are quite amusing (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8305000/8305579.stm). For instance, fancy a three bedroom semi-detached house for £750! However, you may have missed the boat, as deposits were being taken eighty years ago! It seems amazing now but at the time people had to be persuaded to move outside of what we would now think of as central London with poster adverts such as 'Adventure to Edgware!' As if Edgware is the North Pole!
It was also an era when most working class and lower middle class people were tenants rather than owner occupiers. So the house-builders of the time had to convince an initially sceptical public that they could even afford their own home. Advertisers therefore produced advertisements such as the one for the Planet Building Society (whatever happened to them?) which would help to persuade house buyers that they would be able to afford the repayments on a mortgage rather than just pay rent.
You might be wondering what all this has got to do with how things are today. Well, it occurs to me that part of the reason that house prices in the UK and in the south-east in particular are so expensive (even after the recent falls) is that we have not had a major house building programme like the ones between the wars or during the sixties. The population has continued to grow, and the demand for houses has grown even faster as a result of households becoming smaller (more people living on their own). So the net result is more people chasing a slowly rising number of properties.
So what is the solution? Well, first of all we need to start building significantly more houses. And yes, that means building some on greenfield sites. Families with young children do not want to live on former rubbish tips or old gas works. We have to accept that to support the growing population we need to build some new family size homes in places that are currently open countryside but near to large towns. It is all very well having the greenbelt, and I am sure The Protection for Rural England would have something to say, but most of their members are retired vicars living in The Old Rectory in Miss Marple style villages whilst the real people are trying to bring up young children in flats that are not large enough for hamsters!
So a large house building scheme is needed. And not in the middle of Wales. We need more homes, particularly in the south-east. But where exactly I hear you say? Well, you can put them next to my house for a start. I am surrounded by fields. They are very pretty. Every now and again I see someone walking in them. But they would be perfect for some major house building. I don't care if the lesser-spotted chaffinch is evicted. And I don't care if it is in my backyard. We need more homes and we need them now.
Secondly, whilst we try to cope with the shortage of family size homes we need to do something to persuade older people, many of whom are now living on their own, to move out of large family size homes which they no longer need. I know this will not be popular. But it is essential. How do we do it? Scrap the council tax discount for single occupancy. This is madness. They should be paying more not less. Double the rate of council tax on bands F and G homes. Finally introduce a super tax on homes worth more than one million. Older people whilst they may be asset rich tend to be income poor, so this will force many to sell up. Ruthless I know, but it has to be done.
In the meantime, and until I become Prime Minister, we have to live with the situation as it is! Let me know your thoughts.
by Samantha May
Comments (2)
Interesting views Samantha, but I hope my 86 year old mum can live in her 3 bedroom house as long as she wants to. It was bought when new during the '50's by my mum and dad and will become vacant and a new family will move in when nature takes its course - not when bueracrats impose penalties on single occupancy. If you think that any government would direct any extra revenue gained by super tax or raising the rate of upper council tax bands into any housing related areas - you would be mistaken. It would be wasted. By the way, your idea of populating out of town areas with much needed housing has already been done round my mums house. It was in a lane surrounded by the so called green belt and is now surrounded by council housing, road widening schemes, roundabouts, speed cameras, speed humps, inadequate oversubscribed schools, aging sewerage sytem that often stinks, grotty NHS hospital that can't cope, parks filled with druggies and drunks and even a Macdonalds. Oh to be in your house, surrounded by fields to walk in. Keep the chaffinches in the countyside, don't go cookoo.
Ronnie boy
During our search for a house we have come across many retired couples or widowers rattling around in much loved family homes but not because they still want a house which they are using all their energy to look after but because there is no one available to buy their homes to enable them to downsize! So double their C Tax band and make their homes even less affordable to those who might otherwise buy them. I guess that other older people are likely to be finished off by the trials and tribulations of house buying/selling and the stress of moving. The larger modern contributor to take up of family homes by single people is surely divorce..... two single parents both with 2/3/4 bed houses because the joint custody demands this. There are lots of family homes ("no-chain") lying empty because of repossesions and people forced to move but unable to dipose of their empty property, and those empty because the owner has died or moved into sheltered housing of course. It seems to me that those houses that are selling in my area are right at the bottom of the chain and in prime rental areas....no prises for guessing that these aren't being bought by families!
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