Is this one reason there is a permanent UK housing crisis...

[Ferdinand]

46 minutes ago, Delicatedave said:

As for rents staying literally the same compared to income, well just in the short time of 2003 to 2014 that ratio went from 22% to 34% that's a squeeze

 

Not disagreeing and will comment later, but can you link a source for that stat so I can see what it actually represents - region, before or after the benefit system, household or individual income etc.

 

Cheers

 

F

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, Delicatedave said:

As for rents staying literally the same compared to income, well just in the short time of 2003 to 2014 that ratio went from 22% to 34% that's a squeeze
 

 

Back in 1975 I was taking home about £90/month, and my rent for a bed sitting room, galley kitchen and "bath cupboard" was about 58% of that.  When I left home, the advice I was given was that an affordable rent, or a mortgage, should be around 1/3rd of my income.  22% was unrealistically cheap, IMHO, and 34% sounds pretty much spot on, but both are way lower than I was paying out in rent 45 years ago.

[Ferdinand]

8 minutes ago, Jeremy Harris said:

 

Back in 1975 I was taking home about £90/month, and my rent for a bed sitting room, galley kitchen and "bath cupboard" was about 58% of that.  When I left home, the advice I was given was that an affordable rent, or a mortgage, should be around 1/3rd of my income.  22% was unrealistically cheap, IMHO, and 34% sounds pretty much spot on, but both are way lower than I was paying out in rent 45 years ago.

 

The problem is that I can move those stats by a third or more each way just by changing the detail of the measurement, eg even if it is relative to pre or post tax or pre or post benefit income. 

 

One of the numerical  games played with inequality is that there is a habit  of quoting Gini Coeffficient based on figures of raw income not benefit-adjusted income.

 

Oxfam play similar games with their claims about wealth distribution eg ignoring that we all have the asset of a state pension, which really is also "wealth".

 

Edited February 14, 2020 by Ferdinand

[Delicatedave]

24 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

 

Not disagreeing and will comment later, but can you link a source for that stat so I can see what it actually represents - region, before or after the benefit system, household or individual income etc.

 

Cheers

 

F

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/regionalaccounts/grossdisposablehouseholdincome/adhocs/005568meanrenttomeanincomeratiopercentagelondon2001to2014

 

[Delicatedave]

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/only-4-of-homes-funded-through-affordable-homes-programme-were-for-social-rent-65022

[SteamyTea]

Basing rent on a fraction of income is an odd way to look at it.

Be painful if everything was based like that.

Basing rent on market value of a property is also a bit strange. You can get two very similar houses, in the same town for quite different money.

The town I work in is supposed to be posh, so I looked at the LR database to see what 3 bed houses sold for (was a few years ago and prompted by an estate agent talking bollocks). 4 houses sold for around £220k. One sold for £5m.

So could I rent the £5m one for  a third of my wage?

 

Edited February 14, 2020 by SteamyTea

[Delicatedave]

57 minutes ago, Jeremy Harris said:

 

A great deal of the mental health crisis stems from the shift from institutionalised mental health care, to a system that was supposed to provide "care in the community", but which in reality fell through the cracks to be dealt with by an inconsistent and poorly funded network of local authority, NHS and charity operated care.

 

The flavour of government doesn't matter, as "Care in the Community" arose from the growing feeling in the 1960's and 70's that our system of institutionalised mental health care was unfit for purpose and dehumanised those with mental health issues.  Much as I hated Margaret Thatcher, I cannot blame her for being the person in charge when it rolled out, as there was a 20 year plus head of steam behind abolishing mental health institutions, and it was driven by a Labour/Socialist idea from many years before.  

 

The major flaw in the policy was the assumption that local authorities would be able to provide an adequate level of care, when they were being subject to cuts in their spending and major changes to their income stream (like the Poll Tax).  Had the baton for providing de-institutionalised mental health care been passed to the NHS, together with the funding needed to make it work, then I doubt we'd be in the position we are in today.

Care in the community act was introduced in 1990. At that time I had a brother who worked at All Saints mental home, within a week their patents were affecting the traffic on the main road because they were just wondering out of the hostels & private care home which were old people's home in effect. A number of these people ended up in prison for a few years then let out for the process to start again.

[Jeremy Harris]

35 minutes ago, Delicatedave said:

Care in the community act was introduced in 1990. At that time I had a brother who worked at All Saints mental home, within a week their patents were affecting the traffic on the main road because they were just wondering out of the hostels & private care home which were old people's home in effect. A number of these people ended up in prison for a few years then let out for the process to start again.

 

 

Agreed, but if you look back you'll find that the idea was a lot older.  One of the strongest proponents of it was probably Richard Crossman, back in Harold Wilson's government during the late 1960's.  By 1990 the outrage at the way people were being treated in mental institutions had grown to the point where action had to be taken.  The problem was that the government of the day was intent on allowing things to just sort themselves out, rather than take positive action to ensure that adequate alternative care provision was put in place.

 

To some extent I can understand the pressure that was being applied.  A good friend of mine in the 1980s suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and was a danger to himself, and those around him at times.  I well remember getting a call from his elderly mother late one night, who was terrified the house was going to burn down.  I went around to find that he'd become obsessed with the idea that the wiring behind the wall lights was dangerous, had turned off the power to the house and was going around lighting candles.  No amount of reasoning would calm him down, so we called out his GP.  The GP sedated him, then suggested that he really needed to be sectioned, to get the treatment he needed.  It came down to his mother and myself to agree to this, and he was forcibly taken away to Bodmin.  I visited him many times during his stay there, and it was incredibly grim.  It was much like visiting a prison, but once inside the locked doors it really was like Bedlam, totally chaotic, with a mix of some patients who were just tranquillised to the point where they could do nothing at all, and others running around screaming.

 

In the end, a group of us petitioned that he be allowed home, on the basis that he wasn't getting treatment in the institution, and if anything it was making him worse.  The turning point came when he was allowed home and started treatment at a day centre.  They taught him coping strategies that, over a period of months, meant he was weaned off the array of drugs he'd been taking for years and started to live a more or less normal life.  This experience taught me that, if properly managed and funded, care in the community can be positively life changing.  The idea is sound, but it relies on two things that were in short supply at the time it was introduced; adequate funding and people who really care.  Society in the late 1980's/early 1990's was far from being caring, it was probably the period when selfishness really started to dominate over selflessness in British society.  Whether we can blame any government for that I'm not at all sure, as there were other influences at work as well.

[SteamyTea]

6 minutes ago, Jeremy Harris said:

A good friend of mine in the 1980s suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and was a danger to himself, and those around him at times. 

When I was first at university, I had a flat made that tried to peel his skin off with a potato peeler.  Was down to some bad acid.

We just told him to stop.  A while later, he drank too much and had to have a trip to hospital for a bit of pumping.

Found out a few years back that he decided to jump of a cliff in Dorset.

All very sad and looking back, all the signs of serious mental health issues were there, but were were less enlightened 40 years ago.

[Jeremy Harris]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

When I was first at university, I had a flat made that tried to peel his skin off with a potato peeler.  Was down to some bad acid.

We just told him to stop.  A while later, he drank too much and had to have a trip to hospital for a bit of pumping.

Found out a few years back that he decided to jump of a cliff in Dorset.

All very sad and looking back, all the signs of serious mental health issues were there, but were were less enlightened 40 years ago.

 

My friend's mother had a real problem accepting that he had a long-standing mental health issue.  He'd been on antidepressants, prescribed by his GP, for decades.  They did no good whatsoever, and were completely the wrong sort of treatment for him, but back then GPs seemed to just dole out antidepressants like Smarties.  I have a suspicion that this was partly because they either weren't trained to deal with mental health issues, or, perhaps, they just couldn't be bothered to spend time on getting an accurate diagnosis. 

 

The revelation in my friend's treatment came about when he started seeing a doctor who understood the subtleties of different mental health conditions and made an accurate diagnosis.  The daft thing is that any of us that knew him could probably have steered a doctor in the right direction years earlier, as we knew that he'd become obsessed about particular things, to an extreme degree.  I can remember him carrying a sack and shovel in the back of his car and stopping to sweep up any mud he saw on the road, as he was convinced that someone would skid on it and kill themselves.  I've lost count of the times he asked me to check things in their house.  Worrying about electrical fittings was a constant issue, everything from getting me around to check for invisible water damage to his garage lights, to the safety of their immersion heater or boiler wiring.  For a long time I could just go around and be seen to inspect and test something he was worried about and that would calm him down, but as his condition got worse nothing any of us could do would convince him.

 

 

[Delicatedave]

At the end of the day its not our job to see these things and see the are solutions to them or see mistakes have been made. It's down to those who go into politics to see the mistake &  provide solutions to all these problems. To make our life easier, healthier and more rewarding. All I see is politicians getting much better at lying, getting much richer for being politicians and us being less caring because we are too busy doing for ourselves what those politicians should be doing. Oh yes we'll do a bit for charity here and there and that makes us feel good but the basic fabric of what society is is being stripped away till we are all living in boarded up homes speaking to other via the internet and fearing walking out our front door in case we meet someone.

It took 2 world wars to wake people up last time, let's hope it doesn't come to that again.

[AliG]

Lots of issues here.

 

I have no idea what can be done about the mental health issue. I see it all the time. My daughter comes home and tells stories about other children at school who plainly have mental health issues and these are affecting other children. I know a few people who have or who have tried to commit suicide. None of these people had any money issues. I really doubt it is anything to do with government cuts. It is clearly a very complicated issue, I don't know if general mental health is deteriorating or it is just more noticeable.

 

In terms of the original question, "Is this one reason the UK is in a permanent housing crisis", I believe that the real answer is because the UK wants to be. The government really doesn't have that much control over large social changes over time. Lots of countries have lots of different government priorities yet society has seen similar changes. In general the weight if people's actions creates the world that they want.

 

In the UK, the majority of people own their own home. They have a massive vested interest in keeping house prices up and do not care a hoot about people who don't own houses. Governments come into power by pursuing policies that the majority of people like. The majority of people in the UK and NIMBYs who don't want houses built because it keeps up the value of their houses which they have often borrowed against. We have all suffered these NIMBYs in planning, their real concern is basically always that your house being built might devalue theirs - whether that is making the street look less nice, or reducing their light and privacy or increasing traffic or indeed HS2 - what they really mean is it will harm their ability to maximise the value of their house. You cannot build a house you would like to live in - tough that is not their concern. In the last 20 years the UK has seen higher inflation than both the USA and the rest of Europe. Borrowers and owners of hard assets benefit from inflation and the UK has higher inflation than many other countries.

 

The other issue as people have mentioned is the inevitable pull of large cities. As more and more people move to the South East, people act like this is a peculiar problem to the UK, but we live in an urbanising world where large cities continue to draw people in. You see this in China, Australia, the USA, Japan, everywhere. Thus these places have a shortage of housing and the rest of the country may have a surplus.

 

The government can fix the problem by freeing up land to build in the places that people want to live, but the people who already own houses there don't like it and will complain endlessly. There could also be limits on the ability to rent and Airbnb houses as well as to stockpile houses for investment purposes. Airbnb is another way of turning houses into an investment and not a place to live. But again this keeps benefitting the 2/3 of people who own a house.

 

It is interesting how popular progressive taxes have become. The more of the tax burden that falls on the fewer people the more popular it becomes to have more progressive taxes as most voters win in this scenario. Strange that this kind of policy is popular whilst policies that obviously would reduce house prices are much less popular. Is the difference simply that a larger percentage of people own houses than pay net taxes.

 

If of course these trends continue eventually less than half of houses all be owner occupied and the pendulum will swing.

[oldkettle]

2 hours ago, Delicatedave said:

At the end of the day its not our job to see these things and see the are solutions to them or see mistakes have been made. It's down to those who go into politics to see the mistake &  provide solutions to all these problems.

 

Sorry, can't possibly agree with this. 

You don't expect politicians to solve scientific or engineering or medical problems, do you? All politicians can really do in most cases is choose from a list of solutions suggested by professionals. They can tweak the details and they can change their mind and ultimately their decision will depend on a mix of their convictions and their understanding of what their employers, the electorate, want. But I can't possibly imagine an MP saying "this is a completely new way to organise care for the mentally ill". 

[joe90]

My wife and I disagree on planning for new houses, I see lots of plots around us that would be perfect for a house (small, not producing agri products) but my wife says we do not have the doctors/schools etc etc for more people in the area. A local primary school closed a few years ago despite being very good, my argument is if more houses were allowed local schools might stay open, village shops/post offices might not shut. It’s a chicken and egg situation, if we wait fir more services locally before allowing building it will never happen, if more people live in a area, services will have to follow and if there is not a shortage of housing their prices will fall and become affordable.

 

p.s. More houses mean more council tax income.

[Jeremy Harris]

I've direct experience of reporting to a government minister for a time, when I was programme manager for a fairly big procurement (at the time my delegated budget was £1.38bn, believe it or not. . . ).   He was a nice enough chap, but really hadn't got much of a clue about the nuts and bolts of his job.  I had a routine briefing with him once a month, for maybe an hour or two at most, and almost all of that time was spent with him trying to work out how to spin progress, and the inevitable problems that arose, further up his political food chain.  I learned early on that he had zero interest in actually delivering a bit of kit that would make a real difference.

 

I don't think it's realistic to expect any politician to have any real interest in making significant changes to society.  Politicians have a very limited ability to do much, and they all, without exception, tend to prioritise staying in power (once they get there) over doing anything unpopular that has any chance of making any real difference.  As @AliG mentions above, the really powerful levers for change (or rather stasis) in society are the everyday wishes of the majority.  The majority vote for things that don't negatively disturb their life, and don't care too much about anything outside that.  You might get some "Islington Idealists" ranting about the need for more social housing, for example, but see how they react if someone comes up with a plan to build that social housing in their back yard. 

 

Interestingly, we had a fair bit of unexpected support when we submitted our planning application.  Some of those who had objected to a house being built on our plot years earlier had changed their minds.  At least two of those, plus the view of the Parish Council, I think, changed their minds because the plot had become so overgrown with brambles and weeds that it was a real eyesore, and they took the view that having a house on it would be an improvement.  I don't think they really wanted to see our house built, but building it was the lesser of two evils in their view.

 

When I mentioned that the village should think about writing a Neighbourhood Plan, and include in that provision for affordable housing for people who'd grown up in the village, it received a very lukewarm response.  There was a lot of noise about the need for affordable homes, but no one seemed to want them to be near where they lived.

[SteamyTea]

11 hours ago, Jeremy Harris said:

The majority vote for things that don't negatively disturb their life

There have been instances recently where the opposite is true.

[Delicatedave]

16 hours ago, oldkettle said:

 

Sorry, can't possibly agree with this. 

You don't expect politicians to solve scientific or engineering or medical problems, do you? All politicians can really do in most cases is choose from a list of solutions suggested by professionals. They can tweak the details and they can change their mind and ultimately their decision will depend on a mix of their convictions and their understanding of what their employers, the electorate, want. But I can't possibly imagine an MP saying "this is a completely new way to organise care for the mentally ill". 

I think you actually just agreed.  Politicians are there to find the answer and implement it.
The problem is they too often do it in a idealogical way not the best way. I'll give you a typical example: The was a time when the UK led the world in broadband communications. British Telecom had prepared the path forward for all homes in the UK including the building of 2 factories to manufacture the the parts needed. Thatcher in her wisdom decided she wanted to open up that market to private enterprise and stopped it dead in it's tracks. The factories were sold off and US companies allowed to move in. To this day we still suffer as a country because of that decision not only in the lack of broadband to business but also now having to have chinise technology for security systems. All that would have been British & we would have been selling it world wide like they are.

[joe90]

I am ex BT and I agree with the above, also BT wanted to stream tv etc but was stopped in its tracks by government who wanted to open up the market.

[Ferdinand]

I think the original post on changes of Ministers is significant in that short tenures prevents strategies being pursued for long enough to get them done, and then it all changes and we go back to the start.

 

If you change them every 12 months there will never be *any* chance of successful long term policy. If you leave them in post then there at least exists the chance that it could happen.

 

One of David Cameron's strengths was that he left people in post to get on with it for longer periods. Compare to Blair (or perhaps Thatcher) who were micromanagers, though they arguably had Ministers who were big enough characters to argue back, or Brown who was a bear with a sore head.

 

We may not agree with the policies, but a modicum of stability is necessary to find out what works and what does not.

 

That we have recently existed in political earthquake-land has not helped, either.

Example:

Ministers changing jobs

How many people have held each post since 1997-2019?

 

[SteamyTea]

Chris Grayling is a treasure and shows that keeping a minister in place can pay dividends.

When I say dividends, what I mean is that he takes the pressure off everyone else to do anything meaningful.

8 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Ministers changing jobs

Is there a similar chart for top civil servants, the people that do the real work.

[Delicatedave]

1 hour ago, joe90 said:

I am ex BT and I agree with the above, also BT wanted to stream tv etc but was stopped in its tracks by government who wanted to open up the market.

Yes we have had a lot of patriotic nationalist stuff but when was the last time a British government invested in Britain?

[Jeremy Harris]

6 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

There have been instances recently where the opposite is true.

 

Not sure about this, really.  I believe that sometimes people vote for people (or things) because they believe they won't change their personal circumstances in a negative way, and sometimes vote for people (or things) because they are annoyed, fed up or just disillusioned with the way things are going.  I believe that one thing that the very much faster pace with which "news" and information travels now has radically changed the way people vote.  Once upon a time many people just voted on the basis of what they read through the filter of their chosen newspaper, or what they heard on the radio or TV.  Now that information space is dominated by social media opinions and "influencers", who in turn are being hijacked by those who wish to push a particular narrative.

 

The one positive thing to come from this is that there now seems to be a growing scepticism regarding some that much of the popular material spread via social media is either misleading or just completely untrue.  I think we have to thank a few high profile social media users for highlighting this, albeit unintentionally in the case of a few.  Maybe the message that clickbait is a sure fire indication that someone's trying to spread a lie will become more widely accepted, but somehow I doubt it.  There seems to be a section of society who will always want to believe the impossible, or improbable, it's how some of the more infamous tabloids have been so popular for decades.

[Jeremy Harris]

27 minutes ago, Delicatedave said:

Yes we have had a lot of patriotic nationalist stuff but when was the last time a British government invested in Britain?

 

Hard to answer, but in practical terms most of the money that the government spends is spent within the UK.  Sure, some high profile projects make it seem as if this isn't the case, but a look at our balance of payments shows that the money we spend outside the UK isn't much, when compared to the massive chunk spent within the UK.

 

Whether we like it or not, we're just a small island nation that used to be an industrial and manufacturing hub, but which has become a financial and service sector hub over the last 50 years or so.  Some may look on that as being the choice of a government, but the reality is that there are some truly massive industrial and manufacturing nations that can produce stuff for a fraction of the cost that we can.  If the UK wanted to remain an industrial and manufacturing centre then the only way to do that would have been to drive down costs, and it's a hard fact that a major element of manufacturing cost is wages.  If the UK wanted to compete with, say, China, then it would need to reduce wages and increase productivity to match.  I cannot see any government being prepared to support a policy of wage reduction, in order to remain globally competitive.

 

What's become clear over the past few decades is that governments (with the exception of totalitarian regimes) do not have much control over what happens to society within the nations they govern.  The greatest influences on society here are probably big US corporations, like Facebook, Amazon, YouTube etc, who can literally shape the way large numbers of people think and behave.

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, Jeremy Harris said:

I believe that sometimes people vote for people (or things) because they believe they won't change their personal circumstances in a negative way, and sometimes vote for people (or things) because they are annoyed, fed up or just disillusioned with the way things are going. 

There is a saying that political parties loose elections, not win them.

Now I may be in the minority here, but I have not seen much in the last 10 years to give the general public confidence in their chosen decisions.

Just to put a decade into perspective, that is the difference between puberty and a degree qualified teacher starting out on their first job, Tesla going from a niche development company to the leaders in EVs, Facebook gong from 400 million users to 2 billion.

And about the same amount of time that most people on here take from deciding to build a house and getting it 90% finished.

[Delicatedave]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Harris said:

 

Hard to answer, but in practical terms most of the money that the government spends is spent within the UK.  Sure, some high profile projects make it seem as if this isn't the case, but a look at our balance of payments shows that the money we spend outside the UK isn't much, when compared to the massive chunk spent within the UK.

 

Whether we like it or not, we're just a small island nation that used to be an industrial and manufacturing hub, but which has become a financial and service sector hub over the last 50 years or so.  Some may look on that as being the choice of a government, but the reality is that there are some truly massive industrial and manufacturing nations that can produce stuff for a fraction of the cost that we can.  If the UK wanted to remain an industrial and manufacturing centre then the only way to do that would have been to drive down costs, and it's a hard fact that a major element of manufacturing cost is wages.  If the UK wanted to compete with, say, China, then it would need to reduce wages and increase productivity to match.  I cannot see any government being prepared to support a policy of wage reduction, in order to remain globally competitive.

 

What's become clear over the past few decades is that governments (with the exception of totalitarian regimes) do not have much control over what happens to society within the nations they govern.  The greatest influences on society here are probably big US corporations, like Facebook, Amazon, YouTube etc, who can literally shape the way large numbers of people think and behave.

The has been no investment, till Thatcher our income was 37% from state owned industry it's now less than 10%
Have we replaced that 17%? no we've made the problem worse by reducing the tax and handing large tax cuts in CGT and yes someone is going to say "yea but we are getting more tax now so that's worked" no we are not because those figures are never adjusted for inflation or population expansion this is a con the likes of the BBC have failed to point out.

It's simple maths, we as a nation are not looking after our own people. A nation is it's people is it not. Those as old as me (60) were you not promised a better life, less working hours, more leisure time, in your youth. Why are working harder, why are we working longer into old age? and why are basic needs like food, heating and a place to live so extensive & hard to get today? When are we going to wake up or is it a fact that just enough of us are doing ok not to want change?

Edited February 15, 2020 by Delicatedave