Poor housing is one of the core pillars of inequality in Britain. For the children growing up in the UK’s 1.1m overcrowded households, and countless others, life prospects are immediately diminished. Poor design affects lives: it means a prospective doctor or lawyer being forced to do her homework in a cramped, dark, and damp bedroom, or relationships between adolescent siblings torn apart by the stresses of having to share a bed. If we want to tackle that then we have to start building decent housing. Good quality homes are a vital to ensuring a good quality of life.
The disused Mount Pleasant site in Islington presents a unique opportunity: empty 3.5 hectare areas in central London do not come along often. With the UK housing crisis deepening by the week and the capital in particularly desperate need of new homes, this was a chance to turn an empty building in Islington into hundreds of decent new affordable homes. The site’s owner, newly-privatised Royal Mail, had other ideas, preferring a more profitable mass of high rise luxury apartment blocks - the only type of housing that the country doesn’t need more of. Borough councils, local people and a cross-party coalition of politicians lined up to say that the plan would be a huge mistake, a new generation of ugly, expensive and unpopular tower blocks that ordinary people can neither afford nor want to live in. Three-quarters of homes on the site will be apartments affordable only to foreign investors and the super-rich is a travesty. Even the few "affordable" homes that are included could cost up to £2,800 per month to rent, meaning prospective tenants would need an income of at least £100,000 – more than treble the average London salary and in reality "affordable" only to a very few. Boris Johnson, called in to adjudicate, took just 20 minutes to rubber-stamp the proposals with a dismissive wave and disinterested shrug.
But affordability is not the only fault with the Mount Pleasant plan. In agreeing to another series of high-rise towers, built in a ring and described despairingly by locals as a “fortress”, planners have once again sacrificed quality housing for the sake of cramming homes into big concrete blocks. In doing so they are repeating the mistakes of the 50s and 60s – mistakes that are still visible across the UK’s major cities. From Moss Side in Manchester to the Red Road Flats in Glasgow, grey concrete tower blocks dominate the horizon in constituencies like mine all over the country - low quality bastions of deprivation, ill health and despair. Very few politicians or planners have grown up on these estates. As a result, they continue to approve plans for buildings that are not designed with wellbeing or quality of life in mind.
Shelter’s chief executive Campbell Robb said: “With the ‘rent trap’ taking hold of millions across the country, the prospect of a stable home is becoming a distant dream for far too many young people and families. Instead they’re facing a lifetime of moving from one unstable and expensive rental property to the next. “Successive Governments’ failure to build enough affordable homes has left a generation burdened with sky-high rents and soaring house prices, with many struggling to make ends meet – let alone save for a deposit.”
Two thirds of people living in private rented homes could be trapped into renting forever as they are unable to put any money aside for a house deposit, new research shows. 5m people – 66 per cent of renters - are stuck in the "rent trap". The situation for is getting worse, with the proportion of renters not saving anything towards a deposit jumping by 13 per cent in two years. Of those who are planning to buy their own home, more than a third think it will take them over a decade to save enough for a deposit.
The situation is similar in Scotland and Wales, where soaring numbers of people in private rented accommodation could be priced out of ever owning a home. Research earlier this year by Shelter Cymru showed more than half of those renting privately wanted to buy their own home but thought they would never be able to afford it. According to Census data, the number of tenants in the Welsh private rented sector has risen by 42 per cent in 10 years, to 184,254 people. And one in five people in Scotland fear they won’t be able to afford to pay the rent or mortgage during the coming year, according to polling. The research suggests that hundreds of thousands of renters and homeowners in Scotland will at some time in 2014 be worried whether they’ll be able to keep a roof over their heads.
From here and here
The disused Mount Pleasant site in Islington presents a unique opportunity: empty 3.5 hectare areas in central London do not come along often. With the UK housing crisis deepening by the week and the capital in particularly desperate need of new homes, this was a chance to turn an empty building in Islington into hundreds of decent new affordable homes. The site’s owner, newly-privatised Royal Mail, had other ideas, preferring a more profitable mass of high rise luxury apartment blocks - the only type of housing that the country doesn’t need more of. Borough councils, local people and a cross-party coalition of politicians lined up to say that the plan would be a huge mistake, a new generation of ugly, expensive and unpopular tower blocks that ordinary people can neither afford nor want to live in. Three-quarters of homes on the site will be apartments affordable only to foreign investors and the super-rich is a travesty. Even the few "affordable" homes that are included could cost up to £2,800 per month to rent, meaning prospective tenants would need an income of at least £100,000 – more than treble the average London salary and in reality "affordable" only to a very few. Boris Johnson, called in to adjudicate, took just 20 minutes to rubber-stamp the proposals with a dismissive wave and disinterested shrug.
But affordability is not the only fault with the Mount Pleasant plan. In agreeing to another series of high-rise towers, built in a ring and described despairingly by locals as a “fortress”, planners have once again sacrificed quality housing for the sake of cramming homes into big concrete blocks. In doing so they are repeating the mistakes of the 50s and 60s – mistakes that are still visible across the UK’s major cities. From Moss Side in Manchester to the Red Road Flats in Glasgow, grey concrete tower blocks dominate the horizon in constituencies like mine all over the country - low quality bastions of deprivation, ill health and despair. Very few politicians or planners have grown up on these estates. As a result, they continue to approve plans for buildings that are not designed with wellbeing or quality of life in mind.
Shelter’s chief executive Campbell Robb said: “With the ‘rent trap’ taking hold of millions across the country, the prospect of a stable home is becoming a distant dream for far too many young people and families. Instead they’re facing a lifetime of moving from one unstable and expensive rental property to the next. “Successive Governments’ failure to build enough affordable homes has left a generation burdened with sky-high rents and soaring house prices, with many struggling to make ends meet – let alone save for a deposit.”
Two thirds of people living in private rented homes could be trapped into renting forever as they are unable to put any money aside for a house deposit, new research shows. 5m people – 66 per cent of renters - are stuck in the "rent trap". The situation for is getting worse, with the proportion of renters not saving anything towards a deposit jumping by 13 per cent in two years. Of those who are planning to buy their own home, more than a third think it will take them over a decade to save enough for a deposit.
The situation is similar in Scotland and Wales, where soaring numbers of people in private rented accommodation could be priced out of ever owning a home. Research earlier this year by Shelter Cymru showed more than half of those renting privately wanted to buy their own home but thought they would never be able to afford it. According to Census data, the number of tenants in the Welsh private rented sector has risen by 42 per cent in 10 years, to 184,254 people. And one in five people in Scotland fear they won’t be able to afford to pay the rent or mortgage during the coming year, according to polling. The research suggests that hundreds of thousands of renters and homeowners in Scotland will at some time in 2014 be worried whether they’ll be able to keep a roof over their heads.
From here and here
1 comment:
A similar housing problem exists world-wide...of lack of affordable houses.
See this story on west coast America
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26656-developers-aren-t-going-to-solve-the-housing-crisis-in-san-francisco-the-definitive-response-to-supply-side-solutionists
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