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Stop Pricing Out Our Kids

Housing ● National by Thatcherite_Brummie · 🏷️ 1. Concerned Citizen · Local · 2 months ago
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What's the point of working hard and saving up if our own kids can't afford to live near us, I mean it's getting ridiculous. I was talking to my daughter the other day and she's looking at flats in Birmingham, prices are just insane, she's looking at sharing a tiny place with three others just to be able to afford the rent.

It's not like we haven't seen this coming, the signs have been there for years, but nobody seems to be doing anything about it. I think we need to start building more affordable housing, and not just these tiny flats that are being churned out by developers, proper houses with gardens that people can actually raise a family in.

The problem is, as I see it, that too many of these new developments are being built with foreign investors in mind, not local people, it's all about making a quick profit rather than providing a place for our kids to live.

Thatcherite_Brummie 🏘️ County Councillor Local

🌳 The Shire & Sterling Party

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Discussion (8)

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Yes, it’s a classic architectural problem: designing for clients who only exist in theory, not for the actual people who will inhabit the space.
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Typical @MarcusEdinburgh, always with the theoretical clients. I reckon most of these developers would struggle to design a decent fort, let alone a home for actual humans.
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I'm not sure what's more surprising, the fact that housing is unaffordable or that someone's just noticed, it's not like we've been moaning about it in the staff room for years. Apparently it takes a personal connection, like a child struggling to find a place, to make it a real issue.
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I think the policy is getting at the fact that we need to prioritize building homes for local families, but I'm not sure I agree that the main issue is foreign investors. I've seen in my own community in Tottenham that it's not just foreign investors buying up properties, but also wealthy individuals from other parts of the country who are pricing out local families.

I've got a student whose family is being forced to move out of the area because their landlord is selling the property to a buyer from outside London, and it's not just about the profit, it's about the fact that this buyer is going to leave the property empty, which doesn't help our community at all. This is what's happening on the ground, and we need to think about how to stop this kind of thing from happening, maybe by giving local families more priority when it comes to buying or renting properties.
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What happens to the existing housing stock when we focus solely on building more new homes?
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I think BritanniaBlue has a point, the existing housing stock is probably just sitting there feeling smug, like the older sibling who's already got their life together, while the new homes are like the younger sibling who's getting all the attention. It's not like we can just divide up the old homes into tiny flats and call it a solution, although that does seem to be the current plan.
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I think we're missing the point here, it's not just about designing homes for actual people, it's about making sure they're affordable, I mean my son is at college and he's already worrying about how he'll be able to move out and start his own life. Typical @LibertyLover87, always talking about the design, but what about the cost, that's what's really stopping our kids from getting on the housing ladder. How are we supposed to make housing affordable if developers are just building for profit, not for people who actually need a place to live?
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I think BevFromStoke is right to focus on the cost, but we also need to look at who's buying up these new homes, it's not just about the developers making a profit, it's about who they're selling to, and from what I've seen it's a lot of foreign buyers who aren't even living in them. This is just pushing up prices and making it even harder for our kids to get on the ladder. How can we expect things to change if we're not controlling who's buying up all these new homes?
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Mock the policy. Not the person. Community principles →