UK Politics - Asset stripping on a national scale

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Raja said:

Hahaha why not? I know everyone goes there but still!

 

You answered your own question...EVERYONE goes there. Auckland is full(ish).

Having lived therefor 7 years I was glad to leave, and the only reason I ever visit is to see family. Though obviously a large proportion of its 1.6 million population have a different opinion.

Your obvious question is how can a city of only 1.6 million be called "full"? The answer is partly failure and unwillingness to do what could be done to accommodate substantially more people, and partly geographically being unable to do what would need to be done to accommodate more people. I mostly think it's the former, since people who live within a 5km radius of the CBD want to maintain a suburban housing environment rather than accepting the need for it to become urban. I don't think Auckland could ever be a city of 10 million people, but it could potentially be a city of 5 million people if planned out right.

[dog-days]

7 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Also, are the windows double-glazed, not too old, and do they have trickle-vents to let in a small but steady supply of fresh air?

When its cold, are you seeing condensation on the windows? If so then there’s a lot of damp inside the house. The issue isn’t necessarily the windows, its just that damp will show on the windows as condensation.

Thanks, Derfel Cadarn. Wasn't looking for advice, in this case. Just doing one of those ill-advised and impulsive look-at-me waves on noticing that for many of the posters, living in decrepit rented accommodation for years without much hope of change is something hypothetical that maybe doesn't happen to anyone in the circles they move in in real life. 

Edited April 14, 2023 by dog-days

[mormont]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Re housing - housing quality is a problem you can only think about when you have a house to live in. So to me the first problem to address is supply. Once you have sufficient supply then the market can be used to sort out the quality issue. No sane person will voluntarily live in poor conditions when adequate conditions are affordably available. So owners of squalid houses and flats will either need to bring them up to scratch or sell them. Assuming modern building codes are decent all new housing should establish a decent quality floor that existing housing stock would need to approach to be able to command comparable rents. But building out supply, esp for low income earners, will need to be a govt venture, since the market will not provide for poor people as there is no profit in it for new builds.

As someone who advises people about housing, almost everything in this paragraph I disagree with and for most of it, that's because it just isn't true.

You cannot seperate the issues of quality and supply. The biggest supply issues are unsuitable and low quality housing, and excessive cost. You can only cure the supply issue if you provide secure, suitable housing in good repair. Providing low quality housing does not fix the supply issue, allowing you to address the quality issue later. That's not how housing works.

The market has never sorted out the quality issue because the incentives aren't there to do so. To work as you suggest, there would need to be a significant excess supply in the market of housing for all household types - suitable number of beds, suitable locations, adapted for physical needs, etc. As anyone who's looked for housing will tell you, for many households that is not and never will be the case. Apart from anything else, it would mean lots of properties standing empty. Housing isn't a market where you can warehouse excess stock until demand rises again. It's also a market where switching costs are very high, even if alternatives are available. In fact I can think of few markets where they're higher.

So intervention by government is required, and in Scotland we have the 'tolerable standard' for all housing and 'repairing standard' for rentals, and yes, building codes - which are also government intervention in the market, so it's odd that you advocate them while suggesting the market will fix the issues itself. You also suggest the government needs to get involved in supply, so clearly you don't actually think the market will fix the issues!

The problem there, though, is that it will always remain true that the market isn't interested in low income renters, so government will need to remain in the market. Which is fine by me, I think it should be the case, but again, doesn't really fit with the 'market forces' bit of your argument.

tl;dr - quality isn't separable from supply and you can't fix either without significant government intervention.

Edited April 14, 2023 by mormont

[lacuna]

How to prevent the positive feedback loop, though? Build more urban housing, prices go down, more people move to the city (because it's cool), prices go up, build more...

Taken to the extreme, you end up with megacities full of un/underemployed people, and zero rural communities.

[Darzin]

4 minutes ago, lacuna said:

How to prevent the positive feedback loop, though? Build more urban housing, prices go down, more people move to the city (because it's cool), prices go up, build more...

Taken to the extreme, you end up with megacities full of un/underemployed people, and zero rural communities.

I dunno why the people would be unemployed. A large part of the move to the cities is jobs. It's just Western countries are woefully under building their cities. There need to be way more towering East Asian style apartments to handle the demand for new housing. 

[lacuna]

3 minutes ago, Darzin said:

I dunno why the people would be unemployed. A large part of the move to the cities is jobs. It's just Western countries are woefully under building their cities. There need to be way more towering East Asian style apartments to handle the demand for new housing. 

Because if housing was affordable, pretty much everyone already struggling with un/underemployment outside of large cities would instantly move there, I reckon. And so would a lot of people who technically weren't, but would love to live in the city for the amenities.

 

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, lacuna said:

Because if housing was affordable, pretty much everyone already struggling with un/underemployment outside of large cities would instantly move there, I reckon. And so would a lot of people who technically weren't, but would love to live in the city for the amenities.

 

That’s more about infrastructure though isn’t it? Cities are popular because that’s where all the jobs and cool stuff is, but also it’s where the infrastructure, transport and facilities are. It doesn’t have to be the case though. You could for instance build new towns, and connect everything up with public transport, but we’re long past the point of being able to do that. Something like HS2 is so oppressively expensive it might never happen, and the East London Crossing is taking forever to move forward. So we are sort of stuck where we are.

[The Anti-Targ]

48 minutes ago, mormont said:

As someone who advises people about housing, almost everything in this paragraph I disagree with and for most of it, that's because it just isn't true.

You cannot seperate the issues of quality and supply. The biggest supply issues are unsuitable and low quality housing, and excessive cost. You can only cure the supply issue if you provide secure, suitable housing in good repair. Providing low quality housing does not fix the supply issue, allowing you to address the quality issue later. That's not how housing works.

The market has never sorted out the quality issue because the incentives aren't there to do so. To work as you suggest, there would need to be a significant excess supply in the market of housing for all household types - suitable number of beds, suitable locations, adapted for physical needs, etc. As anyone who's looked for housing will tell you, for many households that is not and never will be the case. Apart from anything else, it would mean lots of properties standing empty. Housing isn't a market where you can warehouse excess stock until demand rises again. It's also a market where switching costs are very high, even if alternatives are available. In fact I can think of few markets where they're higher.

So intervention by government is required, and in Scotland we have the 'tolerable standard' for all housing and 'repairing standard' for rentals, and yes, building codes - which are also government intervention in the market, so it's odd that you advocate them while suggesting the market will fix the issues itself. You also suggest the government needs to get involved in supply, so clearly you don't actually think the market will fix the issues!

The problem there, though, is that it will always remain true that the market isn't interested in low income renters, so government will need to remain in the market. Which is fine by me, I think it should be the case, but again, doesn't really fit with the 'market forces' bit of your argument.

tl;dr - quality isn't separable from supply and you can't fix either without significant government intervention.

You either mis-understood what I wrote or I wasn't clear in what I wrote, since I think we mostly agree. A bit like minimum wage, if public housing provides the floor for the minimum quality of housing (not housing of minimum quality), then the private sector (the market) must meet or exceed that. Existing low quality housing stock either will get sold cheaply since they become unrentable, to owner occupiers who will bring up the quality of their house because they bought so cheaply, or to housing providers that can either bring the houses up to standard or knock them down and build from scratch, or the existing owners bring the houses up to scratch to make them rentable again.

Quality and supply absolutely go together, so long as you address supply with reasonable quality housing, which a public housing project should do.

[lacuna]

From my limited, casual web browsing-level of understanding, totally viable work-from-anywhere schemes are being thwarted by influential commercial property owners, since office buildings etc. would quickly lose value.

How about we told those guys to fuck off, and commenced with re-zoning and converting office blocks to housing where possible?

While cities have a certain appeal, I think a lot of people, especially families, wouldn't mind getting out of cities as well, but are being held back because "back to the office!".

Edited April 14, 2023 by lacuna

[lacuna]

19 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

That’s more about infrastructure though isn’t it? Cities are popular because that’s where all the jobs and cool stuff is, but also it’s where the infrastructure, transport and facilities are. It doesn’t have to be the case though. You could for instance build new towns, and connect everything up with public transport, but we’re long past the point of being able to do that. Something like HS2 is so oppressively expensive it might never happen, and the East London Crossing is taking forever to move forward. So we are sort of stuck where we are.

That is, as you say, expensive. Unless you go the eminent domain route, which people don't love.

I still say personal, automated VTOL vehicles will save the day.

And if I were God Emperor of Earth, there would be no more concrete - that is, tearing existing shit down and building something new (and sustainable) would be tolerated, but we've fucked up enough nature already.

 

[mormont]

6 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

You either mis-understood what I wrote or I wasn't clear in what I wrote, since I think we mostly agree. A bit like minimum wage, if public housing provides the floor for the minimum quality of housing (not housing of minimum quality), then the private sector (the market) must meet or exceed that.

I think you weren't clear, because you talk about the market fixing quality issues and again, this has simply never happened, even when public housing was widespread and the private rented sector was small.

As for the public sector setting the floor, that did happen in this country and it did not have the effect you predict.

The fundamental issue is that you seem to think the housing market operates under normal market rules or something very close, driven by demand from consumers who can switch product if quality is low. It doesn't, for many reasons. Housing is a very unusual good, in economic terms, rented housing especially so. Everyone must have housing, it is very expensive to produce and maintain, it has key qualities that can't be adapted easily (location, size), it has significant externalities, unusual demand factors and there are huge barriers to entry for producers. There are two types of consumers (renters and buyers), and some of the latter will act as providers for the former. Switching costs for both types of consumer are, as noted, insanely high and often unaffordable. The inherent value of the product, which is based on a material used in production (land) rather than market demand, is critical to both individual consumers, producers, and the national economy and so governments are disincentivised to intervene to bring prices down or allow them to fall, even when market forces say that should happen. I could go on.

But basically, to fix housing supply in the UK requires radical rethinking of how the economy works, which is why governments have been ignoring it and hoping something turns up for decades.

[Proudfeet]

49 minutes ago, lacuna said:

How about we told those guys to fuck off, and commenced with re-zoning and converting office blocks to housing where possible?

Might need some creativity with the design and purpose. Think the major challenges are plumbing and ventilation. The number and location of toilets and water points are a problem. Not sure if they can be increased to accommodate multiple families on each floor and personally wouldn't like to live where these are communal.

[ants]

2 hours ago, lacuna said:

From my limited, casual web browsing-level of understanding, totally viable work-from-anywhere schemes are being thwarted by influential commercial property owners, since office buildings etc. would quickly lose value.

How about we told those guys to fuck off, and commenced with re-zoning and converting office blocks to housing where possible?

While cities have a certain appeal, I think a lot of people, especially families, wouldn't mind getting out of cities as well, but are being held back because "back to the office!".

Given the environmental impact of housing people in the country is usually higher, and the build & infrastructure costs are higher, I generally think encouraging people to move out of the cities is a terrible idea. Happy to encourage working remotely and converting offices though!

[lacuna]

2 hours ago, ants said:

Given the environmental impact of housing people in the country is usually higher, and the build & infrastructure costs are higher, I generally think encouraging people to move out of the cities is a terrible idea. Happy to encourage working remotely and converting offices though!

I'd definitely emphasize preserving smaller cities/towns, as opposed to everyone scattered about. Though with advances in zero-energy buildings, water recycling, home-biogas systems and such, it becomes less of a problem. Expensive, though.

[Raja]

 

[dog-days]

Working from home could be a way of mildly alleviating the housing crisis if employers and the government weren't trying to get people back to the office, regardless of whether they needed to be there or not. In the UK there are plenty of towns and villages where there is infrastructure already in place but declining populations. (See this ONS chart for example.) And potentially WFH could allow more people to stay in their local area near their families and connections rather than heading to the big city chasing jobs, while their money could help the local economy. 

To buy a one-bedroom flat in a decent but not fancy area of the city where I work, you'd need to pay about £110 000 and probably end up with a short leasehold. Go twelve miles out, and you can get a two-bedroom house with a garden for that much. 

Admittedly, WHF also exaggerates the trend already in place (in coastal Wales, the Hebrides, Cornwall) of the wealthy coming in and buying up property, pushing housing prices way beyond the reach of most locals. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

Apathy is high refarding the coronation, especially anong younger people. 75% of 18-24 year olds give nary a shit, according to a survey.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65275486

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Fascinating investigative docu by BBC into one of the biggest scams of it's kind. The alleged kingpin is ex Georgian defence minister who owns an 18 million pounds mansion in London. One of the companies associated with the criminal network also sponsored Sevilla FC and had sponsorship deals with Liverpool FC, Man City, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Tottenham, Leeds and Southampton.

 

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by AncalagonTheBlack

[Werthead]

On 4/14/2023 at 8:12 PM, Derfel Cadarn said:

Apathy is high refarding the coronation, especially anong younger people. 75% of 18-24 year olds give nary a shit, according to a survey.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65275486

I'm quite startled at the number of people I know (mostly older) who were in tears at the Queen's passing and always supported her, seem completely and totally uninterested in Charles and have to "keep reminding" themselves that he's now the king.

There's been a lot of talk about this in the press, with the monarchy-supporting outlets seemingly genuinely alarmed by the lack of interest in the monarchy post-Elizabeth and urging them to do something about it, such as increasing their public engagements, or face a possible explosion in Republican sentiment. I've even seen the most obvious idea floated again, Charles only doing a few years and then abdicating in favour of William, who is at least younger and more respected (the whole sexual exploits thing never seemed to break through to the general public discourse here, mainly as it was drowned out by Andrew at the time).

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I'm quite startled at the number of people I know (mostly older) who were in tears at the Queen's passing and always supported her, seem completely and totally uninterested in Charles and have to "keep reminding" themselves that he's now the king.

There's been a lot of talk about this in the press, with the monarchy-supporting outlets seemingly genuinely alarmed by the lack of interest in the monarchy post-Elizabeth and urging them to do something about it, such as increasing their public engagements, or face a possible explosion in Republican sentiment. I've even seen the most obvious idea floated again, Charles only doing a few years and then abdicating in favour of William, who is at least younger and more respected (the whole sexual exploits thing never seemed to break through to the general public discourse here, mainly as it was drowned out by Andrew at the time).

For decades people were used to the queen being the queen. Maybe now they just don’t associate Charles as king.

Maybe people, fickle as they are, are just done with the monarchy, more-so than before.

Be interesting to see if the crowds turn out for the coronation.