Summit seeking to crack housing crisis (From York Press)

So will the summit be treating the symptoms rather than treating the disease?

The root cause of the ‘housing issue’ is that there are too many people on the planet and on this very small island who want their own place to call home with only so much housing stock/property/land to go round.

http://populationmat
ters.org/

Sticking plasters fall off – treat the disease!
Then the issue will go away on a permanent basis, not for a few years when the situation has got much worse!

Heres an interesting fact for readers that has just come to my attention.
CoYC produce housing statistics.
CoYC chief exec Kersten England recently tweeted that Yorks housing numbers were massivly up and more houses were built in the first quarter of this year than all of last year.
Included in the housing numbers, believe it or not ,were 124 student bedsits built on Hull rd which were counted as houses! out of a total of 294! Nearly 50%
Can it be right to base the statistics off flawed figures which count student halls of residences as houses. They acan only be occupies in term time and share kitchens and living rooms!!
This is like hostel accomadation being counted as affordable homes last year.
its a con and we should know just how desperate coYC are to manipulate figures to mkae themselves look good
By the way the tweet was also wrong as even if it was right to include the student bedsits as houses the tweet should have said the 'first half of the year' not quarter but who cares about the true fascts anymore?

‘meme says... 10:22am Fri 2 Nov 12
but who cares about the true fascts anymore?’


Certainly not councillors or politicians as that would just get in their way!

The root cause of the problem is the lack of any government strategy to promote economic growth where there are already people and houses rather than expect people to travel or move to where the jobs are. The university expansion has also put massive increased pressure on family housing on the east side of the city - new student blocks clearly demonstrate that not enough were planned at affordable levels on the new campus. Apart from the students there are no doubt more lecturers, technicians, estates managers etc who all have to either travel daily or buy houses in the area. York's population has grown mainly as a result of university expansion and people moving to the area for jobs or to commute to Leeds. Germany Beck may provide for some university staff but will also be attractive for people who work in Leeds or W Yorkshire and want easy access by car - building new houses doesnt by itself help the housing waiting list unless they are social housing (and with affordable housing at 25% we only get a quarter of the new housing to meet these needs, less if the figure is lower)

What a waste of time.
Everyone knows the best way to solve any housing crisis is to erect a really rather weird tribute to Press website commentators on the front of your shop, complete with laminated names and everything.

Buzz light year..what on earth are you on?? I dont understand

greenmonkey says... building new houses doesnt by itself help the housing waiting list unless they are social housing (and with affordable housing at 25% we only get a quarter of the new housing to meet these needs, less if the figure is lower)
You will note I am not an advocate for yorks housing policies but i think you need to look up waht affordable housing really is. It does not mean you get to buy a cheap house.Approx 10% of the homes built as affordable are discounted for sale and even those are tied to a price escalator so you are always stuck with it and not catching up to the market place. The vast mjority are social rented homes and if you have any sort of decent income you dont get one.
People have believed this 'affordable ' line for years but the truth is far removed from the spin.
The only way of resolving this issue is to balance supply and demand but because of yorks policies the sesaw is more out of equilibrium than ever. That's why prices have held up here.

Kersten England ‏@Kersten1england
Good debate tdy w c govt officials getting house building going - beyond debates about 106 + affordable % - access 2 finance, mortgages

and

Kersten England ‏@Kersten1england
House Building part 2 - expectation on land values, working with community concerns - completions in York up significantly, much more 2 do.

The Council's Chief Executive didn't say that the numbers were artificially swollen by illegitimate student bedrooms based on a tenuous interpretation of a one bed flat with a kitchen qualifying as housing in a DCLG guideline for reporting housing completions
. The bedrooms didn't have their own kitchens, but had the use of communal kitchens serving 'clusters' of bedrooms.
The question is: did KE qualify this to the government officials, or were they mislead ? If they were mislead then KE and those responsible for the deception should stand down. This kind of hidden false accounting is tantamount to fraud, and is a sackable offence.

An investigation is needed to get to the bottom of this.

Buzz Light-year wrote:
What a waste of time. Everyone knows the best way to solve any housing crisis is to erect a really rather weird tribute to Press website commentators on the front of your shop, complete with laminated names and everything.

Wow, do you mean the 'Anyone fool can be a Ghoul - many are' halloween display ?

It was mint, a great piece of street art, good fun for da kids, featuring some of York's scariest creeps and crawlers, and everything !!!!!

"Assessments of York’s housing need have suggested the city needs to be building 800 new homes a year – more than 750 of them affordable"

So only 50 private market homes are needed a year ?

Does this mean that the Council will be looking for a 94% affordable requirement from private housebuilders ?

Why not make it 100% affordable, then housebuilding in York will be truly a nationalised industry, working for no profit, and making losses by subsidising York's housing requirements. Comrade Merrett and comrade Simpson-Laing will then have achieved their idea of a communist utopia in York.

Bust the housebuilders should be their mantra - housing for all for **** all ?

Gary Gilmores Eyes wrote:
So will the summit be treating the symptoms rather than treating the disease?

The root cause of the ‘housing issue’ is that there are too many people on the planet and on this very small island who want their own place to call home with only so much housing stock/property/land to go round.

http://populationmat

ters.org/

Sticking plasters fall off – treat the disease!
Then the issue will go away on a permanent basis, not for a few years when the situation has got much worse!

That is not the case. The basic problem is not population but the increased demand that that population has for individual living space. These days we have an ever greater expectation of more room in which to live. It is this that needs to be addressed.

One example is touched on in the comments above. More and more young people go to college/university and it is the expectation that in doing so they should live away from home. Change this expectation, bring the universities to the students, and at a stroke you will have housing stock released for needy families to occupy.

Another example is the number of older couples or singles remaining in their large 3 or 4 bedroomed family homes rather than ‘downsizing’ when the time comes. Tax incentives should be put in place to encourage them to move out.

There are sufficient dwellings in the country to house the population, we are simply not managing what we have efficiently.

Scarlet Pimpernel wrote:

Buzz Light-year wrote: What a waste of time. Everyone knows the best way to solve any housing crisis is to erect a really rather weird tribute to Press website commentators on the front of your shop, complete with laminated names and everything.

Wow, do you mean the 'Anyone fool can be a Ghoul - many are' halloween display ? It was mint, a great piece of street art, good fun for da kids, featuring some of York's scariest creeps and crawlers, and everything !!!!!

Riiiight.... "street art" ... "mint"
That explains why I saw Banksy earlier down the job centre.

I've never seen such a thing.
Do people really get so narked by discussion on web forums that they take the trouble to put up big pieces of 4 x 2 outside their shop, hang effigies from them and adorn them with printed out laminated names from the interwebs **spelt perfectly, case sensitive and everything**??

Really?


Here's the list:
jimmy120833
Buzz Light-year
The Great Buda
Zetkin & Jezreel
EvenAndyD is underneath the star billing, he doesn't make the 4 x 2, not sure if that makes him better or worse than the rest? It's hard to tell the real message.

I'm sure there's going to be some people feeling miffed they didn't make into the 2012 Lord Mayor's Walk Halloween Hall of Ghoulish Villains.
But not half as many people sitting in traffic thinking "WTF?"

Everything aside, the housing debate and the arguing that goes on and the politics and all that, I think it's brilliant. Honestly.

It's what it's all about, the sort of thing you used to see in towns and villages across the country before everything was sanitised and corporatised.
Like scarecrow festivals, the modern ones are a shadow of what they used to be.
People being creative and daring to say what they feel is cool.

I'm a fan of free speech and letting the public see for themselves - genius or madness.

How about making it a regular yearly thing?

Buzz Light-year wrote:

Scarlet Pimpernel wrote:

Buzz Light-year wrote: What a waste of time. Everyone knows the best way to solve any housing crisis is to erect a really rather weird tribute to Press website commentators on the front of your shop, complete with laminated names and everything.

Wow, do you mean the 'Anyone fool can be a Ghoul - many are' halloween display ? It was mint, a great piece of street art, good fun for da kids, featuring some of York's scariest creeps and crawlers, and everything !!!!!

Riiiight.... "street art" ... "mint"
That explains why I saw Banksy earlier down the job centre.

I've never seen such a thing.
Do people really get so narked by discussion on web forums that they take the trouble to put up big pieces of 4 x 2 outside their shop, hang effigies from them and adorn them with printed out laminated names from the interwebs **spelt perfectly, case sensitive and everything**??

Really?


Here's the list:
jimmy120833
Buzz Light-year
The Great Buda
Zetkin & Jezreel
EvenAndyD is underneath the star billing, he doesn't make the 4 x 2, not sure if that makes him better or worse than the rest? It's hard to tell the real message.

I'm sure there's going to be some people feeling miffed they didn't make into the 2012 Lord Mayor's Walk Halloween Hall of Ghoulish Villains.
But not half as many people sitting in traffic thinking "WTF?"

I don't sit in traffic.....!

Scarlet Pimpernel wrote:

Kersten England ‏@Kersten1england
Good debate tdy w c govt officials getting house building going - beyond debates about 106 + affordable % - access 2 finance, mortgages

and

Kersten England ‏@Kersten1england
House Building part 2 - expectation on land values, working with community concerns - completions in York up significantly, much more 2 do.

The Council's Chief Executive didn't say that the numbers were artificially swollen by illegitimate student bedrooms based on a tenuous interpretation of a one bed flat with a kitchen qualifying as housing in a DCLG guideline for reporting housing completions
. The bedrooms didn't have their own kitchens, but had the use of communal kitchens serving 'clusters' of bedrooms.
The question is: did KE qualify this to the government officials, or were they mislead ? If they were mislead then KE and those responsible for the deception should stand down. This kind of hidden false accounting is tantamount to fraud, and is a sackable offence.

An investigation is needed to get to the bottom of this.

Obviously from the Dennis Mc Shane school of accountancy. Obviously a Labour thing.

A realistic LHA rate for private rates, combined with a legislation that makes it illegal to discriminate between somebody who is in receipt of HB and somebody who is not. I recently phoned round all the letting agents and only found two who would accept somebody who was on HB as long as they had a guarantor earning £2,500 pcm. Also following Manchester City Councils example of building new homes on plots of land they owned would help them met their target, instead they are selling their land off, like Beckfield Lane Tip..... It is YCC problem but it feels like they are throwing it to other people to resolve.... challenge them and you get fobbed off with, its complicated!!!