To which Michael to his credit has responded here and just today here picking up some relevant points in another thread about allotments.Tim Lund wrote:So that people - the young especially - find it easier to have a decent life, and bring up their kids?
Just so the question is properly understood, affordable is not in quotes, so it should not necessarily be taken as asking if they want more social housing, with rents up to 80% of market rents - although this is an option. The question could also mean whether [SydSoc] would like to see existing house prices drop, so they become more affordable, without any increase in supply, whether social or private sector. OTOH, if [SydSoc] accepts that there could be more supply, would they be prepared to see more in [SE26], and if so where? What percentage of any increased supply would they want to be 'social'? Does [SydSoc] accept that housing is a long term asset, which over the years may move between the public and private sector, that people may also move between the two sectors, so that the distinction between the two sectors is of only short term significance?
Does the FH Soc understand the provisions in the Localism Act whereby Community Infrastructure Levy on new developments should flow to neighbourhoods which accept more housing, and if so, does it have any views on how it should be spent?
In responding I discover there is a limit to how long a post is allowed on se23.com, so let's see here if STF is up to it:
Tim Lund wrote:Both, to some extent, with that extent depending on (1) where opportunities arise where those immediately concerned have an interest in it happening, and (2) how much additional housing is needed to get prices down to something more sensible - the 'elasticity of demand'. On (1), I would expect most opportunities which arise to be extending or dividing up their houses - and please note the omission of your suggestion of extending any mortgages. I have a case in point in mind, of some neighbours - you may well know them - I'll pm the name - who continue to live in their family home, but some years ago converted the ground floor to a granny flat, and now have it rented out to some tenants. I doubt if any mortgage was needed here, since these are people of the baby boomer generation, who have lucked out so much in the post war era. This seems to me entirely wholesome, allowing people to age while maintaining their links with the local community, and not 'block bedrooms'. However, in the NOTES OF PLANNING POLICY WORKSHOP HELD AT DEPTFORD LOUNGE – 25th April 2012, where there were several representatives of amenity societies, although maybe not from FH Soc - we read only of opposition to conversions.michael wrote:When you say you want existing residential land to be redeveloped do you mean that large amounts of existing housing across Forest Hill to be demolished and replaced with modern three-storey flats and town houses? Or are you suggesting that home owners should be encouraged to extend their mortgages and convert their attics into penthouses for young families?
By targeting existing residential you are either expecting existing home owners to buy into this scheme to split up their homes, or you are expecting streets to be bought up by developers for systematic redevelopment.
Extensions are more problematic, but still something I would welcome on balance. The plus points are as with conversions, and with the additional benefit of physically adding more habitable rooms per hectare, rather than just getting those that exist better used. The downside is the impact on neighbours if done badly, and the environmental impact of loss of garden space if the extensions are horizontal rather than vertical - which they will be unless there is planning guidance in place, because it will be so much cheaper. I'd prefer to leave the issue of loss of gardens for another discussion, since it's rather muddied by sanctimoniousness of the 'grow your own' type.
I suspect there is also a problem with the structure of the building industry - i.e. that there aren't any large, well run companies interested in doing such jobs in sufficient scale to achieve decent economies of scale, so that the market fragments between good quality but high price bespoke work, and the more or less dodgy. I wouldn't want to blame amenity societies for this situation, although I feel they contribute to it by reacting more to bad developments, and responding to the unthinking nimbyism of many of their members, than proactively advocating what would be good developments. In fairness to local amenity societies, in this case SydSoc - they did take a stand on what could have been an opportunity for good development of the Greyhound, but have revealed themselves, in my view, to have been out of their depth.
What we really need is more flexible housing, which I tried to get a discussion going on on the Sydenham Town Forum earlier this year. Like much of my thinking on housing, this was part triggered by a Practical Action talk I went to last year following which I posted this about lessons to be learned from Bogota
I also thought about this when someone posted on the Sydenham Town Forum about a possible development opportunity for some self build and around the same time I read something again about Walter Segal's housing ideas - how it was designed to allow people easily to extend their houses upwards. Wouldn't it be fantastic if this could be mainstream, with a healthy population of local building firms who knew exactly how to extend people's houses when they wanted, with little fuss from local authority planners because the principle was written into their Local Development Frameworks, and Amenity Societies diplomatically rebuffing members who don't like the idea of new neighbours being able to peer into their gardens?There are some planning controls on where you can build houses, but they don't get enforced, and in any case, they don't apply in outer areas. So people just build their own homes, starting off looking like archetypical shanty towns, but being improved over time, with extra storeys added, perhaps for tenants just moved into the city. So the young and less well off do not get priced out of housing.
But it's not going to happen, because before we get to the architecture and planning, there's one massive hurdle in the price of land, which according to that poster was more than the building cost. So this is (2) from the beginning of this post. Before such proposals to help people who need new housing can get off the ground, dues have to be paid those elements of society who have benefited from the long run failure to build. There is a choice - join the revolution and expropriate the expropriators, or let sensibly regulated markets work as they should. Which side are the Amenity Societies on? And now, let's have a song
[youtubes]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iAIM02kv0g[/youtubes]
I would not want to see any special regime for second homes and another few hundred pages to the Tax code, 