Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

Over the last 50-70 years the UK made the choice to stop building social housing and to sell off the existing stock with aggressive government subsidies.<p>Complaining now is a bit like complaining there&#x27;s no milk after you sold the dairy farm to build a casino.<p>I read TFA but I&#x27;m not seeing anything but useless outrage that would have been better placed 20-30 years ago<p>I became a first time property owner at 36 and it took a top 2-3% percentile income + my partners more median salary to do it on the outskirts of London<p>My mortgage runs until I&#x27;m 70 and I, like most owners now, are entirely dependent on the housing casino game continuing. If houses ever return to good affordability I&#x27;m screwed.<p>I have to refinance every 5 years, because that&#x27;s the game in the UK, so if rates spike I&#x27;m also screwed.<p>Everyone in UK housing, owner or rented, is screwed and it&#x27;s been this way for decades.

IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers.<p>What other benchmarks would you throw out there if you were going to grade gov effectiveness?

We had a chance to defuse the housing crisis with remote work and we blew it.<p>Opportunities are concentrated and building in concentrated areas is inherently hard. We still don’t know how to scale mega cities fast while still operating them at capacity.<p>So the problem will not go away anytime soon.

Preface: I&#x27;m a yimby who wants to see far more building, especially building upwards in London, but also more general building elsewhere.<p>That said, a 100 year wait for social housing in Westminster is not surprising, and not as bad as it sounds. A typical professional couple in London could not afford a family home in Westminster, and it&#x27;s extremely common for people in their 30s to move out of the centre when they have kids. I don&#x27;t think this should be any different for social tenants: they should certainly not have to wait 100 years, but it seems reasonable for them to be offered housing outside of Westminster. The Guardian article I read about the 100 year wait specifically mentioned 3 and 4 bed family homes, and my immediate reaction was that no one else can get them either!<p>I think the bigger problem is the lack of affordable housing particularly for young families (social or otherwise) outside of London

It always comes down to we don’t build houses fast enough. Why?

In the UK we never really got medium rise apartment blocks right. Instead we have terraces, which don&#x27;t give the same housing density. The neighborhood I now live in in Portugal is mostly 7-10 storey apartment buildings, which is enough density for plenty of shops, cafes, restaurants, schools, playgrounds, public transit etc. It houses an astonishing amount of people in reasonably generous conditions (e.g. balconies are the norm), quite the modern miracle in my UK eyes.

What happened to IKEA houses: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.boklok.com&#x2F;global&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.boklok.com&#x2F;global&#x2F;</a>

Has anyone in the comments read the article?<p>The page has been down for ages.

Hug of death?

I need a house

Decommodify owning a home. You’re gonna be fretting about why housing is getting more expensive while fighting a ghost battle against homeowners until you do.[1]<p>Do-gooder liberals are gonna worry about what policy mistake was made in the last 50 years. No. You have competing interests and the people who own something have the leverage as well as something to lose if too many people get what they already have. What’s difficult to understand?<p>Don’t try to “grow the middle class”, this selfish NIMBY sociological construction (it’s just gonna compact anyway, and it is). Decommodify having a dang roof over your head.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43726760">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43726760</a>

You don&#x27;t have to wait 100 years for a home, though. You might need to wait 100 years for a <i>free</i> home. You can buy one straight away or rent one.