Article: There is no housing crisis, only a population crisis

[Anthony Butcher]

You can view the page at http://www.democracyforum.co.uk/cont...ulation-crisis

[Blazing Star]

Agreed. It's no longer possible to take a liberal line on people-pollution.

[TannyD]

Why can't we close our borders? we need to manage this situation. Won't The EU let us do anything that will benefit ourselves?

[Anthony Butcher]

Why can't we close our borders? we need to manage this situation. Won't The EU let us do anything that will benefit ourselves?

The EU is only part of the problem - immigration from outside the EU is still massive too, and that is entirely within the control of the British government.
Two million immigrants from outside the E.U. have settled in Britain under Labour, claim Tories | Mail Online

On top of that, it was the British Government that opted to open the borders to the accession countries years before France and Germany did; again there was no EU compulsion to do so.

Immigration control is a British issue far more than an EU one, no matter what UKIP would have us believe.

[flamingreen]

Immigration control is a British issue far more than an EU one, no matter what UKIP would have us believe.

Its both. Apart from A8s hundreds of thousands of Dutch Somalis have come over (plenty in Bristol), surprising numbers of Muslims, Moroccans , Algerians and the like, countries with which we never had any links, who have almost certainly come via France. We have large numbers Spanish and Portuguese settlers, and Brazilians, given amnesty in Spain a few years ago, none of whom would be here without the EU, nor would asylum seekers given citizenship by other EU countries have the right to come here.

As from 2013 we will be forced to accept Bulgarians and Romanians (although I suspect whichever big party is in power will allow them in as soon as the election is over). MPs need to be asked where they stand in that respect, when local meetings are held: Will their party guarantee to keep them out at least until 2013?

[Geoffrey Collier]

Anthony Butcher: The population virtually quadrupled in the 19c; and Malthusians were preaching certain doom. To that later was added the opinions of the eugenicists. With the advantage of hindsight; that population was needed in 1914; we faced defeat without it. In the inter-war years too low a population was the latest obsession.

I believe that we need immigration control in terms of numbers, skills and speed of admission to facilitate integration both culturally and economically. With a landmass of forty-times larger than ours, the USA has had rigid immigration control since just after WW1. They do, however, have a special problem on the Mexican border, but that is another story.

In England and Wales some 700,000 houses are unoccupied; that in many/most instances is justified and understandable; but thousands are empty existing rate-free and not even the owners are known. Building new houses is institutionally driven: house builders, building societies and other vested interests. In many of our older towns and cities shops are abandoned, and give a look of permanent dereliction. Many of those propertiesd were built originally as houses and they should be returned to that use. If we lost 30% to 50% of shops in many areas, that would make the remaining ones economically viable; while simultaneously mitigating the housing problem. Old industrial and agricultural buildings have been successfully converted into homes; also discarded chapels and churches, and a multitude of other buildings. Out of town retail parks have left properties in the town which are now waiting to be reclaimed. It is too easy to sigh and say we need more houses for the population. I say that people need decent housing, but building new houses is a problem 'down the road' when we have addressed a multitude of other options. When houses are needed, the materials and architectual style should be of a high standard. Architecture should produce inspring creations: population = more housing, is wrong and too indicative of journalists dictating the agenda. As in art, politics is now in an impressionistic age: I say return to rigid policy analysis. What are the problems, what are the facts, and what are our prevailing options? Problems should stimulate the human mind; leave despair to those not in possession of the necessary vision.

[flamingreen]

In England and Wales some 700,000 houses are unoccupied;

If they are its because they are in the wrong places. I am very dubious as to whether or not such figures are true. I see very few unoccupied nowadays, although that wasnt so ten years ago. Even the most unpromising properties old offices etc are being converted into flats, in the south anyway.

[ChrisV]

The reason immigration is so high and housing is so low is because our whole economy is being propped up by excessive house prices. If there was enough houses to meet demand then house prices would drop and the whole of our economy would sink like a stone. We excel at nothing at all: our hi-tech industries are losing ground to forieign ones, we produce nothing, our financial sector has failed and we have huge deficits.

The government are well aware of this and prefere to be blamed for immigration than the complete collapse of the UK economy. The UK is a giant pyramid scheme. The people at the top are being supported by the young and immigrants below. The young and immigrants take on huge levels of debt, which goes to the older members of society, ensuring that the demographics show the majority of people in the UK are getting richer, when in actual fact an increasingly high proportion of people are taking on higher and higher debts.

I predict that whatever government gets into power, immigration levels will be kept high to ensure the economy appears to be strong. Can you imagine what would happen if we stopped all immigration, people realised that their house prices were massively overpriced and half the popullation went into negative equity.

We should have never got into this situation. Blame labour for their financial mis-management.

[IvanNolabour]

We all know why labour let in so many people, they wanted ready and willing voters and to help change the make up of this country from a mainly 95% white one, to one with a high ethnic mix. They have achieved this with the almost absolute silence of the Conservative and Lib-dem. parties, when both parties had every chance to raise the matter in parliament and elsewhere. Now we have it that suprise, suprise, we do not have enough housing in this country to house our new and ever growing population. This is the fault of the present government (and the conservatives and Lib-dems) who allowed in so many people and now we are the ones having to pay for it, with massive housing developments planned for the whole of the UK. Here in my part of the South we are having to find room for 116,000 new houses and our Tory council has found 9 strategic sites, all of which are on greenfield sites. So now we have a conservative led council doing the governments dirty work.

Its too easy to blame just Labour, the other parties are just as bad, and it will be the case that after the election when whoever gets in power, that immigration levels will be kept high and these housing developments will go through. There is only one solution - a total halt on all immigration, and a major rethink on what happens to the UK ie one massive housing estate or maybe a lowering of our population to a proper sustainable level.
Voting for any of the 3 main parties will just mean the same old thing going on!

[Blazing Star]

Most of the immigrants are not in the market to buy houses. If they were all removed tomorrow I doubt it would make much difference to the price of a three bed semi. It might affect large multi-occupation properties in certain areas.

There were huge jumps in house prices during the 1970s and 1980s which were certainly not affected by immigrants. You have to remember that at any given time only a relatively small portion of the population and the housing stock are active in the "market", which can be affected by a vast number of factors.

For years. I would say, the major factor has been the ever-increasing availability of credit and prices have related directly to income multipliers. It's a different ball game since the credit crunch.

In this area (N Devon/Somerset) prices are back to 2005/2006 levels.