Owning your own home

but the credit check has come with no evidence of enough income to cover the rent,as one of them is self-employed with no tax returns etc...

Find different tenants if you have concerns about this.

@Oliver Schick - isn't there also a double standard here?

Lots of people were up in arms about London councils moving their tenants to other places because they couldn't house them locally. What's the difference? If they all did that wouldn't it be a great way to free London and SE housing stock and relocate the population to less populated areas?

It comes across as thought you're talking about forceably dispersing the population.

Personally speaking I'd ideally live in London proper rather than just outside. I wouldn't mind living on the south cost. I wouldn't want to live in the Middlands or North because it would put me away from family, and tbh I just don't want to. Although I know I often make digs about Norfolk if they built a fuck off big motorway and high speed railway I'd really like to live in one of the nice bits.

£5 says that shit loads of people feel exactly the same way which is exactly why it's about more than just jobs and housing stock.

Fox is saying that isn't realistic.

Yes, and he's wrong about that.

It is related because you're doing exactly what Gove does - you have a fixed ideological view then ignore the facts on an issue and keep telling other people they are wrong and so are the experts.

Now you just shift to procedural points unrelated to the point at issue. And you ignore the point I made that the Shelter guy's press statement simply doesn't follow.

I don't have a fixed 'ideological' view. I've studied these issues intently for more than a decade. The conclusion is always the same. The underlying conditions need to be changed or the problem will never go away. And yes, they can be changed, but obviously not while Nonsense Johnson is in charge.

This isn't the first time either, it's a pattern.

See above.

Your point doesn't stand because I could link to 50 articles on how the solutions you propose are the solution aren't the solution, but I can't be bothered and you'd ignore them anyway.

I have absolutely no problem with advancing a minority point. Again, for escaping to mere procedure, and ad hominem, see above. Stick to the issue and you will very quickly see that I have a point.

Much easier to ignore you.

Well, I won't ignore you.

@Oliver Schick - isn't there also a double standard here?

Lots of people were up in arms about London councils moving their tenants to other places because they couldn't house them locally. What's the difference? If they all did that wouldn't it be a great way to free London and SE housing stock and relocate the population to less populated areas?

It comes across as thought you're talking about forceably dispersing the population.

I categorically would never support that. It's wrong and always hits poor and vulnerable people.

Personally speaking I'd ideally live in London proper rather than just outside. I wouldn't mind living on the south cost. I wouldn't want to live in the Middlands or North because it would put me away from family, and tbh I just don't want to. Although I know I often make digs about Norfolk if they built a fuck off big motorway and high speed railway I'd really like to live in one of the nice bits.

I've lived in London for nearly 26 years and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. But just look at the number of people in the 'Moving out of London' thread or in this very thread who are looking to move out of London. Plenty of people would prefer to live in smaller places and are tired of/stressed out by London. No-one needs to be 'forcibly' relocated.

To spell out a little more of what's missing: The UK needs more regional government, not necessarily devolution as it's been pursued for some time, but federalism, with regional authorities having real powers about their areas and economic development, as well as a crucial role as authorities emblematic of local and regional civic pride. Keeping it all centralised in Whitehall is simply nonsense. It needs clear policies to support manufacturing industries and other ways of diversifying and re-diversifying the economy. It needs to give people other things to invest in than just property. It obviously (but won't under the Tories) needs to reduce injustice and inequality. And so forth. Without these corrective measures, the British economy will remain extremely vulnerable.

living on the south cost.

Sounds pricey. :)

£5 says that shit loads of people feel exactly the same way which is exactly why it's about more than just jobs and housing stock.

Well, yes, it definitely is. However, this is the issue we were talking about and it's also the subject of this thread.

I wouldn’t live there - I’m from Norfolk so again would say that but the town feels pretty soulless. As mentioned before the train line really sucks too. How comes?

@Oliver Schick - isn't there also a double standard here?

The other obvious question is why Oliver is living in London.

Surely if if he believes this so strongly he should be leading by example?

Or is moving out of London just for other people as you allude to?

Not long at all. A couple of years at the most. Compare this to the immense speed with which London has exploded in the last two decades.

That seems wildly optimistic. Assuming you could get companies to relocate instantaneously you'd still be massively short of infrastructure. Hospitals, schools, shops, public transport, etc

I grew up there and spent most of that time planning to escape. When I did it was to the furthest away university I could get into, then I moved to London and I would never ever go back.
Nothing traumatic happened, it's just an insular, small-minded ugly shithole.

Compare this to the immense speed with which London has exploded in the last two decades

I think that is a bad example. London’s growth in the last 20 years is just a reversal of the decline over the preceding 40-50.

https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2015/01/london-1939-2015.html?m=1

Which if anything says that what we tried last time (ie move people and jobs out of the city) wasn’t really in step with what people wanted, so they moved back.

Oliver’s view is also very exclusionary- middle class people with well paying office jobs can move to for e.g. a small place in the country. Someone who works in Greggs cannot- unless Greggs precedes them, and also I suspect that few who work for Greggs intend on doing that cradle to grave, so you’d need other employers.

Oliver’s statement above could be paraphrased as “if we change absolutely everything, then everything would be different”, it’s Farage level politics. Simplism, dismissing complex reality with a confidence that the underlying arguments do not support.

As mentioned before the train line really sucks too. How comes?

How come the train line sucks or how come I'm looking at Ipswich?

The train service has been interrupted by a lot of engineering work, which should start to show some benefit now. It's been ok when I've used it but there have been a lot of bus replacements at weekends - which I've avoided.

Why move out of London? It's probably not a viable option in the next couple of years but in essence, I'm tired of what I'm doing, would quite like to cash in London property prices, become debt free, take a few years off, go sailing instead of working.

Obviously just daydreaming here...

it's just an insular, small-minded ugly shithole

yeah, that's pretty much what my wife said last time we went there. i was trying to peddle "it's not that bad".

failed.

You were in Ipswich passing through on the way to or from a nice place?

I think he meant "Why move out of London to Ipswich?"

Yes.

I think he meant "Why move out of London to Ipswich?"

It's reasonably close to London
Property is relatively cheap
It's near the coast
Have family nearby (Woodbridge area)
Climate on the east coast is nice

Part of the problem is that I don't understand the level of risk involved, and can't balance this against
the opportunity cost of not having someone moving in.

Move to the nice place. The rail replacement is a bit of a nuisance but has always worked for me, easy to get the bike on the train.

I think that is a bad example. London’s growth in the last 20 years is just a reversal of the decline over the preceding 40-50.

Yes, but, well, not quite. London's (the LCC area's, which was much smaller than the GLC/GLA area's) pre-war was about 8.5 million. Much of this was slums and living conditions for many were truly appalling. Slum conditions have, of course, never quite gone away, but it is certainly better today. I've read reams on London's population statistics and I have always come away with the impression that its population must be much higher than 9 million today, or whatever figure is current. A GLA planner I know told me a few years ago (pre-'Brexit') that the rate at which London's population was growing was greater than ever before, even in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Also, in those days London was still the capital of the 'Empire', growing much faster than other cities, and today it is merely one of many fast-growing cities, with its growth rate dwarfed by the real population (though not necessarily power) metropolises of the world, some of which are x times larger than London.

I don't think it's a bad example of how quickly growth can happen, though. Governments have all the power to direct economic investment, and most do. It tends to be in over-centralised states like the UK of France where this goes wrong. I'm most familiar with the example of Germany, where you have 'structurally weak' regions, too, but where there are constant efforts to strengthen them. And German economic policy is far from ideal, obviously, especially with the disastrous and corrupt sell-out of East Germany, but it's still better than over here, although it has been losing ground over the last couple of decades.

There is also a need for speed, as, for instance, former manufacturing regions have been losing skills for a long time now and there will come a point when those will be much harder to re-establish.

A mate moved to Ardleigh for similar reasons to the ones you listed. The commute to work seems to fairly good as those sort of commutes go.

No personal experience but that part of the world seems like the sort of place you'd want to be in the surrounding towns and villages - a bit like moving to Aylesbury vs somewhere else in Bucks.

I think that is a willful misinterpretation. Oliver is saying that the systemic issue is that even if the ratio of declared houses 'needed' were matched by houses built the issue would remain, the inequality would remain, and none of the social stresses created by the lack of housing would be solved. He is saying the state structure and industry surrounding the housing market is fundamentally distorted (politically, economically, legally) and that matching demand with supply will not solve it.

If you don't agree that's fine. But to say it's Farage politics is a huge disservice to what he's saying and how he has said it.

Oliver’s view is also very exclusionary- middle class people with well paying office jobs can move to for e.g. a small place in the country.

Where did I say that only middle-class people should be able to make that sort of move?

Someone who works in Greggs cannot- unless Greggs precedes them, and also I suspect that few who work for Greggs intend on doing that cradle to grave, so you’d need other employers.

Well, yes. You do realise that in talking about a well-balanced and well-distributed economy I'm fully including all that?

Oliver’s statement above could be paraphrased as “if we change absolutely everything, then everything would be different”, it’s Farage level politics. Simplism, dismissing complex reality with a confidence that the underlying arguments do not support.

This is quite a fascinating comprehensive fallacy. I say two very simple things--change government policy to strengthen neglected sectors of the economy, and strengthen places evenly, e.g. by being home to economic activity. Consequences of this would be that currently unused housing would come back into use, and that new housing could be built with better distribution. That's not in any sense 'changing absolutely everything' or even 'changing everything'. It's not even unusual, but simple, textbook economic policy. Obviously, the oversimplification of it doesn't make any sense.

Thanks. You're right, that's what I'm trying to say, but as usual in too many words.

I don't understand the level of risk involved

There's more risk. Critically however there is no reward. Pick tenants who offer as little risk as you can. Reluctant landlords cannot afford tenants who can't / won't pay the rent.