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Be nice if it happened

Labour would give local authorities and residents more power to build on green belt land to meet local housing needs if the party wins at the next general election, Keir Starmer has said.

In an interview with The Times, Sir Keir accused the Conservatives of “killing the dream” of homeowning for a whole generation.

But as we know Nimby is a very powerful force…..

22 thoughts on “Be nice if it happened”

  1. You know, I just don’t think that a lot of people who complain about housing care enough.

    There was a property guy on Twitter saying “you know, why don’t you move to Darlington, £120K for a house” and everyone piled in like “why should I have to move away from my friends and family to buy a house”. Like, grow up. Everyone I knew moved to another place for work, to get richer, and moving to get richer by affording a house is no different.

    And these low energy people also aren’t going to organise a YIMBY political movement. I mean, there’s people like Mark Wadworth (RIP) and Sam Bowman, but how many people are with them? I think the YPP had about 20-30 members.

    But I think there’s a lot of people (and I’ve seen some on Reddit) doing this. “Company is letting me work remote, should I move oop north so I can buy a place and stop paying rent”.

    Labour are going to backpedal because people who own homes have a lot more energy around fighting development.

  2. Come to think of it, this is a bit like the Great Migration. Millions of black people who didn’t like being called “boy” and risking a lynching just got the fuck out of the South in the 20th Century. Didn’t join a political movement, just packed their bags and moved to Chicago or Detroit. Barely mentioned in history.

  3. One of the stumbling blocks is that developers build houses but do not add infrastructure or resources to support the additional population. And neither does the council. Nor the Government.

    It’s no wonder we are NIMBY’s.

  4. It’s not just the building chitty, Tim.
    If you have an extended period of low interest rates you get asset bubbles.
    If you import millions of people you inflate demand.
    If skilled labour is rare, even unskilled labour becomes expensive. Guys pouring concrete in London on 23 quid an hour make for expensive buildings.

  5. . . . more power to build on green belt land to meet local housing needs . . .

    Local, as in Somalia, Albania, Baluchistan and surrounds.

    . . . Nimby is a very powerful force…..

    Sadly, not nearly powerful enough.

  6. A politician making a promise?

    What could possibly go wrong? Sir Kneel already has a bit of a rep of being able to cycle where he can’t see…

  7. What Starmer means is he will delegate more power to local politicians who will be inclined to upset all the ‘wrong’ people and please all the ‘right’ people. Residents will get the role of audience and noises off.

  8. Bloke in the Fourth Reich

    Isn’t the advantage of green belt is that there aren’t even NIMBYs there?

  9. There’s a huge amount of house-building near us. Permission was granted when “Two Jags” was in charge of such matters and decided to build in the sort of areas that, he assumed, would be full of Tories.

    When people said “What about the traffic?” THEY replied “Don’t worry, everyone will cycle.” Now that the houses are filling up THEY are going to introduce a congestion charge.

    God knows what happens when the locals’ fears about the sewers are realised. Come to think of it, I know: we’ll all be in the shit.

    There are many reasons for nimby – one of the best is the sure knowledge that the various levels of government will cock things up, either from malice or incompetence.

  10. BioM4

    Yeah but they had work to go to. Detroit built up a sizeable affluent black middle class based on the motor factories.

    I live by the seaside because I am retired, I tried commuting from here when I first moved and it was a right pain in the wossnames. If I had to work in London it would either a) be lucrative enough to pay for the fares b) I’d have to find somewhere nearer.

  11. PJF: Excellent point. Why should we destroy our countryside and way of life just so Third-Worlders can move here? Sunak wants cheap labour, Starmer wants to rub our noses in diversity, the BBC don’t like the idea of borders. Deal with that, then we can start tackling the problem of housing.

  12. Otto: Similarly, I moved to live by the seaside in my family’s home town, but the availablily and distance to paid employment is making it look like an unaffordable luxury, and I really must force myself to put my preferences to one side and examine if I should move back inland to cheaper accommodation and more pay.

  13. Ottokring,

    “I live by the seaside because I am retired, I tried commuting from here when I first moved and it was a right pain in the wossnames. If I had to work in London it would either a) be lucrative enough to pay for the fares b) I’d have to find somewhere nearer.”

    I forget where, but I think one of the old Essex or Kent seaside places is attracting a lot of remote work people. Pain in the arse when you have to go to London but tolerable if you only doing it weekly.

    But also just find places with higher disposable income. You might earn less living in Slough or Derby than London, but your rent is much less.

  14. BonM4 “one of the old Essex or Kent seaside places is attracting a lot of remote work people”.

    The old Essex seaside place I live in is attracting* a lot of black people.

    *Possibly not the right word…..

  15. Is this like how local authorities take local needs into consideration when siting a new rapefugee hotel or ULEZ?

  16. UK has the smallest floor areas per head, and the most proportion of people saying we’re concreting over the green belt.
    These can only both be true if we’ve got strangulating height restrictions.

    If Keir wants to be rad he could smash the NPPF, but more practically he could devolve anything height related, including the right to light to LAs. And abolish stamp duty, for all types of ownership and prices.

  17. Surely, abolishing stamp duty will just raise the price of property by a corresponding amount?

    ISTM, the most pressing issue is the subsidising of the poor to live in rich areas. Why? It just subsidises their employers, inhibits their accumulation of capital, forces the subsidising of other workers (eg doctors, teachers, etc). To live in central London, you either have to be rich enough, or poor enough.

  18. No, stamp is a tax upon transactions, not value. Therefore it affects the number of transacitons, not the values.

  19. Surreptitious Evil

    One of the stumbling blocks is that developers build houses but do not add infrastructure or resources

    May be different down south from the People’s Independent Socialist newly-Islamic Republic of Scotia but, up here, they do get made to build some infrastructure as part of the planning consent. Insufficient for all needs but then they don’t get to charge you yearly here either.

    There’s a recent development not far from me that includes a centre of small shops (inc a Sainsbury), a nursery (sorry, an “Early Learning Centre”) and a pub. All built by the developers (possibly with commitments beforehand but that’s their commercial nous or lack thereof.)

  20. Thanks, Tim. It’s my confusion, between “stamp duty” and “stamp duty land tax”.

  21. If “..stamp is a tax upon transactions, not value.” , then why is stamp duty higher for a more expensive, but not necessarily larger in size, property? Shirley, not another way of the numpties in government ripping off the property buyer?

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