Machiavelli
Well-known member
The housing crisis is slightly misleading I think. Decades ago, people lived with their parents until they could afford to buy (it generally took two people to afford a mortgage so therefore done via marriage or living together) or earned enough money to pay rent. There were less houses because of the war although in the 60s very inferior flats were thrown together as a 'solution'
As people are far more mobile and many more going to university now, there is a greater demand for housing whether rented or bought. Families splitting up are another cause. There are more single people living alone than every before. Immigration is not the main cause.
I find it very worrying when politicians blame immigrants for the wrongs in society where economics are more to blame. That sounds very clumsy but I am not that articulate in expressing what I mean.
You're quite right in your analysis. Immigrants have got nothing to do with the 'housing crisis'. The housing crisis is a result of a massive failure to build and renovate houses over the past three decades. This is very widely recognised and has been for a long time, go back to the Barker review conducted about a decade ago, for instance. It's a shame that bashldsir doesn't recognise that the party that he used to vote for has made a commitment to build 200,000 properties a year by 2020 which will not only begin to turn around the housing crisis, but will also help address the jobs crisis that we've also been experiencing for the past three decades or so. This is in stark contrast to UKIP's immigration policy that will have a negative impact on jobs -- 'regaining control of our borders' will effectively mean excluding immigrants, the largest sector of which come to this country to attend our universities which have an international reputation despite drastic underfunding over a number of decades, and which are under assault from other directions too. You exclude foreign students, and you lose a significant number of jobs that are useful to our economy.
One final point: the housing crisis is also due to our inefficient use of housing, as Danny Dorling has exhaustively charted in his recent book.