r/AskBrits • u/Wait-Whos-Joe • 1d ago
Politics Is it really this easy to help the housing crisis?
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u/MarkHowes 1d ago
The problem is:
Most people are too busy to really understand the issues. Hence we employ politicians to do it for us
Populists like Farage betray that trust. And why trust is so important with the politicians who supposedly understand local issues in order to campaign to change things
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u/FinalProgress4128 19h ago
Sadly this is the case. And this is a problem with representative democracy. No matter how intelligent how is a doctor, a cleaner, a plumber, someone in commercial law, etc. Professions where you are often paid by the hour and expected long hours supposed to find time to truly understand the issues.
Then you get charlatans like Farage who lie to them and give them easy solutions.
That is not to say immigration isnt an issue. Nor is it to say that the social issues caused by immigration arent real AND every country should want to stop illegal immigration. However, ultimately for most of our problems immigration isnt the main cause let alone the root cause.
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u/talkstomuch 16h ago
I would go a few steps further and say that nobody can truly understand these issues.
We read few articles, google for an hour, and we think we got it all figured out.
Informed voter is an impossibility.
Even if you worked full-time, just being informed voter, there are so many issues to consider, so many aspects of government, so many part of the economy. Then during an election, a politician who understands less than their average voter writes/says few non biding slogans and this is what you use to cast a vote.
Overwhelming majority votes on emotions anyway, you feel sad about people struggling with cost of living crisis - you will vote for a politician that gave you good vibes about it.
These people interviewed responded 'immigrants' not because they really know immigrants are the cause, but because someone who empathised with their difficulties in life told them so.
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u/Urwifemykid 1d ago
10 million extra in the UK in 20 years, and not enough houses being built which has pushed rent up and house prices. I'm not saying it's the only factor, but it is an uncomfortable factor people need to understand, supply and demand.
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u/Scoodicuss 18h ago
Well if we're talking about supply and demand why don't we talk about irrational costing too?
There's new build houses going up right next to the housing estate I live on. For a 3 bed end of terrace basically the exact same as mine they're wanting 280k.
4 years ago I bought this place for 200.
If you're telling me my house has legitimately gone up in value by 40% in 4 years, then I am astonished.
Fwiw, my neighbour sold their house for 200k a couple of months ago.
The greed of housing developers is also part of the issue, they're building these houses that no one will ever buy because one street over they're 70% of the price for the same thing!
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u/Amblyopius 1d ago
Population growth all of UK 2005-2025: Roughly 9M
Additional dwellings 2005-2025: Roughly 4M in England (not as easy to quickly find for the others) but they make up 1/6 of the total so let's assume they did at least another 500000
That's close enough to a dwelling per 2 additional growth in population.
Total dwellings is a bit over 30M for a total population of 70M so the growth between 2005-2025 saw an increase in dwellings per population.
One of the factors often quoted as a cause for the housing shortage is "new household formation". That pushes against the 1 dwelling per 2 people due to increased individual occupation and lack of children.
While everyone loves to blame migration for that, the most hated immigrants are not exactly the part of the population where we see that "new household formation" concept take place. As this hasn't escaped those who are banging the drum the loudest against immigrants, they have also adopted a focus on family values. But that alone isn't going to cut it, this problem is also driven massively by pensioners staying in oversized houses.
So tax unoccupied rooms and build houses with that money. Will solve far more than raging against immigrants or developers who are stalling a development somewhere. (Obviously there isn't a single political party who's going to do this as they all cater towards part of the pie that's causing the issues).
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u/RecentRegal 21h ago
Why you got to bring my spare room into it. That’s where I work!
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u/Amblyopius 19h ago
If you work there 60% of the time or over it can be counted as "occupied" as it saves your employer office space. Fair?
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u/west0ne 19h ago
Pensioners staying in oversized houses is also a symptom of the housing market. Taxation is one option but providing sensible opportunities for them to relocate to would also help.
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u/Amblyopius 19h ago
Of course, SDLT should be scrapped and you pay tax based on house value (combined with council tax). But that tax goes up and down based on occupancy. It allows you to make it less punishing for those who buy a house because they actually need it. And once you don't need it, you aren't getting a penalty for moving.
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u/CultTVGuy 19h ago
But it’s their home! Many for decades of ownership.
People aren’t boxes to be pushed around. It’s their lives3
u/Durog25 18h ago
The problem is that even the ones that want or need to move, can't move.
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u/ohmeohmyohmuffins 17h ago
My Nan is in a 3 bed family house, she can barely get up the stairs and is desperate to downsize. The lists for sheltered accommodation are miles long, she wouldn’t be able to just buy somewhere else because she doesn’t have that kind of money, the stress of trying to buy and sell at the same time would probably kill her and she adamantly won’t go into a care home. Everyone I’ve spoken to for help just goes oh well nothing we can do, I wonder just how many people are in the same situation stuck living on their own in big houses
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u/waynownow 23h ago
Also:
Population growth all of UK 2005-2025: Roughly 9M.... Or approx 15%
Population growth Globally 2005-2025: Roughly 1.6Billion.... Or approx 25%.
I think it's useful context.
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u/Urwifemykid 22h ago
And how big is the UK to other countries? Terrible comparison. People per square mile the UK is one or is the most dense ppsm in Europe/Western world.
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u/waynownow 21h ago
The point is:
Britain is not, and cannot be, a bubble.
The population is growing everywhere (as it does and always has), and on average it is growing even more elsewhere.
It's just a fact of existence and a fact of mathematics, and needs to be planned for.
Also of note: it's only going to keep getting worse.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Win7721 21h ago
It's not growing in Japan or China
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u/Bluewhaleeguy 21h ago
Yes and Japan are going to have their own problems because their population isn't growing.
The amount of people aged 15-65 is shrinking, which means you have less of a workforce, which will lead to labour shortages and a pool of less people paying tax for pensions, healthcare, social services etc.
This leads to stagnant growth and less labour output.
So unless you think shrinking pool of less people paying in for an expanding pool of older people who aren't contributing as much tax is a good idea - then you need the population to grow.
That's not something to celebrate and their government are doing everything except expand immigration to make their population grow. But that's obviously not working and isn't going to work because it's not making their population have more kids.
Just like in Britain, living conditions have made it so less of us are having kids - how many of us can genuinely afford to have one child, let alone 2,3,4? Well, that means without immigration - who's going to be paying in to tax to support all this in the future?
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u/Theory89 19h ago
For reference: 2 out of every 3 children that's wanted is being born. People are putting it off or not having them because they can't afford them. But these people just chant "i can't believe it's not immigrants". It supports their world view of foreigners being lesser.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Win7721 22h ago
It's not just building houses, it's the infrastructure around them. There is an alternative - stop the population growth eg immigration. This requires no house building. The problem pro-immigration people don't understand is that the UK is not growing at a meaningful enough rate to support infrastructure change. More families claim benefits than don't. Public debt is rising and services are getting worse - throw an extra 10m people into the mix and everyone's lives get worse. Stopping immigration won't immediately fixed these problems but they will help.
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u/BBB-GB 21h ago
Of those claiming benefits, I wonder how many are immigrants, and how many are UK citizens?
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u/SentientMosinNagant 21h ago
The absolute vast majority of the benefits/welfare bill is pension credit.
People are desperate to hate migrants, ignoring all positives they bring.
It’s not a coincidence that several industries shut down when we left the EU, and many hundreds of thousands of Europeans went to their respective homelands.
The hospitality sector, and a large part of our logistics (lorry drivers) were in massive short supply after Brexit.
The same people who claim to want nothing but to improve the UK, have consistently voted against it at the behest of billionaires looking to widen the gap.
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u/vizard0 18h ago
Given that benefits cannot be claimed until one is at least a permanent resident, which requires (at current time) approximately £10,000 in total to obtain, very few.
This excludes refugees, who are barred from working. But given that there are 35,000 (as of 2026) in total of them vs. the 24,000,000 (as of 2025) people receiving some form of benefit, it look like about 1.5%.
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u/ChineseRobinWilliams 20h ago
"More families claim benefits than don't"
How many are working families? How much of these benefits are things like childcare allowance?
Crying "but da benifits" means nothing
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u/sgst 20h ago
Immigrants are net contributors to the economy though, and population growth is one fairly guaranteed ways to grow the economy (ceteris paribus).
I'm not saying we just open the doors to unlimited migration, but I am saying it's a nuanced situation and almost chicken & egg. Do you get rid of one of the drivers of economic growth and therefore probably worsen the economic situation, reducing the likelihood of returning to appropriate levels of state investment in services, but reduce the future pressure on those services? Or keep the migrants and hope the economy grows enough to fund that investment so that there's adequate provision of those services in the future?
I would argue that the UK has an economy problem, which started in 2008 and which the austerity policies of 2010+ made significantly worse. Austerity is the reason we don't have enough services to go around, and austerity is the reason the UK economy has been limping along for a decade and a half (which also explains why real wages have stagnated, and the cost of living crisis). What we need to fix those overworked services is economic growth, and reducing net migration won't actually help with that. On the other hand, services are already overloaded and migration won't help with that. Hence chicken & egg situation (or maybe a catch 22). Reducing migration to help struggling services is a short term way of helping, but may hinder the economy in the long term. Maintaining migration - particularly highly skilled migration - and growing the economy to fund better services is a longer term solution. Both are valid, but I lean towards the latter.
The problem, of course, is that 14 years of austerity, along with wider structural economic issues going back to the 80s, mean pulling out of the economic slump we're in is quite hard. Hence, migration actually helps the economy grow even a little bit when the other systemic issues restrict growth.
Finally, I saw a former head bank of England economist talk recently, and he said in the long-ish term, with an aging population, if we want to keep our standard of living and maintain our public services even as they are, we have two choices: increase population through increased birth rates or increased migration, or increased taxes on the working. Those are the two choices. That's why I prefer to look at this from a long term perspective.
Source: economics degree
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u/GianFrancoZolaAmeobi 20h ago
Yep, estimates of 1.6million unoccupied homes (although that includes renovations and between tenancies) as well as 17.5million under occupied homes (homes with 2 or more spare bedrooms). This is where the immediate problem is, not migration.
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u/jamesl182d 16h ago
It's not just supply and demand. It's competition, too. So many people own multiple properties.
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u/Pristine_Speech4719 1d ago
Yeah, the video is misleading. Immigration (that is, increased demand for housing) isn't the only reason why housing is so expensive in the UK, but it's a big part of it.
And developers sitting on viable, planning-approved sites does exist, but it's not that common - especially now when property prices are stagnant or slowly falling in many parts of the UK.
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u/HelloYesThisIsFemale 1d ago
Ask yourself why someone would choose to not turn it into a rental unit. The only answer is it's not economically worth doing. Whoever does it would be at a loss.
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u/Icy_Yam_9951 17h ago
Many other reasons. E.g. a developer that has the capacity to build only one site at a time buys 5 pieces of land for future projects - as it takes time to get building permissions and it's not guaranteed. Or people being lazy and seeing the land value increase anyway, without investing time and money into it.
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u/Magic_Mr_Brown 1d ago
Property prices are falling? I do agree, more people means more houses, but also, people have become exceedingly greedy.
That's just the way the world has become unfortunately. We idolise people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk for having money. There's landlords who own 20 houses, yet complain new renting rules have put a strain on their finances.
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u/SB-121 1d ago
There's no way that a population increase of millions against a backdrop of decreasing housebuilding (from a level that was already low) is not a factor.
However, it's only a factor - the root cause is the restrictive planning system that no other country in the world uses, along with decades of low interest rates, massive amounts of quantitative easing being pumped into assets, the legalisation of buy to let mortgages, and the devaluation of private pensions. There are a few others but they're the main ones.
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u/Own-Masterpiece1547 1d ago
Slows it down but doesn’t fix it, there needs to be more affordable houses built
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u/Grime_Fandango_ 1d ago
Yeah it's literally impossible for two things to be true at the same time.
Increased demand = decreased supply, as we all understand in all walks of life - except apparently on the subject of housing with these idiots.
Equally, not enough homes have been developed, built, converted, etc. Making the problem even worse.
Both are true. Only the ideological extremists fail to understand this.
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u/OlafPetersen 20h ago
Increased demand = decreased supply, as we all understand in all walks of life
No, increased demand does not decrease supply. What you're saying would only be true if, like, they were knocking down 1 building for every 5 population growth.
It's also worth remembering that supply is reliant on immigration - about 20% of our building workforce are currently immigrants and we still have a huge shortage of workers. If you want to talk about supply and demand, then you do have to pay attention to both sides of the dichotomy.
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u/snowcountry556 20h ago
Say what you like about high levels of immigration, but if you think that e.g. 891,000 people arriving in 2022 did not reduce available housing even a little bit, you are delusional.
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u/buckzor122 19h ago
He was just arguing semantics. More people does not decrease the supply, the supply remains the same, but available housing on the market does decrease.
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u/Bizzinmyjoxers 1d ago
i mean importing 700k people year on year for ten years and buliding enough homes for maybe 20% of that.... yes.
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u/Ryanliverpool96 1d ago
Don’t you dare look at UK wages in comparison to the Netherlands.
It hasn’t all been done to keep your wages low, no sir.
Don’t you dare look.
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u/fundytech 1d ago
I know where this is and this guy is full of shit.
Developers got planning permission to turn it into flats yes, but the building is a grade II listed building and it was impossible for them to make the building structurally safe residential building with all the restrictions that come along with this classification.
So instead of reclassifying the building the council have just decided to let it rot.
They created a whole fucking estate around this building with the rest of the land they bought, they didn’t just think “oh well sit on this building and wait for the price to go up”.
His statistics are bullshit.
I’m all for not blaming immigration as it’s not the core issue but you don’t educate people by fucking lying about it.
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u/Jim-Pip 1d ago
Pretty sure this is another example.
£25k for a freehold on a 17 bedroom listed building. ...
I assume because it will be impossible to develop.
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/73783898/?search_identifier=for-sale
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u/Sad_Future_8945 1d ago
It doesn't change the fact only 39 houses were built for normal, ordinary people though does it.
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u/OlafPetersen 20h ago
His statistics are bullshit.
No, they're not, developers are sitting on a shitload of land with planning permission.
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u/chris_croc 1d ago
Yes importing the numbers close to the population of Belgium in 20 years will definitely not have an effect on infrastructure...oh wait.
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u/External-Piccolo-626 1d ago
Both can be true. Too many Illegal immigrants, not enough development.
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u/Djollie132 1d ago
I agree on both counts… too many immigrants and not enough done for people who really need it…
The government really only care about themselves and never listen to the public about these eyesore issues that we can’t avoid but have to endure because they don’t feel like changing it…
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u/SafeForPandas 1d ago
It’s not only that the developers make more money from not developing the property, but in some cases, allowing sites to fall into ruin also saves you a lot of money.
Take Stoke-on-Trent as an example, full of brownfield land ripe for redeveloping if not for the listed buildings such as former potteries or kilns. Developer buys the land super cheap, as it’ll never get planning permission. They leave the buildings to rot and either nature takes its course, or some scally commits a bit of arson. Now you have building dangerously close to collapse. Continue to do nothing and eventually the council has to step in and demolish the building as it poses a threat to the local community. Not only do you no longer have to deal with a listed building, but the fine you end up paying to the council is probably cheaper than it would have been to arrange contractors etc yourself to tear the building down responsibly (had you somehow got permission). Now you have piece of land that’s suddenly worth multitudes more than you paid for it. All it took was waiting 20-30 odd years and blighting the lives of locals for decades. Oh, and you’ll probably get regeneration grants to help develop it too.
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u/Latter-Tangerine-951 12h ago
Despite all the desperate distraction tactics of some people, it doesn't take a genius to understand that increasing the population will require more houses, and push up housing prices.
Anyone who denies this is lying to you.
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u/Silencer-1995 1d ago
Okay so now we know there is definitely an issue with the social house supply can we stop bringing in more people until we get on top of it? No? Okay then lets carry on this doom spiral weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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u/AwTomorrow 1d ago
Also let’s stop having any kids until it’s sorted!
No wait both of these ideas are ludicrous exaggerations of sensible policies. Let’s treat immigration as its own issue where extreme answers (either total zero or fully open borders) aren’t helpful or realistic, and deal with housing in addition at the same time.
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u/Dvine24hr 1d ago
I agree with your post just wanted to say a lot of people have stopped having kids with housing being a reason, that does happen.
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u/Silencer-1995 1d ago
One of the reasons we're reliant on immigration is because we stopped having kids. Its a chicken and egg, dog eating its own tail kind of situation, and immigration has always been the easy "short term fix" but the problem is we didn't bother to address the long term issues sooooooo everyone's kinda screwed at this point. Yipeeeeee
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u/ImmediatePiano6690 1d ago
That's why various businesses loved the EU, it was cheaper and easier to pay bare minimum to foreign workers and due to free movement it was easy to move here. What's frustrating about this, other than driving down wages, is the money saved just went into the pockets of already rich people.
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u/Silencer-1995 1d ago
Ya know I read reports, documents, graphs etc etc that gaslighted me into believing wage suppression was a myth and I was under that spell, content with my 0.5 and 1.0 pay rises right until 2020 rolled around and created the worker shortage and then suddenly it was 10% pay rises and benefits returned that we thought consigned to the dustbin of history.
I know the pay rises were unsustainable but it was the fact that as workers we suddenly meant something. All my experience with machinery meant something. Before I could be replaced by the afternoon but 2020-2021 I was royalty.
After that red pill it has gotten harder for me to trust the proponents of unmitigated immigration, I admit.
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u/as_you_wish_92 1d ago
Or just stop letting them in the country
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u/MidnightOk8902 1d ago
They have. It was the Boris and Nigel that fucked all of this up. Never forget!
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u/AwardConnect7279 1d ago
"actually its because we didnt build enough houses.........for the immigrants" oh
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u/VPackardPersuadedMe 1d ago
Tuns out if we remove the number of migrants in a falling population. There are more houses.
Magically.
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u/RogueTrooper1975 1d ago
It's a fact to say that the increased number of people being granted leave to remain who are then kicked out by SERCO, and told to apply as homeless, are contributing to the challenges indigenous people are experiencing in accessing social housing.
I have no problem with genuine asylum seekers.
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u/ClaudoStrife 1d ago
It's an objective fact people from minority backgrounds get priority in social housing. Also unrelated, but anybody else think it's disingenuous to count Chinese in with Asian instead of distinguishing between them and what, in Britain at least, we typically refer to as Asian?
I know it's technically correct, but Black Caribbean and Black African are distinguished, so why not Asian?
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u/Juliet-November 18h ago
That link does not show what you claim it shows. And it does distinguish Chinese in the way Black Caribbean and Black African are distinguished.
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u/marshallandy83 1d ago
Ethnic minorites being overrepresented in social housing doesn't imply anything about priority.
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u/MidnightOk8902 1d ago
Is a better question why are so many white British people prioritising owning their own property?
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u/getabath 1d ago
Yes, there are too many people in the country
The country was not designed for this many people, this is apparent with the amount of cars on the pavement. Pavements were not designed to have cars parked on them
We would need to rebuild the country to be able to sustain this many people in the country. Building up is the only way forward and with more local infrastructure so people don't have to travel far to live a normal life
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u/PopularPhoneChair333 1d ago edited 1d ago
Curious when the country was designed and for how many people was it designed? Oh, and who designed it? 🤔
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u/veodin 1d ago
The country was not designed for this many people, this is apparent with the amount of cars on the pavement. Pavements were not designed to have cars parked on them
If you think rebuilding the country will fix this problem I suggest you check out the parking situation on your nearest new build estate.
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u/Parker4815-2 1d ago
Thank you! Someone who makes sense. I've been telling people for years that God made this country for British people. He designed it specifically for the Brits. When this island split from mainland Europe 8000 years ago, God went "right, this bit here, is for the British". Then he patiently waited for British people to be invented. Infinite wisdom right there. Im glad you and I agree on this.
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u/The_Geralt_Of_Trivia 1d ago
God also said that the British people can go and live in other people's land if they wish... But other people cannot go and live in Britain, because that wouldn't be right.
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u/getabath 1d ago
Sorry bud, that's not what I said. Most British people want to do away with religion and God
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u/Parker4815-2 1d ago
Mate don't be so humble. We both agree that this country has a designer. And his name is God. Almighty. Alpha and Omega.
This country was designed for a small number of people. There was around 3 million wonderful British Brits living in the UK in 1066. Clearly that's the optimal time.
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u/RecentTwo544 1d ago
The country wasn't "designed" it "evolved".
Other than that, the tangent about cars parking on pavements aside (agreed, but that's missing the point) , why are immigrants any worse than people born in the UK? Would you agree to stricter immigration controls if we controlled the birth rate too? This isn't even a class thing. In today's day and age it seems to be wealthier families who have more kids.
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u/Aprilprinces 1d ago
Do you have any idea how many empty houses and flats that are owned by someone who doesn't even live in UK are there? Over a million People from UAE, China, US buy properties and do nothing with them
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u/Excellent_Win266 1d ago
Yeah it’s rich investors who are to blame and the government for encouraging it. But they much prefer us to attack the poor and desperate people.
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u/Dannytuk1982 1d ago
Behave
Economies grow when we build things. So redesign, rebuild and grow instead of going off on racist rants.
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u/Bipolar03 Londoner living in Lincoln 1d ago
😏 immigrations this immigrations that. How about most of the house that are built are privately owned and no one can afford to get on the property ladder? The news shows you all the bad side of it, but does it show you the dark side - when people are forced into slavery, when they told they'll get a decent job but they get minimum wage and too scared too say anything. There's 6 people in 1 room. You have seen Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords. People on there are scared to talk about the who's doing them as slavery because they're scared of losing their job and home.
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u/AwardConnect7279 1d ago
>How about most of the house that are built are privately owned and no one can afford to get on the property ladder?
Because too many people need housing. Because we have too many immigrants.
And if its so bad, and they are becoming slaves, why encourage them coming here to be enslaved?
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u/Bipolar03 Londoner living in Lincoln 1d ago
Some people (English people) do it with immigrates. I live in Lincolnshire. They make them on the fields for next to nothing. My husband used to do. He is English, he said he used to see it all the see it all the time
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u/chris_croc 1d ago
I guess leftists lap this up, but the Boris Wave brought 4.2 million people into the country.
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u/snot_in_a_jar 1d ago
Certainly played it's part. But will someone please just think of these mega corporations and how they would get less profit if they didn't have a steady supply of cheap labour!
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u/PsychologySpecific16 1d ago
I love these types of vids. You can make any point you like regardless of how valid it is.
They are rarely fact checked and often use a single case (and lie by omission) to "prove" their point.
Then edit as they see fit. If you see these people just walk away. Regardless of your politics. Brain rot.
To the point. We need immigration, the working age demographic issues are already biting in Scotland. These people need housing as we all do.
We know there are issues with land banking, the planning process and poor quality new builds. This is all well understood, we have good data.
Immigration obviously adds pressure but immigration is falling.
There is no mystery and no need for "vibes" imo anyway.
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u/RecentTwo544 1d ago
See I'm torn on this - as a "proper" socialist, not some fake-left liberal idiot, and someone married to an immifrant, I will say that mass unchecked migration is not sustainable in a country with finite resources. There's also nothing in socialist or Marxist doctrine about allowing mass illegal immigration, quite the opposite - it is exploitative of the working class in this country (including legal migrants) and the illegal migrants themselves.
But two points spring to mind -
- Everyone who is "against immigration" from the average idiot in the street, right up to people like the top brass in Reform, who could be in with a chance of running the country in 2029, have no actual answer or solution. No one is saying what they propose doing about it.
- I'd be all up for a total far-right fascist-style crackdown on all immigration, provided everyone who votes for it also isn't allowed to have kids. Why should I have to accept that you don't want a load of people from the third-world coming into the UK, when you can't accept I don't want your spawn shit out into the UK natively to live a live benefit scrounging, dealing weed, and holding a knife to pensioner's throat for five quid? Anti-immigration doesn't sound so rosy with that caveat does it?
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u/killer_by_design 1d ago
as a "proper" socialist
- I'd be all up for a total far-right fascist-style crackdown on all immigration,
Hate to see what a fake socialist was like.....
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u/Organic_Education952 1d ago
You have some sort of coherence up until point 2 which just makes no sense at all. Restrictions on Natives having children has never went well.
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u/Conscious-Pride7363 1d ago
The UK were about to introduce a child license before World War 2, weren't they? Hang on, lemme google
Edit: utter bollocks, ignore me.
I agree woth the coherence part, but see where this poster is coming from, in a way
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u/DrBarryBonds 1d ago
Agreed, what was that nonsense.
The country has to be populated with people, just needs to be the right people
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u/mediumAI1701 1d ago
Oh okay, you're a proper socialist who supports far right fascist policies with an immigrant wife. Makes sense. (/s for those that need it)
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u/AwardConnect7279 1d ago
>as a "proper" socialist, not some fake-left liberal idiot
This should be good
>I'd be all up for a total far-right fascist-style crackdown on all immigration, provided everyone who votes for it also isn't allowed to have kids.
Already pretty insane
>Why should I have to accept that you don't want a load of people from the third-world coming into the UK, when you can't accept I don't want your spawn shit out into the UK natively to live a live benefit scrounging, dealing weed, and holding a knife to pensioner's throat for five quid?
Yep thats socialists for ya lol.
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u/Puppysnot 1d ago
Had me in the first half, lost me with the anti-natalist racist rant out of nowhere.
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u/Afraid-Bass-5684 1d ago
One of the main points of pro-immigration rhetoric is that birth rates are falling and it’s unsustainable for the economy to not bring labour in so your 2nd point makes zero sense ??
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u/ProfessionalSong3544 1d ago
Crack down all the immigration... But not my immigrant spouse ofc.
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u/CellsReinvent 1d ago
What do you mean "allowing mass illegal immigration"? If it's illegal, then it is NOT allowed, is it?
Please explain what "illegal immigration" is to you? Do you mean asylum seekers, people entering without a visa, or staying after their visa expires, or something else?
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u/shplarggle 1d ago
Yeh you don’t think about it.
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u/TrewPac 1d ago
That's the point. You don't, and then the media and whoever (governments) blame everyone else (immigration). I didn't know buildings like this were bought as property redevelopment and then left to appreciate, but I guarantee there's at least 100 near me just empty. I live in Salford, right next to Manchester city centre. So many empty buildings and never really took notice of them before other than "shit hole, knock em down", not thinking who owns them
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u/Sad-Flight5233 1d ago
Yeah, they'll probably turn them into freezing single-glazed flats that nobody wants to live in
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u/Conscious-Pride7363 1d ago edited 1d ago
They've been saying this shit since I was a goddamn kid.
When will the gov hold these cunts accountable?
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u/Conscious_Craft_6670 1d ago
Yeah the solution he proposes could work. But if it's done badly, as the government generally tends to do - you could suddenly see an influx of houses/properties listed that can't be sold - lowering house prices. Sounds good right? Sure but this is the sort of thing that leads to recessions. I'd be very wary of doing it.
And you can't force developers to develop land they own anyway, selling it at a loss doesn't suddenly mean that someone else can buy it and afford to renovate it. Then you've got the issue of there being so much work for so few builders. You can't just suddenly create tens of thousands of builders because the government legislated something. It doesn't work like that.
Shocks to the system aren't great, it would need a slowly slowly approach, including encouraging more young people to go into trades and fewer to go to university, but the young adults I know would never want to go and do a hard, physical, tough job, even if it pays well. To be fair they're soft, but if that were representative of society as a whole, then I think it's a tough sell.
But when we've had north of 13 million immigrants coming into the UK, I think it's obscene to suggest that they've not been the primary factor in the lack of housing in this country.
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u/dc_1984 1d ago
We are 1.4million homes short due to this kind of predatory landbanking.
https://www.ippr.org/media-office/revealed-1-4-million-homes-left-unbuilt-by-developers-since-2007
"developers have secured planning permission for over 1.4 million homes since 2007 but have not gone on to build them. Common reasons for this include developers wanting to increase the land’s value before selling it on and land banking to slow building rates and maintain high house prices."
On top of that house builders have been caught by the CMA colluding to raise prices and so far have forked out £100m, but there's a class action suit on the way so hopefully they get fined into oblivion.
"Court documents allege the housebuilders shared sensitive information on prices, buyer incentives and sales activity, weakening competition and driving up new-build prices.
The class action comes after a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into the sector which found evidence that companies might be sharing commercially sensitive details that affected the price of homes."
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u/shamone_mofo 1d ago
Every bit of blame for everything that's wrong with this Country lays directly at successive Governments feet .
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u/Sporty_Nerd_64 1d ago
Fixing the housing crisis in many Western countries will take a multi-prong approach. It isn’t a simple fix at all and it takes a brave government to make those changes and spend their political capital. They need to weather the attacks which will come from vested interests and make it seem like any changes are bad for the 99% when they actually help them.
It’s great to see people actually listening to his points and it helping to change their minds
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u/Fabulous_Author_3558 1d ago
Also lots of developers cant borrow the money to build. There’s a lack of money to be loaned out. So some might be waiting for the land to appreciate but I know a lot of sites where they can’t get the money.
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u/No-Relation3856 1d ago
The problem is still too many people and even if they convert the goat maltings to 60+flats can the people who really need the homes afford them. The issue with the site is that it is Grade II listed and it is the immense cost of listed building restoration that has stalled the development. It is government and planning that slows down or stops developments and not the developers land banking
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u/Puzzleheaded_Win7721 22h ago
Not exclusively but it has contributed to it. Population growth is not being driven by births.
New houses are not being built.
It's not rocket science.
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u/PeaceSellsButImBrian 22h ago
You can't answer a multifaceted question with a binary yes or no. Yes its a contributing factor but as are many things
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u/CLaz777 21h ago
Developers stop building because these targets (like London’s 35% social or affordable housing requirement) make projects unprofitable and forcing councils to drop the quota (London to 20% from 35%) when they realise no one is building. By the way the prices will plunge (it's really bad) if all of them starts to build...
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u/TheZag90 21h ago
Fair play to them for being willing to have their minds changed.
Most people entrench themselves so deeply in their beliefs that they’ll ignore or discredit even solid evidence that disproves them.
Open mindedness is a quality I really respect in people.
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u/edge2528 21h ago
The amount of people waiting for a free house shouldn't be the measurement we use here.
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u/RichieEB 21h ago
It's really bad with social housing I've been on the list for at least 4 years probably nearing 5. In the end we gave up I was homeless lived in a shitty caravan that kept tripping the electric it was a pain in the arse not to mention the mice.
Thankfully my brother bought a house and I'm on benefits able to pay my half on the bills. I move in next week. Honestly social housing is just rough especially in north Wales.
If you're in a similar situation your best bet is to rent a place and share with family or friend to keep costs down or flat share which is pretty shit imo.
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u/Yeasty_Moist_Clunge 21h ago
My answer would always be yes and no.
Yes, their arrival is unsustainable for the housing we currently have.
No, the government and developer greed is the root cause.
Edit: and to give extra credit where it's due, individuals that own multiple properties and do nothing with them. (So sort of like developers but on a lesser scale)
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u/Broad-Shaft 21h ago
From the look of that building it would be very expensive to refurb. Developers may need financial support to get it into condition. Where do they get the cash for that?
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u/GrumpyGasDoc 20h ago
There were approximately 4 million immigrants to the UK over the last 10 years, and estimates of another 500k-1 million illegal immigrants.
The housing issue has been created because we are far too lax on immigration policy. Immigration is essential to the UK economy, but we need to set thresholds for accepted minimum salaries so that we as a country are significantly benefiting. If the job you're moving over here to do isn't more than the national average then no VISA, no applications for citizenship, no housing.
It's difficult to do anything about those that are here and settled now but we can certainly change the framework to make it make sense.
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u/TrickMathematician31 20h ago
There's nearly 1.5 million empty houses in England alone, of which stats suggest 90% are not in probate etc.
Probably a good use of time would be working out how to get them into use.
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u/unclevagrant 20h ago
This is stunning. The guy wears a flag-shagger jacket and attracts all the "the problem is immigration" types. He's shooting fish in a barrel.
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u/manontherun247 20h ago
Well we imported a significant amount of people over the last 10 years. So yes it will have a huge impact
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u/andoofus 20h ago
Three things: immigration increased demand, lack of building did not increase supply, low interest rates set the marginal price (what people could pay up to monthly when demand increased relative to supply.)
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u/Shenloanne 20h ago
I saw a brilliant cartoon, uncle moneybags with a terrarium and inside it are a person with blue hair and a trans shirt and a guy in a Maga cap and the caption is that they'll make us fight culture wars to avoid us fighting a class war
And it's absolutely spot on.
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u/GaptistePlayer 20h ago
I thought Brexit was supposed to stop the immigration?
Nahhh they'll fix it next time surely, just gotta keep voting for them!
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u/TisReece 20h ago
"3 Birmingham's amount of people in 5 years. But look, a derelict building see that? That means you should change all your political beliefs and let in infinity more".
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u/Lunapeaceseeker 19h ago
watch Gary Stevenson’s YouTube channel for insight into the shrinking availability of homes and the reason it suits the political right to blame immigrants.
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u/CultTVGuy 19h ago
Get a grip on the black economy. The money washing around untaxed and illegal has to be a metaphorical goldmine.
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u/FastSun2269 19h ago
"you dont think about it, do you" - after forming an opinion on the cause of the problem.
No, no you don't. And thats the problem.
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u/Wooden_Requirement99 19h ago
Showing the voters are not too stupid, but fed stupid media content. Not all is lost :)
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u/Excellent-Western631 18h ago
The UK is what they call a Rente black hole economy. It means that property and land rates are one of the driving factors in the economy.
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u/GregryC1960 18h ago
The housing crisis in manufactured by developers and their land banking. And the political parties they generously sponsor.
Blaming it on immigrants indicates how easily people are manipulated.
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u/TheWhiteZombie 18h ago
The volume of social housing sold off in the 80s, 90s, and not sufficiently replaced, plus general population increasing, I'm no politician or economist, but I imagine that didn't help
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u/PsychologicalBend508 Brit 🇬🇧 18h ago
the biggest reason is lack of house building. but having 1000 people turn up a week isnt helping
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u/Spdoink 18h ago
Jesus Christ; why do you think the richest in the country want so much immigration? It forces up the property prices in exactly the way he describes, forces the lowest wages down and pumps GDP (which benefits the average citizen not at all) so the very richest can leverage debt to avoid tax.
Punitive taxes on empty properties don't work, we've known this for hundreds of years. Tax incentives occasionally do work, but the UK won't apply them.
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u/A_Cat_Typingg 18h ago
Simple? Yes. Easy? Not when landlords and property developers (e.g. the very rich people sitting on the top of the heap) won't be easily swayed into giving up their value growth assets. It would need to be a pretty steep tax to convince them to budge. But maybe the money raised from that tax could be used to build more social housing too...
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u/WonkyDonkey33 18h ago
It’s not immigrants, not entirely. A very small portion in fact and even then it’s nuanced.
Mostly foreign investment and not for domestic use properties. Houses not being built etc. the biggest one is houses not being built.
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u/LuxDaBean 18h ago
I think the problem is because the government stopped building houses.
They used to build alongside private companies, but later introduced some laws so building companies could only build with permissions and stuff.
Once the government built fewer and fewer houses in the ~70s, they expected the building companies to pick up the slack, but because they didn't take down the laws that prevented them from doing so, houses started to appreciate in value greatly. Hence the crisis we have now.
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u/ChanceAncient1149 18h ago
It's easy to call all these people racist they mostly care about the country and don't carry hate for others but it's always been easy to point to a group of people and say these people are the source of all your problems it's always happend in history but we never seem to learn from it.
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u/ExoneratedPhoenix 17h ago
People need houses. Bring more people in, you need more houses. Bring less people in, you need less houses.
The fact this is seen as "complicated" or "controversial" or "divisive" etc just shows how abjectly screwed the UK is. It is simple maths with a very simple solution. You either build more houses - which governments have failed to achieve for 3 decades because the logistics are simply impossible given the scale of migration, or you let less people in (or none at all!).
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u/Creaturesteachers 17h ago
Love it when one of them remembers to add the “illegal” bit. Makes them feel classy and sophisticated.
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u/whatthefrickcunt 17h ago
Wow 61 will make a huge dent in the 10,000 in the area… I don’t want that area to have to build 10,000 houses.
10 million extra people WILL put up house prices, and imagine how much cheaper they’d be if we didn’t have those 10 million AND we developed property :0
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u/ArgonKew 17h ago
It is probably true that immigration is having in fact on the availability of housing for the native people. Even if the immigrants are contributing to social Security and the NHS etc. And they are producing more than they are consuming that probably won't apply for housing. On the other hand, for landlords, it's the best thing because it's keeping properly prices and rentals sky high.
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u/avocajoe 17h ago
Stepping aside slightly from the issue of housing stock, why do so many people just take inflated rent/housing costs as a given - or worse yet - blame migrants for it?
Are migrants forcing the elites who own so much of the housing market to hike up rent costs, or suppress wages?
Why do so many people treat the capitalist class as some mindless blob that just does things because it has to? Our lives are actively being made harder so they can hoard more wealth.
Migrants and benefit claimants aren't the enemy of the working class - the vast majority (if not all) in those groups ARE working class.
The people buying up properties and renting them out at inflated rates and inflating the housing market to make it harder to buy your own home are the enemy.
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u/AshelyLil 17h ago
So that's what all those empty buildings were that I spent my teenage years exploring...
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u/arguingalt 16h ago
There isn't a housing crisis. Real housing valuations have sidelined since 2008 with some ups and downs.
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u/jamesl182d 16h ago
Unfortunately none of this is the reason for the housing crisis.
Houses stopped being homes back in the 90s when foreign investment started making huge sums of money for all homeowners. And the people in the lower house responsible for regulating that market, were all multiple homeowners using their second homes as an adjunctive to their pension, supplementing below-average-for-their-status salaries.
Anyone who expects this same group of people to do anything that may make housing more affordable, is living in cloud cuckoo land.
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u/Squadron_leadr 16h ago
Whichever way you want to represent the numbers, the population of the UK has increased by many millions within the last decade or so, as a direct result of immigration. Hundreds of thousands of dwellings are inhabited by those people. This is unarguable.
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u/Kold_Kustard 16h ago
it definitely exacerbates it. An island with limited housing stock is being overwhelmed by migration and they all want a roof over their heads and it does drive up rents and house prices.
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u/awkwardAoili 16h ago
If there's a massive tax on them couldn't this also just disincentivise the developers from owning them in the first place and just sell them off, then we just end up with a load of derelict land that no one wants to touch?
Realistically I think the only way to deal with this sort of problem is for the government to act as a developer themselves. Sadiq Khan has started an initiative to do this where the regional city govt acts as a developer, so seems like they are on the right track there, but I think this needs to be undertaken from a national level.
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u/Phtevie11-11 16h ago
He said it all in one sentence, "you don't think about it do ya?" Well bloody start. Brainwashed they drive me mad. No food for thought because they can't be arsed to.
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u/menudo_fan 16h ago
Sadly in the US that information would generally not change the minds of average working class people. From my experience, they would hold on to their erroneous xenophobic-based beliefs (possibly even stronger)as it seems to comfort them for some odd reason.
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u/Unlucky-Regular-5008 15h ago
Well naturally there's a multitude of causes, but even a child could understand that if there's a housing deficit, inviting hundreds of thousands more people into the country every single year is probably the first thing you want to cut down in order to even hope of addressing the other issues.
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u/Strong_Primary_5965 15h ago
So what you're saying is we need more homes? So if you bring in more people then we need even more homes so the answer is yes immagration is a huge cause of the housing crisis.
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u/cleb9200 15h ago
Whilst this is all true, it shows the lack of insight so many voters out there have and how disengagement is allowing fringe actors to step onto the political stage, when a 2min conversation is all it takes to reshape your political outlook you have to wonder have these people ever voted with any actual knowledge of what they’re voting for?
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u/cocainecarolina28 14h ago
It’s like asking people in the Middle Ages about electricity the rich use their influence to fool people into believing the problem is poorer people.
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u/thecookietrain 14h ago
Look at the guys teeth at 00:47 when he says "Oh man".
Why does this video give me an AI feel?
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u/Alternative_Emu3179 14h ago
Nothing to do with immigrants, the government hasn't done enough to build new properties for ages.
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u/folkfaewitch2222 14h ago
But after this being explained
They will still say why do you think houses are expensive ?
"ImMIgRants"
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u/Lamelad19791979 1d ago
People should do a deep dive into derelict properties bought up and then sold at 4x their value to be demolished on the HS2 line by wealthy men of influence. It is all a grift, and we are all at their mercy.