BoogyMan
01-06-2011, 10:11 AM
Abject socialist classwarfare dipstickery at its finest. Thank goodness we are not quite this far gone in America yet.
Click through and read this moron's solution to this "problem."
There are two housing crises in Britain. One of them is obvious and familiar: the walloping shortfall in supply. Households are forming at roughly twice the rate at which new homes are being built. In England alone, 650,000 homes are classed as overcrowded. Many other people are desperate to move into their own places, but find themselves stuck. Yet the new homes the government says we need – 5.8m by 2033 – threaten to mash our landscapes and overload the environment.
The other crisis is scarcely mentioned. I stumbled across it while researching last week's column, buried on page 33 of a government document about another issue. It's growing even faster than the first crisis – at a rate that's hard to comprehend. Yet you'll seldom hear a squeak about it in the press, in parliament, in government departments or even in the voluntary sector. Given its political sensitivity, perhaps that's not surprising.
The issue is surplus housing – the remarkable growth of space that people don't need. Between 2003 and 2008 (the latest available figures), there was a 45% increase in the number of under-occupied homes in England. The definition of under-occupied varies, but it usually means that households have at least two bedrooms more than they require. This category now accounts for over half the homes in which single people live, and almost a quarter of those used by larger households. Nearly 8m homes – 37% of the total housing stock – are officially under-occupied.
.: Read the rest of this tripe :. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/04/take-housing-fight-wealthy)
Click through and read this moron's solution to this "problem."
There are two housing crises in Britain. One of them is obvious and familiar: the walloping shortfall in supply. Households are forming at roughly twice the rate at which new homes are being built. In England alone, 650,000 homes are classed as overcrowded. Many other people are desperate to move into their own places, but find themselves stuck. Yet the new homes the government says we need – 5.8m by 2033 – threaten to mash our landscapes and overload the environment.
The other crisis is scarcely mentioned. I stumbled across it while researching last week's column, buried on page 33 of a government document about another issue. It's growing even faster than the first crisis – at a rate that's hard to comprehend. Yet you'll seldom hear a squeak about it in the press, in parliament, in government departments or even in the voluntary sector. Given its political sensitivity, perhaps that's not surprising.
The issue is surplus housing – the remarkable growth of space that people don't need. Between 2003 and 2008 (the latest available figures), there was a 45% increase in the number of under-occupied homes in England. The definition of under-occupied varies, but it usually means that households have at least two bedrooms more than they require. This category now accounts for over half the homes in which single people live, and almost a quarter of those used by larger households. Nearly 8m homes – 37% of the total housing stock – are officially under-occupied.
.: Read the rest of this tripe :. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/04/take-housing-fight-wealthy)